Mike Bickle emphasizes IHOP's calling to deepen our relationship with God, urging the congregation to sustain a vision of intimacy with the Lord amidst life's distractions. He reflects on the importance of maintaining a heart connection with God over the years, rather than allowing ministry assignments to overshadow personal spiritual growth. Bickle shares prophetic insights received over the years, highlighting the need for a vibrant spirituality that transcends mere activity and focuses on loving God wholeheartedly. He encourages believers to prioritize their relationship with God as their primary assignment, ensuring that their ministry flows from a place of deep connection with Him.

Father, I thank you in the name of Jesus for the Word of God, and I ask you, Lord, Lord, as we open our hearts before you, I ask you to release your blessing upon the hearing of your Word, upon the speaking of your Word. I ask you for a spirit of impartation. I thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Well, tonight I want to talk about IHOP's calling to go deep in God. Now, that's obvious. It's the calling for the whole body of Christ, but the Lord has given us repeated prophetic encouragements, which translates, when the Lord gives you repeated prophetic encouragements over the years, it translates to more than an encouragement. The Lord's saying, I'm serious about this. It's an invitation for the whole body of Christ, but there's all kinds of reasons why the people of God draw back and don't sustain this vision of going deep in God. And as we are at a new season here, we're coming up at our eighth birthday in a few weeks, and thinking of the season that we're in with the God TV, establishing the cameras in the prayer room and the new launch date is May 28th. It was going to be in April, and then we put it back a little bit, but the leadership was just here last week. You saw them, Rory and some of the others, and they said May 28th is the final launch date where we're going to have the 24-hour cameras going on and bringing many into the prayer room with us. And that's kind of cool in one way, and it's a blessing to different people around the world, and it's a lot of pressure, and it's a lot of work, and there's stress, and there's a good and a bad side to that. And that's not so much what I'm talking about. The potential benefit or even the stress and the work or just the trouble that it causes to do that, but I'm thinking of from the heavens, that the Lord is saying here at our eighth anniversary of IHOP, our eighth birthday, I am wanting you to go into a new season. I'm wanting to bring the responsibility of IHOP up to the next level. We're going from, you know, childhood to adolescence. He's saying, I want you to be more responsible. I want you connecting with me in an intentional way at a new level here. And I think of our fundamental calling, no matter what ministry, but I think I'm being particular here at IHOP, is to go deep in God in a sustained way. That is not an automatic thing at all. That takes a constantly revisioning ourself to go deep. And going deep is not the same thing as just doing IHOP. You can do IHOP and lose your vision to go deep and still hang around IHOP and be in leadership for years without having a fresh connecting of our heart to have a clear vision to go deep in God. And so I feel stirred up by this. I'm looking at our, some of the original things that the Lord spoke. In Cairo, Egypt in 1982, I had the most powerful experience that I've had in terms of being awake. I've had one or two in the visionary night type category over the years. But in 30 years of ministry, the single most dramatic experience that I've had in the fear of the Lord was in Cairo, Egypt in 1982. I was in a hotel room spending an evening alone with the Lord on a trip where I'd been to several different cities and different nations for about a 30-day period. I was tired and I was just spending an evening with the Lord and I was just praying and talking to him. And the voice of the Lord came to me and the fear of the Lord fell upon me. And he said this, he said about four different statements. He said, I'm going to, the primary one, I'm going to change the understanding and expression of the whole of the body of Christ of Christianity in the whole earth in one generation. And the fear of the Lord came upon me and my spirit trembled under the authority that was on this word when the Lord spoke it. Now I don't want to spend a lot of time developing it. I've said it many times through the years, though some of you are new with this and probably it'd be helpful to spend a few minutes on it. But I'm going to give the kind of just the brief recap of it. When he said, I'm going to change the understanding of Christianity, I knew instantly by the Holy Spirit, he meant the way that unbelievers perceive the church. Mostly around the world, unbelievers, the way they view the church, they're not excited by it and they're not troubled. They're not threatened by it. They're neither. They're neither excited nor threatened. Mostly the unbelievers, it's just irrelevant. They, they don't have a negative or a positive. It just, they never think about it. It's just not a part of their mindset. In Acts chapter five, verse 13, it said that when the revival was breaking out in the book of Acts in Jerusalem, in Acts five, verse 13, it says that none dared associate with the believers. Now it doesn't mean in the full sense they didn't associate with the believers because then nobody would be saved. And many were, were being saved on a regular basis, but it meant the unbelievers, they saw the people of God and they saw the glory of God. They saw, they saw people being struck dead in the house of God when they lied at the communion table. And the unbelievers were taking a step back going, you know, those people, they're different. It's powerful. It's, it's scary. It's exciting. I don't know. And it says that none dared associate with them. And what I think the idea is that they, they carefully went near them in terms of, of, uh, of the corporate body. I'm not talking about just as individuals. I'm sure they had friendships with different ones, but they thought about it instead of just kind of casually joining and being apart. They said, there's something powerful. I mean, the dead are being raised. Paralytics are being healed. People are struck dead and we don't understand what the rules are yet. So we're going to kind of go slowly. And that's going to happen before the Lord returns. The glory of God will be manifest in the church to such a degree that unbelievers will view the church very differently than they do now. Some will hate it with rage, or they will join it with all of their heart. But either way, they will, they will think about it. They will wrestle with the reality of the church instead of just not ever think about it. Then he said, I'm going to change the end, the expression of Christianity, the way that my people dwell together, the way they dwell before me and the way they live with one another, the way they, the spirit of God moves in their midst and the way they express their life, their corporate life together. It's going to change. And then in that very same context, the Lord spoke clearly for what I call four different heart standards. These are not the only values of a New Testament community. There's, I could think of about 10 more values that are very important to a New Testament body of believers. So some people said, our four values at IHOP are, and I go, no, no, we have about 15 actually, maybe a few more than that. But these are the four values the Lord spoke because these are the four values that are most neglected by the body of Christ. These are the four values that are most easily dismissed where, you know, when the, when things go tough and life is hard, these are the four that go to the wayside quickly while maintaining other normally accepted New Testament values. The first one was night and day prayer that the people of God, I'm not saying that every church has to have a 24 hour prayer furnace. That's not what I'm saying, but that the spirit of prayer would be something important to them. There would be holiness of heart or purity. That people would go deep in God. Well, all four of these speak of going deep in God. They would encounter God, extravagant giving to the poor. This was, this really impacted me. This is 25 years ago and the Lord spoke to me clearly a number of times over the years that he's going to give me, put it within my hands, tremendous amount of wealth. And I can see that right now. I can see with my eyes in the natural, not just by faith in the spirit. I can see how that's beginning in a significant way to come to pass. And the Lord put this in my heart. I had a deep resolve as the Lord placed the authority over millions of dollars. I didn't want to be more extravagant and giving to the poor. And it's not just the poor, it's just the purpose of God in the earth. Because you know, the majority of the earth, the leaders in the body of Christ live in abject poverty. I mean, the whole body of Christ in the West, most leaders do okay. I mean, many of them look pretty simple, but many of them doubt. But in the third world, I mean, the vast majority of the body of Christ in the whole world lives in tremendous financial lack. Tremendous. From Western point of view. I mean, they have enough to do the will of God and that's what God promised. And the Lord spoke to my heart and he said, I'm going to put wealth in your hands but here's what I want you to do. I don't want you to use it for yourself. I want you to use it for my purpose. And if you use it for my purpose, I will continue to multiply the wealth I put in your hands. And I made a determination by the grace of God and he's helped me to rejoice in this these 25 years. Meaning it's an exciting thing. It's not a grit my teeth and think, oh Lord, living simple is really a burden. I find joy in my spirit and the whole prospect of it. I find it to be a excellent and a delightful thing. And as much as I understand living a simple lifestyle in our culture. But I don't want to have millions of dollars and give away more than most millionaires, but still live at a different lifestyle than I do now. No, I want to live in a simple lifestyle when a billion dollars and the Lord promised me specifically, he would put a billion dollars in my hand. That's a thousand million. I know that you know that number. And I purposed, I would never change my lifestyle. No matter how much money came into my hands, I would never change my lifestyle. And for again, the last 25 years, the Lord's helped me to rejoice in that reality. And it's an enjoyable and a fun thing to do. And the Lord is going to prosper his church, even in the West. But God is wanting men and women to receive prosperity for all the right reasons and to use it for all the right reasons. And then the fourth heart value or standard he put was the idea of a prevailing faith or the realm of the prophetic, the power of God. Confidence that the power of God would intervene. The realm of faith, the realm of the prophetic, the realm of the manifest presence, which is deeply connected to faith. When the Lord will break in and do extraordinary things and answer our needs in extraordinary ways and answer our enemies in extraordinary ways and, and set things in order and divine appointments and open and shut doors, many dimensions that require the Holy Spirit manifesting his power in our circumstances. Well, these four different heart values, these heart standards, as I've called them over the years are really expressions of going deep in God, but going deep in God is this vision to have a, a sustained vision is the key to having a heart connect with God through the years. I don't mean, I don't mean a general heart connect with God. I'm talking about a heart connect with God that, that tenderizes your spirit and motivates you to want to be a wholehearted lover of God, obeying God in every area of your life with, with zeal and with energy going after a hundred fold obedience, viewing the first commandment to love the Lord, your God with all of your heart as the, as the greatest glory in your life to have the anointing to love God in that kind of abandonment. And of course, if you love God with all of your heart, you'll naturally love one another. And then you'll love your enemies. Anyone who loves God with all of their heart will always love people, friends and foes alike, because they will be tenderized by experiencing the love of God. So when I talk about going deep with God, I'm not talking about having mystical experiences with the Lord, although I like mystical experiences, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about day by day, having a sustained relationship with God where my, in my heart, I feel his presence and I have a witness in my spirit that I'm going wholehearted for God throughout that day. That, that, that I have a certainty, I have a confidence that I'm seeking to obey him in every area of my life, my thoughts, my words, my time, my money, that I'm really trying to obey him in all those areas day by day. And which means to love him and to fill his presence and to fill my heart with his word and to just to be connected to God. That's what I'm talking about by the vision to go deep. Well, the Lord said, I'm going to change the understanding and expression of Christianity in the earth in one generation. That's the first sentence he said. Then he said, I'm inviting you, this is 25 years ago. He says, I'm inviting you to be a part of a work that will touch the ends of the earth. Now that was the first time I was 26 years old. It's the first time it ever dawned on me. I would be bigger than the city that I was pastoring in. I was just on the way of leaving St. Louis after seven years of church planning in St. Louis to come to Kansas city to establish this new work in Kansas city. And so I received this word from the Lord. I'm going to use you. I'm going to involve you in a work that will touch the ends of the earth. And right now, as we're coming to our eighth birthday of IHOP and the TV dimension of it, I can see it more and more where this is going. Now, my goal in life is not to touch the ends of the earth. That's an assignment. And you know, with every assignment you receive from the Lord, how many of you know, whatever the assignment you receive from the Lord, it will ebb and flow. There will be seasons where that assignment is prospering, that ministry assignment, and there'll be seasons where it's really drawing back. It's like, it's like the waves of the sea. It goes out the tide, it comes in and it goes out and it goes in. And 30 years of ministry, I've had times where it seemed like everything I did had life and momentum and seasons. No matter what I did, I couldn't get an ounce of anything happening. And everyone I know that's been in ministry for decades has that same testimony. Those that have known the favor of the Lord, they know what the pruning and the discipline seasons are like. So my passion is not to touch the ends of the earth. That's my assignment. My passion is to touch the heart of God in a sustained way. That's my passion. I've told this story several times over the years that my friends will come and see I hop in because we had this, this sign at the church. I pastored for, for 16 years, the Lord spoke that we would do 24 hour prayer in the spirit of the, of the Tabernacle of David. So we had a sign on the wall, 24 hour prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle of David. And we had that sign up nearly 16 years. So people would come by and they go, what's that? And I said, I don't really know that thing. You know, Bob Jones talked about, you know, the youth movement, singers, musicians, dancers, and Israel and praying and fasting and a whole group of people doing it all day. Something like that. I don't really quite know what's going to happen. Now, eight years later, looking back, it seems pretty clear, uh, what the Lord meant, at least in the early stages, there'll be lots of developments over the years to this, but for 16 years, I didn't know what it meant. So in the last eight years, I've had lots of friends come, you know, local, as well as many friends from other nations come through, go, Hey, you're doing it. You're doing that, that 24 seven deal. It must be your dream. And I say, I like to be nice about it, but I like to always be clear. And it's a little, sometimes a little shocking to them. I go, no, it's not my dream. I hop was never my dream. I said, my dream is to touch God at the heart level, all the days of my life in depth. That is my dream. I hop is my assignment. I appreciate I hop. I hop is hard. It's hard work for a lot of you. I said, it's my assignment and I will do it with all of my heart to tell the end. I do. I hop for, for the sake of love. I go, it's not my dream. I hop can get real big or be, or, or be real little and my heart. And I mean, my dream doesn't change at all. I can do my dream in prison. I could do my dream anywhere because my dream is between my heart and God's heart. My dream is only dependent upon me keeping a vision for it and sustaining that vision. And a lot of people, their dream is their ministry assignment. And that's really will get you in a lot of trouble. It will get you into burnout into bitterness. When your ministry assignment is the big dream of your heart, you will inevitably end up in burnout and in bitterness because there's too many things that happen in circumstances, the ebb and flow where the favor season, you're excited. Then the pruning season, you're depressed and burnout and the favor season. People are, are, have momentum to help and there's the favor of the Lord, but then the enemies emerge in the favor season as well to resist. And if you get your mind locked into the circumstances of how many people are responding and how many are attacking, and that's your mind, your primary dream in life, I assure you, you will end up burnt out and you will end up bitter even in the ministry. And having been in ministry 30 years, I assure you the vast majority of the people that I know that have been in ministry 20, 30, 40 years, most of them are burnt out with significant residues of bitterness in their spirit because it's really disappointing. It's not, some people say the church can really be tough. Well, I'll broaden it. Human beings can really be tough. It's not because they're born again. It's because they're human. I've heard people overstate how tough the church is. I go, hey, the world's not that cool. Trust me. They're pretty, they're pretty vicious out there. And they go, yeah, but they're not supposed to be. I go, granted, they're, I mean, they're supposed to be vicious out there. The church isn't, isn't supposed to be. But it's not because it's the church that it's tough. It's because it's humans and we're in a fallen world. So you don't need to take it out on the church. The key, the key to not having burnout and bitterness is making the number one dream of your heart to go deep in God. Make that your dream. Make your ministry assignment secondary. And if it gets reversed, your heart will get wounded continually. And the wounding of your heart is the, is the divine wake-up call. It's the alarm system. Make your ministry number two, not number one. Announcement, make your ministry number two, not number one. That's what the pain in ministry, the disappointment of things not happening and years later and still nothing is happening. That pain or the pain of you're actually doing something and people are resisting you or responding negatively. But there's two sets of categories of pain. And whether nothing is happening or a lot of people are saying wrong things, whatever the source of pain is, the pain is an alarm system to tell you to realign your heart. And not that the pain goes away instantly, but to make your going deep with God, encountering God at the heart level, make it the number one dream of your life, not the second or third thing. And there's plenty of difficulty and plenty of pain to remind you. I've had that alarm system work in my heart for 30 years. I know what it means to go out. The Lord says, I don't even want that as your main dream. Make that secondary in your life. Make me your main dream. And guess what? You will begin to feel the presence of God in a new way in your heart. You'll find healing and a sense of joy and you can have energy no matter what's happening or who's mad, glad or sad. You have energy in your heart with the Lord and it's exciting. Well, the Lord told me, he says, I'm inviting you to be a part of a work that will touch the ends of the earth. And I just wanted you to know that touching the ends of the earth isn't the big thing in my life. And if it's the big thing in your life, that's wrong. Make that secondary, make that secondary, not primary. And so I was on the floor in this hotel room in Cairo, Egypt, and I was weeping and the fear of the Lord was on me. And I was saying, yes, Lord, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I heard the voice of the Lord again. He spoke to me. It was the internal audible voice of the Lord. I've had that experience two or three times in 30 years. And the Lord says, you've only said yes, but you've not yet done it. I was going, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, Lord. He says, you've only said yes, but you've not yet done it. And I, I heard this so clear. It's like, wow. And I was still saying yes. And he says, many have said yes, but they did not do it. And doing it doesn't mean embracing it for five years. The it isn't a five-year, uh, consistency at devotion to, uh, at, at going after God at the heart level, doing it means doing it for decades. God is calling us to follow through, to endure, to have endurance. I mean, the greatest thing imaginable is connecting with God's heart. I mean, what could be greater than that? We all know that. And yet that so quickly becomes secondary in our lives, even as leaders. And there are more leaders sitting in this room that are under 25 years old, but the call of leadership is on you and saying yes is important, but we haven't done it. If we stay steady for two to three years, we've only done it. If we stay steady for decades. And my point being is that I've seen a lot of people stay steady for five years. Some 10 I've seen very few stay steady with God over 10 years, very few, uh, even leaders in the body of Christ. I mean, fiery in their spirit. I mean, they're still in the ministry. They still love God. They still preach sermons. They still lead a church, sometimes a big ones, but they're, they've lost the fire in the urgency. They they've lost that sense of abandonment to be obedient with their eyes and their words and their time and their money in a really specific way. They've long lost that zeal to be careful, to obey and all the years of their life and to have an aggressive love response of their heart, feeling the love of God, filling their heart with the word. I've seen very few do that for over 10 years. Very few I've ever seen do it over five years. But when the Lord says, you said yes, but you haven't done it yet. You haven't, you have not sustained this vision for years and it wasn't a rebuke, but he was, it was a sobering idea. And so what I'm calling us to at this eight year season of IHOP, our eight year birthday, I'm calling us to realign our heart with this vision to go deep. And I don't mean just corporately we go deep, although corporately is important. I'm talking about you and your heart. I'm talking about Sunday today and Monday tomorrow. I'm not talking about going deep in kind of a figurative way. I'm talking about today, caring about filling your heart with the word, caring about connecting with the Holy Spirit, caring about obeying God with your eyes and your words and your time and your money. I mean really caring. I'm not talking about being preoccupied with legalistic details and where you're nervous if you spend five minutes wrong. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a preoccupation with the details of the mechanics that distracts you from God. But I'm talking about a a zeal in your heart, a vision of your heart to sustain this connectedness with the Lord to get it first and then to sustain it through the years. Now the Lord's very kind. He's very gracious. I mean he's different than man as we all know. We're very grateful for that. But in Romans chapter 4 verse 20, God said about Abraham or Paul the Apostle said, he says, Abraham did not waver. Now Abraham, he had the promise of God. He didn't waver, meaning in his faith and his obedience. Well Abraham, God says, I will give you a son and this son will be an heir of whom I'll bless the nations of the earth. And of course the son is Isaac. Well time goes, you know, 10 years, 20 years, it goes to 25 year wait. And in that 25 year period, Abraham says, well maybe, maybe I got it wrong. So he took his maidservant and had a son, Ishmael. And Ishmael's been troubling Isaac for all these for 4,000 years. But Paul the Apostle writes about Abraham and he says Abraham did not waver. Now in my house that's called wavering. I mean it looked like he wavered from where I'm sitting. What? He didn't waver. Well maybe Paul didn't know the book of Genesis. Or maybe Paul did know Genesis, but he knew God better than, than I knew God. When I first read that, I thought, how could Paul say that? I mean he said the same thing about David. In Acts chapter 13, said that David fulfilled all the will of God. I could think of 10 sins recorded in first and second Samuel that David committed. And David did some really bad things, but through God's editing process, David did all the will of God and was called the man after God's own heart. Abraham did not waver, meaning through God's editing process, God, there is a contingency for the weakness of our flesh. When the Lord, what the Lord calls sustaining our vision, it doesn't mean that we don't have a bad week or even a bad month where we're not going after the Lord heart. Now I'm not trying to make it, you know, give people a reason to, to go easy with the Lord for a week or a month. But the point I'm saying is the way that God evaluates our life, he is so kind in his editing process that when, when, when we don't have that focus for a week or a month, or we look, look back and all of a sudden six or eight weeks of that, what's happened? Because our heart naturally drifts away from that kind of ardent focus on the Lord. The Lord says, quickly repent, realign your heart. And when I meet you on the last day, the way that you're going now, you didn't waver. So it doesn't mean you didn't lose your zeal for a day or a week or a month, but it's when it, when the Lord made it aware to, uh, to your, your conscious, to your, to your understanding, you went, oh Lord. And I've done this many times. I've probably two, three, four, five, six times a year. It's not like I counted. It's not on the calendar. I have to consciously stop and go, wait a second. Yes, I'm doing IHOP. Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm loving the mandate and the message here, but I'm not connecting with the spirit in a present tense way at the heart level. Like I, I used to even a week ago, a month ago, or two or three months ago, and several times a year, a few more than that, I become aware that I'm drifting away from that present tense earnestness to obey with my eyes, my words, my time to have a extravagant love exchange where obedience is my reward and my delight. It's not the price I pay. I want to obey. I want to be with him where he is. I want to be near him. I want to feel his heart. I want to do what excites him. It's not like I'm gritting my teeth trying to pay the price to me know God because he has all the power I have to yield to him because he can out-wrestle me. So okay, I will obey you. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an urgency in our spirit to go after God in a present tense way, and I lose that consciousness just in the rigors of the work and of leading, and a month goes by, two months goes by, and I hear myself preach to you, or I hear one of you talk, or just in a prayer time, and I go, oh no. You know, in the last weeks, I haven't pressed in like I know to. My vision for a sustained heart connect to go deep in God, it's not like I've thrown the vision away. It's just not, it's not been premier before my attentiveness. So I haven't been preoccupied with that vision. It's dropped down to second or third, and I have to go, whoa, wait a second. And I'm not talking prophetically to us as a community saying the Lord has said this is a season. Yay, IHOP, you are off. You know, that's not what I'm saying. I'm looking at the eight-year birthday. I'm looking at the God TV. I'm thinking of this thing going out, and I'm thinking, Lord, are you sure we're ready? I mean, really, are you sure? And what I assume the Lord is saying, yes, you are ready. You're ready for my esteem, but I'm raising you up to bless people. I'm raising you up to bless you, and I'm raising you up to humble you and to expose your heart to you too. Yeah, you're ready. Like, oh, how about just the bless people and bless us part? Well, I'm going to bless people through IHOP, and I'm going to bless IHOP through IHOP, but I'm going to expose IHOP, and I'm going to humble IHOP. Yes, you're ready. It's just the right time. And so I feel just a little apprehensive. I've been around a little bit with the Lord over the years, and I just know he cares so much, and he's just like, oh, Lord, I don't know, you know? I mean, my yes is yes, but it's like, I'm just, I am a little, I'm more nervous than I am excited about this new season. Because I'm not interested in IHOP having notoriety. Notoriety will get us zero at the judgment seat of Christ. We could have notoriety and stand before God and say, well, you know, lots of people in the world had notoriety, but they were not doing the will of God. I want IHOP to have dynamic spirituality. I want IHOP to have the majority, of course, all the people, but I mean, the majority of them is more realistic because there's always those that are coming in with all different attitudes, you know, from all different types of responses. So as a shepherd here, I'm saying, Lord, that the majority, we would have a vibrant spirituality, a vibrant reality at the heart level. That's what I care about about IHOP. Not notoriety, not more people coming and more people watching and more money coming. Those things will come and go. I mean, they will come and they will go and they will come again. I'm not going to lock into that, you know, that tide coming in and going out because in the next 20, 30 years, if the Lord tarries, and I think he is going to tarry, he will wait. I don't think he's coming in that time frame. He might, but I expect several different seasons of high and some cutbacks in our future. But what concerns me is a vibrant spirituality. What I mean, a connectedness of our heart. And beloved, we can have connectedness in our heart right now. I mean, without any TV, if God TV says, you know what, we really missed it, it's nothing. And if the bank says, you know what, you've got a loan for buildings, we want our buildings back. You know, we're cashing the loan. Well, that's illegally impossible. That's not going to happen. But my point being, if everything went the opposite of the way it's going, we can still do the will of God. We can do the will of God under a little tent like David did and go 24 seven with all of our heart and nobody care at all what we're doing. And we do the will of God perfectly. And the will of God isn't just doing it. Although there is a dimension of the will of God of doing the work that he puts before us. But the will of God, the primary will of God in our heart is to grow in love, to grow in meekness, to grow in revelation of God. Jesus said in John 17 verse three, he goes, this is eternal life to know God. I mean, our number one goal and object in a relationship is to know God, the knowledge of God to have revelation in our heart is John 17 verse three. So I think of three things regularly. And I say them a lot to grow in love, to grow in meekness, which really is identical, but I just, it's kind of two different sides. I mean, two, two, two different faces of the diamond or to grow in revelation. And we can do that. It doesn't matter how big or how little our life is in terms of its impact. Beloved, this vision is doable. The vision to go deep in God in a sustained way. It is attainable for the weakest person because we're all weak. There's nobody who's intrinsically strong. Paul, the apostle by nature and Elijah were as weak as you and I are. There's no, it's like it said in James five about Elijah. He goes, Elijah prayed fervently. He says, and the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. It accomplishes much in James five or 16 and 17. But he said, Elijah had a nature like ours. Elijah was a guy that woke up in the morning when he, when he got up or he woke up in the afternoon. If there, if he did the night watch, you know, when he woke up, he woke up tired. He didn't wake up prophesying, probably did a couple of times, but he woke up going, Oh man, it's hot out today. I gotta do work, but I don't want to work. It's going to like, Oh, it's just like everybody. This thing is doable for, for the week, for the weakest doable meaning to sustain a vision through the years of going deep with God, of encountering God, you know, over 10, 20, 30 years, there are so many understandable reasons to drift away from this life vision. I don't mean, I don't know that very many people ever one day say I am now officially changing my vision. I am no longer going hard after God. I don't know anybody that actually says that one day. And I've, I've been involved with thousands of believers in the 30 years of ministry, thousands, just having a large church through the years. And I know lots of ministries. And like I said, I rarely see, I do see, I do have examples and it's exciting. People go over 10 straight years where they keep the vision to go deep, steady in their heart. And that means they've had some bad days and weeks in that 10 year period, but it's still from God's point of view, they didn't waver. I'm gonna tell about a bad week or a bad month. I mean, I've kind of losing your way in it. I'm talking about a bad year or two. That's different. This thing is doable, but in 10, 20, 30 years, there are so many reasons to drift just the cycles of life of married, single, children, children, young children, old ministry, little ministry, big ministry, little ministry, big ministry doesn't exist. Ministry starts up again. There are so many seasons in 30, 40 years. Body feels good. Body feels bad. Body skinny, body not skinny, you know, body energy, body, no energy. There's so many, so many seasons in life, in relationships, in family, in marriage, in ministry, 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years. It's no wonder there's many good, understandable reasons why people kind of lose their way. But beloved, we don't have to lose our way. Doesn't mean we'll have a ministry anybody knows about. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about sustaining a vision of going all the way deep with God. That's what I'm talking about. It's going to take times where we consciously realign our heart. We consciously realign our heart three, four, five, six times a year, maybe more, maybe less. Where it's like, oh, it's here again. Lord, this awareness that the last weeks I haven't done that. I've just been careless compared to former times in my relationship with you. No, no, I'm going to redo this. I'm going to get ahold of my schedule. I'm going to lock in a new way. I'm going to put my heart before you. I'm going to be careful with my words. I'm going to be careful with my eyes. I'm going to be careful with my time, my money. I'm going to obey you. I'm going to walk in the Holy Spirit of these areas. I'm going to have a conscious connection with the Holy Spirit. Most of you know that I have a brother that's been totally paralyzed for 34 years. He broke his neck in a high school football game when he was 17 years old, 34 years ago. And just for the last 12 weeks, he's had the most horrible time in his 34 years. He had a respiratory infection and, uh, and couldn't breathe. They put him on a respirator, on an air machine, respirator. And it was such because they can do it several ways, but it was their only option where he couldn't talk at all. Couldn't whisper. I mean, he couldn't even say, hello, how are you doing? He couldn't make one, no, no, uh, Eric had come up through. So we had to read his lips and we're all bad lip readers and he's a bad lip giver or doer or whatever. And I would look at him, you know, eight minutes later, he, I, the only one we really understood is, Oh, forget it. It was so frustrating. And because of the respirator, he couldn't, he couldn't talk. He couldn't receive water. They put a tube right into his stomach. Could they have food or water? Didn't have even an ice cube for 12 weeks, not one sip of water in his, in his throat for 12 weeks. And he'd just look at the ceiling and just in anguish. And we talked about this and now, uh, the respirator he's off of it just the last couple of days. And we're talking and through the time, and we've talked about it before and at different times. And it's like, and he has this vision to be healed. And, and, and that is an exciting, uh, reality to press for being healed. But the bigger reality as he would lay there, I say, Pat, and he is, it wasn't all new information to him. He's loved the Lord for, for these, uh, 30 plus years. I said, there is, as long as you have breath, even if it's artificially, you're being helped with it. You're awake. There is a will of God for you in the last 12 hours and the next 12 hours, there is a will of God for you. The will of God doesn't begin when you get healed. There's a will of God today for you. It's not like I get off the respirator. I can have a, uh, a, a sip of water. I mean, hasn't had a sip of water in 12 weeks, hadn't said a word for weeks. Then when that changes, then he can start doing the will of God. It's like, no, the will of God for you right now is identically the will of God for me. And the whole thing of the increase and, you know, connecting, uh, I hop into other places around the world through TV are all coming here, but we have the exact same primary mandate to do the will of God by growing in love and meekness and revelation. You don't have to be able to talk to do that. All you have to be able to do is think if you can think you can do the will of God consciously. And that gave his heart strength that every day that he lay on that bed and loved God and was humble in his attitude towards God and towards the nurses. Every day it was recorded in God's book as a significant day in the will of God. And it's the same thing as in my life, my life, God's not measuring me by how many sermons I preach and how many people hear them. He's measuring me in the same way. He's measuring my brother Pat in the exact same way. And the only things that go in his book in the positive sense is if I grow in love and meekness, I grow in revelation of him and his word. And he had great joy in that, in that reality, because it made every day important and every day was eternal, laying there suffering and just tears coming down his face. He couldn't do anything and utter frustration, couldn't communicate, couldn't drink, just looked up at the ceiling. I mean, what a horrible thing that he's walked through. But as horrible as that is, he could still do the will of God as capable as I can do the will of God and receive the same response and the same gold as anybody else as Billy Graham with a worldwide ministry. And some people are so locked in to their ministry assignment that they disconnect from their primary assignment. Your ministry assignment is not your primary assignment life. It is a secondary assignment or your third assignment. And some people are so much in pain over their ministry assignment. It's not working. Nobody's responding. I'm waiting forever. I'm still in the dungeon. It's not working. And they're in so much despair about their ministry assignment that they are neglecting their primary assignment in life. And that's to grow in vibrant love and humility and revelation at the heart level, regardless what circumstances come their way. Meaning regardless if anybody ever listens to you at all, does it matter? You can grow in your primary assignment in your life. As I hop as we're returning this corner, this eighth eight-year birthday, and I'm thinking of the increase that's coming and the work. Beloved, we can even do the work, the rigors of the work that's involved in this. We can do the work and people can get touched and lots of things grow and we can lose out on our primary assignment in life. And that's to connect with God in a deep way at the heart level. And by the grace of God, I feel such zeal about this. I've said this to our leaders on a number of times. I do not want us to get out of the will of God in our primary way. I don't mean by activities to lose out in our primary will of God in our heart, because our ministry assignment is growing in this season. We stand before God. He says, yeah, you grew. A lot of people knew about you. I didn't call you to notoriety. I called you to intimacy, not notoriety. Notoriety will come and go. Intimacy is the great gift I gave you is the call to that, to connect with my heart and my heart with your heart. And so as I'm ending now, I never really is good at the ending. So I just, I'm ending now, but I just want us to have this in our minds. Amen. Let's stand. It was pretty weak ending. I realized I got to work on that a little bit, but let's stand before the Lord. Let's just wait at his presence. His worship team come up, but even before we do anything in terms of with the