Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of Isaiah 40 as a forerunner message, calling believers to comfort Jerusalem and prepare a spiritual highway for the Lord's return. He discusses the historical context of Isaiah's writing during a national crisis and draws parallels to the end times, where messengers will proclaim God's truth amidst persecution. Bickle highlights the dual mandate for believers: to comfort Israel and to build a spiritual highway that aligns with God's values and plans. He encourages the church to engage actively with God, waiting on Him for strength and renewal, especially in times of fear and uncertainty.

Father, we just come before you in the name of Jesus. Lord, we ask you again by the Holy Spirit to mark our hearts. Lord, we know that the end-time message, we can't get it without your help. Lord, we ask for the Holy Spirit illumination of our mind and heart. Let us see what you see and feel what you feel about this chapter. Lord, I ask you again, why do you want these truths proclaimed? Why specifically did you put these in the Word of God about the end times? Lord, help us with that, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, paragraph A, the historical context that Isaiah is writing into, the trauma, the crisis, because this is about responding to God in a place of international and national crisis. That's kind of the backdrop of Isaiah 40. There's an international national crisis going on, and of course, it's the same as every chapter, it's the Assyrian Empire. And the Assyrian Empire was the superpower of that day. And it's, for those that are with us for the first time, the Assyrian Empire, nobody uses that name today, but it's basically the Middle East. Syria and Iraq, Iran, Egypt, some of those nations altogether, different combinations of them were over the 300 years of the Assyrian Empire connected to Isaiah's day. Okay, then paragraph B, we have an outline there, you can just look at that at your own. Paragraph C, Isaiah 40 has specific applications to, I'm going to give four specific applications, and they're all related to a national crisis or a big event in salvation history, or both together. First application was in Isaiah's day, where Judah was fearful, trembling in fear, as the cruel superpower of Assyria is surrounding the country of Judah. You know, Judah's got a, it's a small country, with Jerusalem is in the, a part of it, and the Assyrians are threatening to destroy them, and Isaiah is speaking about interacting with God and looking to God in this national crisis, because fear was dominating the culture. Then the second application was a spiritual, dynamic, glorious event in salvation history, the coming of the Messiah, the first coming. And John the Baptist was the Isaiah 40 messenger. And the Roman Empire was obviously crowding around the nation of Israel as well, oppressing them, later to destroy them in 70 AD, but this great event in salvation history, the first coming of the Lord. Then this chapter has been relevant through history, particularly when the body of Christ, or the Jewish nation, has been under intense persecution. There's those seasons of persecution that are more intense than others. This chapter has been a life saver, and a giving strength and insight. And then of course the, I believe the primary application of this chapter, though these first three are completely important and valid, but there's yet another crisis, there's yet another event in salvation history, of which this chapter is going to have relevance in its fullest sense of the word. And that is when the Antichrist Empire is oppressing the nations of the earth, and bearing down on Israel, seeking to completely exterminate and destroy Israel. And the body of Christ will be under severe persecution from the Antichrist Empire, and messengers will go forth in the spirit of John the Baptist, proclaiming what's going on, why there's good news in the midst of the crisis, how we're supposed to respond to God, and what the big-picture story really, really is. And so Isaiah chapter 40 is a chapter for all of redemptive history, from when Isaiah wrote it, but it's a chapter particularly for the messengers in the generation the Lord returns. It's the diet that they will feed on, and it's the diet they will feed the people of God on. This is the chapter that will make sense of things in a way, in a unique way. This is one of those unique chapters, Isaiah chapter 40. Okay, Roman numeral 2. It starts off very, very positive. Starts off with a call to comfort Jerusalem. Now the Lord's messengers are mandated, and it doesn't tell us who the Lord's messengers are. It's an unidentified voice, of course it's from God, calling people to take on this messenger role. And it's like the call is, whosoever will do it. But it's a blanket call, be a messenger, and there's a two-fold mandate in Isaiah chapter 40 for the messengers. And the first one is to comfort Israel, to comfort Jerusalem. And the second one, we'll look at in a few moments, is to build a spiritual highway for God, and for the people of God to interact with God. So it's a two-fold mandate for messengers, and it's a whosoever will answer the call. And we're in an hour of history where the Spirit is visiting people in a real specific way, stirring them to answer the call, this two-fold mandate, to comfort Jerusalem and to build a spiritual highway. We'll look at this a little bit more in detail, but it starts in verse 1. Comfort. He says, yes comfort. You feel the intensity and the urgency by the double imperative here. Comfort, yes comfort my people, says your God. Now that's an interesting phrase, because if you look at that carefully in verse 1, there's two groups of people. There's the people of Jerusalem, called my people, says the Lord. But there's the other group who love God. They're the messengers. They live outside of Jerusalem. They're distinct from Jerusalem, because they're called to bring the message to Jerusalem. So it's not those living in Jerusalem. So there's two groups going on here. And these are predominantly, not only, but Gentile believers across the earth, all across the nations, that are to take this calling as they answer the Spirit's call to be a messenger. Paragraph C. Now there's a very specific calling upon Gentile believers in the generation the Lord returns to comfort Jerusalem. Now many Gentile believers, they love Jesus. And most believers, 99.99% of them or whatever in the body of Christ are Gentiles. But most of them are not connected to the biblical mandate to comfort Jerusalem. When, like as folks come here, myself, when I first met Bob Jones, and he told me, you're going to be involved in a ministry that's going to pray for Israel. And he says, do you ever pray for Israel? I go, never. Why? And he looked at me and says, 35 years ago. And he said, my, this is going to be a lot of work. He goes, you don't know anything what I'm talking about? I never thought of Israel. And most of the people that come here, they come because they love the intercession, contending for revival, the intimacy with God message. And I've heard the story over and over. They go, I didn't get the Israel thing when I first got here. But I have news for the whole body of Christ right from the Bible. God is calling Gentile believers, anyone that will answer the call, that they are to be messengers to comfort Jerusalem. It's a biblical necessary mandate. And we'll get into why it's so critical that we do this. Look at here in Isaiah 62. The Lord is proclaimed to the ends of the earth. That's the Gentiles out there, by the way. It says, I'm not talking to Jerusalem right now. I'm talking to all the believers in the earth. Tell Jerusalem this message. And so the question you're asking in your relationship with the Lord, are you answering the call? Are you moving forward in that calling to say this message to Jerusalem or to Zion? Zion and Jerusalem, you can use usually interchangeably. Tell the Jewish people in Israel or the Jewish people in the nations, tell them their salvation is coming. The Messiah is coming back and he's going to come with his rewards and his blessings. And he's coming in days to come. We're to tell them that. And then to break down a lot of the details that are implied with that. Here in Jeremiah 31, it calls out the Gentiles again. Sing with gladness for Jacob. That means Israel. Shout among the chief of the nations. So in the chief of the nations, here's what you're to do. You're to say, oh Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel. So the believers among the chief of the nations, they are to enter into this partnership with God, crying out to God to save the remnant of Israel. Verse 10, it goes on. They don't just do prayer for Israel. That's verse 7. But verse 10, oh nations, make the message clear. Don't just pray for Israel. Proclaim the message. Become a messenger. Tell them in even the far away distant places, not just in the major cities, go to the most remote island. The message must go global. And the Holy Spirit is calling Gentile believers to answer the messenger calling. And it's a messenger calling against twofold here in Isaiah 40. Number one, to comfort Jerusalem. Number two, to build a spiritual highway, which we'll look at in just a moment. So as a body of believers, we want to answer that call because this Jeremiah passage says, well, okay, that looks good. But the context of Jeremiah 31, which we'll get to in our next semester in the spring, it's this global anti-Semitism against Israel. So when you're reading it, you go, well sure, I'll say, save Israel. And I'll say, he that scattered Israel, well, Jeremiah 31 verse 10, I'll say that. Well, the environment is going to become far more hostile in terms of anti-Semitism and far more costly to say this message. Right now, the nations of few people will get bothered, but you give it some more years and this is going to be a very, very costly message to be true to. So it's the sort of thing you want to set your heart now for it. You want to search it out in the scriptures. Now, I don't want to get in the hour of intense pressure and then start figuring out if it's even in the Bible that I'm supposed to take a stand because if you're under intense pressure, you'll find Bible verses to get you off the hook. But when you're in a time before the pressure intensifies and you see it clear, you're a little, you're quite a bit more objective because you're loving God and you're reading it. You say, yeah, and you get your heart rooted. Then when the pressure intensifies, you can't cast it off because a lot of folks, they wait till pressure, but then under the pressure, they can't quite see the verses clearly that they're supposed to take a stand. So as a community of believers, we're wanting to be intentional about understanding these things now before things really heat up. Talk about page two. Now, the message, well, I guess you got to go back to page one. I forgot to read it. I got off the topic. Look, go back to page one, Roman numeral two, paragraph A. Comfort, yes, comfort my people says your God. Speak, verse two is what I forgot to read. Speak comfort to Jerusalem. Speak comfort to Jerusalem. Cry out to her. Tell her this, the military warfare against her, the hostility of nations that continually have come against her for near 4,000 years since Abraham, there's been hostility against Israel. Tell her it's over because Jesus has come and the Millennial Kingdom has started. That's the reason it's over. There's a day when there's no more military conflict, no more political intrigue with nations. Tell her, number two, her sin is totally forgiven. For all of her apostasy and rebellion, God has completely forgiven her sin. And tell her, number three, she's going to have double honor and double glory and double grace. Even in the context of all of her sin, God is going to give her double glory and double grace. Now, some folks think that she's going to get double penalty, but I believe that now we'll go where we were, top of page two, paragraph D. Isaiah goes on later to develop the idea of the double portion. He says in Isaiah 61, that he's talking to Jerusalem. Instead of your shame, you'll have double honor. This is when the Lord comes. In the millennium, when the Lord comes to look at Jerusalem, says, I'm going to give you double grace, double forgiveness, double honor, double favor in the nations I'm going to put upon you now that your king is in place in Jerusalem. You're going to possess double of everything, nearly. It's what it says here in verse seven, Isaiah 61. You know, it goes on in Isaiah 62 and says, the intercessors are going to cry out and tell Jerusalem is a praise in the earth. Well, right now, Jerusalem is being mocked in the earth, and it's going to become more hostile the closer we get to the Lord's return. The closer we get to the Lord's return, the less Jerusalem will be praised in the earth. The more they will be hated in the earth. But there will be a sudden reversal. And when the Lord Jesus comes and he sets up his throne in Jerusalem, all the nations are going to the number one city of the earth they want to go to is Jerusalem. Because the glory of God will be there in the throne of Jesus and the new Jerusalem coming down and the city of the great king from Psalm 48, all there in Jerusalem and the whole earth will be going, wow, Jerusalem is the praise, the place to go. It will be the number one visitor place forever in history will be Jerusalem. It will be praised worldwide, and that's part of the double honor that's coming to Jerusalem. Okay, let's look at Roman number three. Preparing the way of the Lord. Preparing the way of the Lord. Now he's going to go to the, I want you to catch again, this is the second message, because the first mandate is to comfort Jerusalem as a messenger. But the second mandate is to prepare for the Lord's coming to the earth. So that's a twofold mandate. And the call to messengers was whoever would answer it. There was nobody in particular, I guess in Isaiah's day, it would have been Isaiah and his disciples that are identified a bit in Isaiah 8, he had a team of people that he was discipling in the things of God, and they were reading the word and studying it, and undoubtedly they were taking the, answering the call to be messengers to prepare for what was coming. But we know that there's a global dimension to this. So nobody knows in Isaiah's day that nobody knows there's a John the Baptist coming 700 years later. It's just left wide open. There's a voice. Nobody knows who that voice is. He's crying in the wilderness. Nobody knows when. It's 700 years after Isaiah. He's saying, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for God. That's a mysterious command. Make a highway in the desert. Nobody makes a highway in the desert, by the way. Because it's far more costly and far more work to make. There's many more obstacles in the desert than there is in a city to build a highway. And the idea is that when a king or a royal family, a monarch, a dignitary would visit a city, the city, it's like if the Olympics is in a city for four, five, eight years, they're building up the city for the grand event of the Olympics. Well, when the word came that the emperor was visiting your city, which would happen once, maybe in a hundred years maybe, that they'd get the notice and take the next year or two, however much time, leeway they had, and they would build up a highway so they could have a processional for the emperor to come in. And they had to move all the obstacles out of the way. That's kind of the backdrop, the context. But here it's really strange and mysterious. They're building a highway for God. Well, God doesn't march on a highway, and there's no obstacles. We need to move out of the way for God to walk on a highway. I mean, He created the heavens and the earth. This is a bit cryptic and mysterious. And of course, when you get all the passages together, it's a spiritual highway of truth. That's what John the Baptist, we find in John chapter 1, he said, I am that voice at the first coming. And I'm building a highway, but it's a highway of truth. It's a spiritual highway. Now, don't be confused because there are about 10 other passages in Isaiah, maybe 8 or 9, not quite 10, where there is going to be a physical highway built related to the second coming of Christ. That's another subject for another time. We've mentioned that a little bit over the weeks. But there's a physical highway being built from Egypt to Assyria, and this massive highway going into Jerusalem. It's physical, and it's for all the refugees and everybody making pilgrimages to Jerusalem to go on that highway. But here, it's a spiritual highway. And Isaiah is the only one who actually develops this highway theology. And when you read it, at first you're going, is this the spiritual highway of truth, or is this a physical highway with construction and technology? Which one is it? Well, this is clearly, this one here is a spiritual highway. And the premise is this, it's a highway for God. And what it means, God doesn't need a highway, but what God, the principle of the kingdom, one of the fundamental principles is, God says, I will release my glory through my people. But I will only release it through my people when they're in agreement with me. So the highway is a highway of truth. It's a highway that tells God's values and tells God's plans. It's a highway that's proclaiming ideas, God's values and God's end-time plans. And when God's people understand them and they agree with them, they come into agreement, the Lord says, in that agreement, that's the highway my power and purposes will be released through. It's a spiritual highway. And that's what John the Baptist was building, a spiritual highway. He was getting the people of Israel to see the truth about who the Messiah was and to repent of compromise and wrong attitudes with the Lord so they could be a part of partnering with the Lord. So it was a spiritual highway that John the Baptist was building. And he goes on here, he says, every valley shall be exalted, every mountain will be brought low, every crooked place made straight, and every rough place made smooth. And here's the real important verse, I mean, the important point to note, verse 5, and the glory of the Lord will be seen by the whole world together. When it says, all flesh will see the glory, they're not talking about a kind of a figurative, by faith, I think I see his glory, I sense that he's important, so I saw his glory in that limited sense. And actually, that's actually true. But this is not what Isaiah 40, verse 5 is talking about. There is a day when the Messiah, the bridegroom king, will come on the sky, we all know it, in flaming fire in the glory of the Father, and every single eye will see him. It says it three times, every eye will see him in the planet. That's what Isaiah 40, verse 5 is talking about. So Isaiah says, Isaiah could say John the Baptist 700 years later, you can borrow this verse, but it's bigger than you, and it's for a timeframe beyond you. It's for a timeframe when every single human being, every eye will see the glory of God. Everyone will. He will come back again in flaming fire, the glory of the Father, with all the angels, all the saints caught up to meet him in the air, and nobody will miss it. It will be the critical moment of human history and salvation history. So that's Isaiah's anchoring this whole messenger calling into an end time scenario here in verse 5. And yes, he would say to the people of his day, yeah, we're going to come for Jerusalem and tell them of the great promises that are coming. Yes, we will cover Jerusalem in our day, but there's a day when this will have a full global dimension of fullness. And John the Baptist, you can borrow that verse and fulfill it a little bit. When you introduce the first coming of the Lord, that was so significant. Jesus said he was the greatest man ever born of a woman, and his unique calling, preparing the first coming of the Lord, I mean, the importance and the value and the sacredness of that calling cannot be overexaggerated. But I want you to see in verse 5, this calling is anchored as an end of the age, an eschatological context. It's a messenger calling for a time even beyond John's. Okay, look at paragraph C. God called it a highway for God, in verse 3. We've already covered this, but I want you to just get it again, because the people...God will only manifest his glory in a consistent way through people as they agree with him. But they agree in two ways. They agree with his values. We call that purity, or generosity, or humility, or righteousness. We agree with values, so we repent of compromise and wrong attitudes, we embrace his values. Because the Lord says, I'm not going to use you in a consistent way if you don't agree with my values. Again, humility, generosity, purity, love, righteousness, justice, those normal kingdom values. But there's another thing that the people are to agree with, his plans. Not just being humble and generous, but grasping what he's doing and his global eschatological unfolding of his plans to drive evil off the planet and replace every single evil leader on the planet with a new leader and completely have a new world order. Literally, in one day, he's going to shift it all. They're to agree with that. Well, the paragraph E here, John the Baptist, he modeled the way to prepare a spiritual highway. But again, there's a physical highway too, so don't lose sight of that, but that's not what this chapter is talking about. In paragraph E, he had a twofold message. And the reason we care about this message because he's a model of the end-time messengers. Though there was one John the Baptist, of course, there'll be two of the witnesses, those two amazing prophets in Jerusalem, but I believe there'll be thousands and hundreds of thousands of messengers, if not many more, maybe some millions, I don't know, all over the earth that will be in their local area giving expression to this Isaiah 40 calling, this messenger calling, they will answer the call in their life, in their generation, I mean, in their local area, and they will answer it. So we want to do paragraph E, we want to look at what John the Baptist did when he answered it, and we want to model that. What he did is he called people to repentance, paragraph E, and he called people and he announced the coming of the Lord. When he called, he said, repent, come into agreement with God's values, come into agreement with God's plans, repent of wrong thinking, repent of wrong thinking, because wrong thinking leads to wrong feeling, which leads to wrong doing. We think right, we feel different, we act different. Right thinking is critical. So when he says repent, he's not just saying stop the bad stuff, he's saying embrace the right things, not just stay away from the negative, embrace the positive, but it's more than just embracing values, it's embracing the plan, so we're understanding this remarkable unfolding of God's leadership in the midst of these unique dynamics of intense positive and intense negative happening globally at the same time. When the earth is confused, God has his messengers who get what's going on. They've repented of wrong thoughts and wrong values. Now here in paragraph 1, in Luke chapter 3, he calls them to kingdom values, and the main one he hits in Luke 3 is generosity. He's talking about economics, and you could study that on your own, but as end time messengers, we want to learn from John, the way that John answered the Isaiah 40, verse 3, build the spiritual highway. The way he answered that call is the way the end time messengers will answer the same kind of messaging. But number, paragraph number 2, John didn't only talk about values, kingdom character values, he announced the coming of Jesus, he announced the full power of the Holy Spirit, and he announced God's judgment. So when you say announcing that Jesus is the coming of the Messiah, it also goes with the great end time revival of power, and it also comes God intervening in the nations with judgments. All of that is one package together. So John, he would tell them to have humility, he would tell them to have generosity and love, etc. Then he would tell them, oh there's going to be an unprecedented salvation event. A man is coming out of heaven. God is going to be fully man, and the fire of the Spirit's coming, and judgments are going to break out, and they're all going like, what are you talking about? And it's like the Holy Spirit is saying, end time generation, take notes, because this is the same messaging you will be having. So it's not only building a spiritual highway, it's also comforting Jerusalem. So there's two tracks of the message that is going, that's unfolding here. Okay, now, let's look at paragraph, page 3. It says that a voice is crying in the wilderness. A voice is crying in the wilderness. Now, in Isaiah's days, 700 years BC plus, he's a little bit more than that, 740 is when he actually started, is what most of them say. But 700 years before Christ, they don't know who this voice is, or what it looks like. And again, it's not identified. John comes on the scene in John 1, they go, who are you? Are you the Messiah? He goes, no, I'm the voice. They go, the voice? They go, yeah, the Isaiah 40, verse 3. They went, whoa, that's a big statement. But the thing that I really, really resonate about this is that John was content to be a voice and not to be a name. When they came to John in John chapter 3, and they said, hey, more people are following, more people are following your cousin. He's, you know, your younger cousin. You've been doing this longer than him, you're older. He said, I've got to decrease. This is not about me. I'm not pulling people to me. I'm a friend of the bridegroom. I'm trying to get them connected to him, not to me. And so John was so content to be a voice and not to be the name, the reputation. He goes, if they get connected to him, I did my job. That's what the friend of the bridegroom does. The friend of the bridegroom, John said that's what he was in John 3, 29. The friend of the bridegroom helps the bride and the bridegroom come into their embrace, and he gets out of the way. He's like the best man at the wedding. His whole job is to remove all the distractions so the bride and bridegroom connect eye to eye, and nobody's in the way. That's the friend of the bridegroom. And God is raising up messengers today that aren't trying to figure out how popular, how many likes or dislikes, or who is and who isn't for them. They're focused on a whole other thing is on their mind. They're trying to get people gazing in his eyes to capture the reality of who they are in his eyes, and they say, I did my job. I'll get out of the way. He was a voice, but he was not a name, but he was a voice, but not an echo either. And what I mean by that, I've used that phrase over the years, be a voice not an echo. It's okay to use other people's materials. I've done it all my life. I use ideas from others, but you don't want to be content simply repeating somebody else's. You want to feel it. You want it to be real. If it's real in you, you can use the information. But if it's real in you, and you can echo for a while, but eventually you want to be a voice and not just an echo. You want it to capture your thinking and dominate your internal conversation with the Lord. That's when you're a voice, when the messaging and the reality is in you at that level, and that's what the Lord is raising up right now. Voices that will be friends of the Bridegroom. They don't want to be a name. They're not trying to get to see how big they can get in the eyes of the popularity contest of the Christian world. They're wanting to get people connected to the Bridegroom God. Paragraph G. It says that he's crying out in the wilderness. I like that word, crying out. It's a voice that's crying out. And the reason that this touches me is that John refused to be silent. And crying out is cool as long as everybody in the crowd thinks what you're doing is really cool. Then it's like, wow, isn't that gal or that guy, aren't they passionate? Isn't that amazing? The crying out isn't measured in the context where people are affirming you. The crying out is measured when John, the religious leaders of the nation, turned against him. And they said in Matthew chapter 11 verse 18, they said of him, he has a demon. He is demonized. They didn't say he was a cult leader. They said he's demonized. He's full-on demonized. This man is dangerous to the kingdom of God. That's what the top Bible teachers in the land said about John the Baptist. And then Herod said, if you don't stop interfering with my sexuality and my practice, if you don't be quiet, I will kill you. And I don't know that the conversation went that way, but he was killed because in the cultural wars of his day, he wouldn't be silent. In the cultural wars today, many believers are getting more and more silent. They want to be messengers, but they want to be messengers in a crowd of people that think they're amazing messengers. And I like being in a crowd of people that think they're amazing. You guys like me, right? See, I like you, you like me. This isn't where it works right here. This is cool. I like this. All that, I was just joking. But my point is, this isn't where it counts. It counts when we go out there and we, in tenderness, but in boldness and clarity, we hold the line. In all the cultural wars that are increasing and increasing, where the Word of God is being marginalized and set aside, more and more leaders of the body of Christ are getting more and more silent. They're drawing back, and John the Baptist went the other direction. He went crying out. I don't mean he was belligerent, that's not the idea, obnoxious, because I believe it's bold, clear, tender, humble, but he wouldn't back away under pressure. So the nation called him demonized, and Herod killed him because of his stance on morality, and he refused to back away. And here was the mandate. It says in paragraph 1, he's to make straight the way of the Lord. Now a couple chapters earlier, chapter 35, we know the highway's already been introduced. It's a highway of holiness. And this, although holiness is kind of out of fashion in the body of Christ today, holiness is not out of fashion in the kingdom of God. From God's point of view, holiness is the only way the highway works. When people agree with God about lifestyle and value and sexuality and life choices, coming into agreement with Him, it's a highway of holiness, but it's more than a highway of holiness. It's a highway of understanding, too. It's agreeing with what He's doing, not just the values of which that He's calling us to. And John the Baptist and the anti-messengers, they are to make the highway straight. In other words, clear. Make it straight, not ambiguous. Don't say, well, you know, just the Lord, He'd just love him anyway, you know, you want to, the Lord just, everybody's happy and, you know, blah blah blah. Ambiguity. No. Political correctness. That's not the goal. I mean, you don't want to pick a fight, but you don't want to be silenced or muffled into this vanilla ambiguity, political correctness, when the Word of God is being thrown into the streets across the earth and trampled on even by believers. Make it straight, Isaiah said. Make it clear. Move the gray areas. Be bold. Be tender, but be bold. Be straightforward. Again, it's a highway of purity. It's a highway of understanding. Now He's going to give four aspects of this highway. And paragraph number two. Now this, for Isaiah's passage, Isaiah 40, this is a spiritual highway, but actually these very things will happen when the physical highway is made as well. These will have a physical counterpart with that, that eschatological highway, that millennial highway is built that Isaiah has, you know, eight or nine passages on. Again, I haven't actually counted the number, but the list is about that long. But anyway, every valley shall be exalted. Now all four of these areas of the highway he's going to call this emotional, spiritual life, all four of these are politically incorrect if you address them straightforward. When I look at all four of these and what they mean, and I say, Lord, what man or woman in the kingdom of God will be straightforward on these issues? Because if they are, they will lose their following, part of their following. And if they're after a following, they won't build a highway with these four elements on it. First, says every valley must be exalted. Now the valley, it's again, it's spiritual, it's emotional. In John the Baptist's day, it's the low areas in our life. This is more the easy one to address, but still we kind of address it a little bit and then kind of move out of the way. We don't want to get too into somebody's life, to their stuff. The low areas of people's lives emotionally and spiritually that need to be healed, God says, I want to bring those valleys up. They include wrong thinking about in accepting a low view of God, a low view of who they are in God. It includes the emotional low spots of, there's many believers that are absolutely just trapped in rejection, condemnation, an inferiority complex, a negation of everything positive. It hits them and bounces off. And the Lord says, I want to build that highway up. They're gonna be on the highway partnering with me, they gotta agree with me even about them, about their own life. They gotta agree with me what I say about them. And the Lord wants us to resist wrong thinking and replace it with right thinking. That's the more, more popular one to address. Again, as long as you don't get too personal to an individual, as long as you just keep it public and generic, they won't be bothered by it. But you get talk to somebody real up close and personal about these issues, they will not like that at all. Well, the next one, paragraph three, is far more politically incorrect. Every mountain, all the high and proud things, bring it down. It's the high things that need to be brought down. It's pride. It's what we're all born with, that we're all come by naturally. And I just give three examples of a hundred. Drawing undue attention to ourselves, manipulating situations to gain honor, pouting, complaining, pushing your way till you get your way, defensiveness when you're corrected, on and on and on. Again, you can talk about that a little bit publicly, but you don't want to get personal on that one at all. Then number four, the crooked places have to be made straight. These are the areas of compromise. These are the areas of addiction, the areas of perversion. These are the areas of sexuality, of covetousness, of all these areas that are crooked in the body of Christ. And the Lord told John the Baptist, I want you to address these things. Of course, he addressed covetousness and immorality were the two things he went on record for, more than anything else in terms of the biblical record. Make it straight, the crooked places. In the cultural wars, say what God says. Be clear what the Word of God says. Luke chapter 21, verse 34 to 36, Jesus said in the day when a great snare comes upon the whole earth, he says, watch out. And he highlighted immorality and drunkenness. He goes, these will be two of the main things that the enemy will use to the body of Christ. Drunkenness and immorality. And the body of Christ is rife with immorality in America, all over the world. And you just don't hardly hear anything about it in a pulpit, because you can't build any momentum with people if you address those issues directly. He said make the crooked places straight. Now when some people get direct, they get hostile. So direct doesn't mean mean. Direct doesn't mean non-lacking tenderness. Direct doesn't mean you got to psych yourself up to say it, so you're gonna go win an argument. That's not what direct means. Direct is tender, clear, bold, but you got to be resolved in your private life on the issues before you get into the proclamation or the conversation, because you'll get into a funny spirit unless you're clear this is God's glory and God's wisdom. Then the rough places, made smooth. That's the harshness, the critical spirit, the judgmental, the mean-spirited Pharisees. They had rough places in their life in leadership, and there's a lot of rough places in homes, and the way men lead their homes and their families, and the way leaders lead their businesses, men and women, the way pastors and leaders, a lot of rough places where people are muscled and bullied and all kinds of things, and the Lord says, I want all four of these areas addressed in the messenger ministry, because I need people that agree with these areas, because this is, if they come into agreement, the glory of God will move in them and through them. In the number, paragraph H, then just to say it again, the context of Isaiah 40 is clearly an end-time context, because there will be such unique dynamics, there will be more lust, more demons, more bitterness, more fear, and more desire to self-medicate the closer we get to the Lord. That's why in the coming of the Lord, that's why Jesus said in Luke 21, he goes, Amorality and drunkenness, don't self-medicate when the pressure builds. Watch, wait, interact with me, and do it in community. Like I said, we can't get this message without the Holy Spirit helping us, and we can't get it alone. We get it in community, and we can't get it without eating the scroll, without really spending time personally going after it. So I gotta go after it, I need the Spirit's help, and I need you if I'm gonna get it. We gotta do it together. Well, that's the highway, Roman numeral four. Of course, that's the main part of Isaiah 40, and the other part is glorious, we'll just take a few minutes on it. It's just about the power, and if I had to, if I had to summarize the rest of Isaiah 40, I would summarize it, God is all-loving, all-powerful, and all-wise. He's all-loving, he wants your best. He's all-wise, he knows your best. He's all-powerful, he can do your best. That's really the theme of the rest of Isaiah chapter 40, but we're gonna look at it just a little bit. So, Roman numeral four, paragraph A. Then this unidentified voice says to Isaiah, cry out! Okay, what's the message? What am I supposed to cry out? I know I'm supposed to come for Jerusalem, I know I'm supposed to, that's part one, I know I'm gonna build a spiritual highway where I address these four issues in people's lives and in the culture. I don't want to address those four issues in the culture, or even in my own life, maybe. Maybe he didn't say that, I don't know, but now the Lord adds another dimension. He goes, verse six, cry out, and Isaiah goes, what? What's the message? He goes, you gotta get foundational on this, foundational part of the message. All flesh is grass. It's loveliness, it appears for a moment like a flower, and it's gone real soon. So don't be afraid of your enemies. They'll be gone in a minute. And don't seize every opportunity to self-aggrandize your life. Don't do that, because your beauty's gonna be gone in a minute, too. Your enemy's power and their luster is gonna be gone, so don't overly worry about it, and so is yours, so don't invest all your life in that. There's a bigger storyline called the Word of God. So don't let your enemies get you off course, and don't let your own pleasure and agenda and your own beauty and your own achievements get you off course. All flesh is grass. The good, the bad, the ugly will be gone in a minute related to your life. Stay focused on the big pictures, what he's saying here. Verse seven, the grass withers. That enemy, he won't even be there in a little while, and he has no voice at the judgment seat anyway. Why are you letting the enemy dominate the conversation of your life internally? The grass withers. Why are you letting your own beauty and your own glory dominate you? You're more than beauty and glory in human achievements. You're a believer. You're part of the family of God. You're messengers at a critical time in history. Verse eight, the grass withers, but the plan of God, the purpose of God stands forever. The promises, the promises will stand when the enemy's gone. The enemy will wear out. The promise of God on your life and over the earth is true. The purpose of God. I want to invest myself in the purpose of God because it will last forever. Turn to page four if you would. Now he's going to shift gears here. He says, let me tell you a little bit about the coming of the Lord now. Let's get back to the coming of the Lord message. This is part of the message. He says, verse nine, now he shifts gears because he started telling a messenger to go comfort Jerusalem. Now he's going to tell Jerusalem, it's good that you were comforted and strengthened by the global body of Christ because now Jerusalem, you got, you must take a stand. He says, Zion, and again, Zion's almost interchangeable with Jerusalem. He goes, you speak the good news to Jerusalem. He goes, and you get up on a mountain. Now we all know this verse, get up on a mountain, lift your voice, but we might not be thinking of the context because Jerusalem at the end of the age, when the glory of God, the whole world sees the glory of God, is surrounded by hostile anti-Semitic nations in anti-Christ empire. The anti-Christ is wanting to destroy them and they're supposed to get up boldly and talk about Jesus coming to overthrow everybody. I can picture the guys in Jerusalem going, well I know Asher will do it no matter what, but I can picture just human beings in Jerusalem going, no it's your turn, I preached last time. He goes, get up on a high mountain, lift your voice, don't be afraid. Say to the surrounding cities, because the anti-Christ armies have got a siege around all of Judah and Jerusalem, and they're invading, they're hostile. He says, I want you to take the lead and tell them the gospel story. I'm trying to picture this. What manner of man or woman will do this? I mean, already most believers in Jerusalem that I know, they say, well they won't let us talk about Jesus and evangelize, so we got to be really careful. Isaiah said, get up in a bullhorn and make it loud. I look at that and I go, gee whiz. And this is when the anti-Christ is in power surrounding them. This, when I look at verse 9 and the mandate of Jerusalem to take a stand within their community and their local area with all the hostility, then I back up to verse 1 where it says, the Lord says, I told you guys to go strengthen Jerusalem. You need to strengthen them because they're going to need an hour of, they're going to need to be strong, and they need to stand in an hour that you cannot comprehend, and they need the whole global body of Christ together with them. Paragraph B, Jesus said, when you see the abomination of desolation, which is really the anti-Christ empire and the anti-Christ worship moving, centering in on Jerusalem, when you see the anti-Christ put up his image in Jerusalem, that's the abomination of desolation, and demand to be worshipped, verse 16, let those who are in Judea get out, not just get out of Jerusalem, get out of Judea, get out of the surrounding area, because Judea is like the area, the area right about, go far away. Well, Isaiah is talking to people who stayed. Most fled, but some of them are still there, and he's telling them, don't be afraid. Yes, you may be martyred, but Jesus said, he goes, they may kill your body, but they can't hurt you. He said that in Matthew 10. I read that a few times, huh? He goes, you got to live for billions and billions and billions of years in the physical resurrected body of the glory of God. They can't take anything from you at all, so they kill you. Zechariah 14, all the nations will be gathered around Jerusalem when Jerusalem says this. So again, when I look at verse 9, and I see my brothers and sisters in Zion or Jerusalem, use it interchangeably, lifting their voice to preach the gospel of Jesus and the coming of a king from the sky to absolutely destroy the Antichrist. That message will probably bother their fellow Jewish people, as well as the Antichrist people around all the nations, and he says, do it. And he says, Gentile body of Christ, you must be strengthening them and supporting them and building spiritual highways before this thing comes to a head. And I look at Isaiah 14, I go, this is really intense. Paragraph D, tell them your God is coming. This is one of the most descriptive passages in the second coming about exactly what Jesus does when he comes. You know, we get a lot of passages where it says he comes. Then there's passages, there's fire and glory and angels and all the saints and a trumpet and the archangels. We get the phenomena around him, but you don't get so many passages that tell you the details of what the man Christ himself does in activities. Paragraph E, there's seven activities. Verse 10, he comes, God comes in the person of Jesus. He doesn't come as a weak lamb to be slaughtered, he comes with a strong hand, mighty, powerful. He's going to rule the nations. He's not coming to be put on a cross, he's coming to be put on a throne. He's coming to remove all the evil leaders on the earth. And he's going to have his reward with them. He's going to vindicate his people, he's going to reward everyone who stood for him in righteousness. When these people were being persecuted and mocked and laughed at, he says, I will make it up to you more than you would ever imagine. I'm coming with a memory of everything you did standing true to me. All the lust you turned away, all the opportunities you lost because you were eating the scroll and pouring your time in, and then the other opportunities you lost because you told out loud what you studied in the word. Beloved, you will lose opportunities. You'll lose a lot of opportunities by just taking the sheer hours to do it, and you'll lose another set of opportunities by saying what you discovered. He said, I'll reward you. His work is before him, he'll feed his flock like a shepherd, he'll gather the lambs, he'll carry them in his bosom, he'll gather them like, and carry them like this, and lead them gently. So number one, his arm will rule. He's going to take over all the governments. Number two, I already mentioned, he's going to vindicate, reward everyone who stayed true to him, and their character. I'm in a global vomiting of immorality, and a man or a woman that stays clean and says no to this, and they're turning away all these other opportunities because they love the Lamb of God. They'll follow him wherever he goes. His work is before him. He's going to bring down a new Jerusalem. He's going to fill the earth with the glory of God. The Garden of Eden is going to expand progressively worldwide. He's going to completely heal and restore the animals, the atmosphere, the agriculture. All the angels are coming down. I mean, it's going to be amazing. His work is right in front of him. Anyway, number four. Oh boy, I'm just having fun. Okay, I won't do that again. Okay, number four. I'm kidding, just having fun. He'll feed his flock. Now this is strange. Feed his flock, like what do you mean, feed his flock? You've got to remember, there are going to be thousands and thousands of Jews, maybe millions, I don't know, that are refugees, driven out of their homes with anti-Semitism, and another multitude that are actually in prison camps. I mean, it's the Adolf Hitler thing, but a man far more powerful than Adolf Hitler is coming on the world scene. Far more attractive, far more powerful, far more cruel than Adolf Hitler, and he wants to annihilate the Jewish people. He wants to take up where Hitler left off and finish it. He won't, but that's what he wants to do. And there will be Jewish refugees all over the earth, fleeing in safety, and God will require the Gentile body of Christ to, like the Kore Timbun, put them in their homes to bear it with them all the way. And there will be many that will be in prison camps, Jews and Gentiles. And when Jesus comes, and there's a surprising amount of information about this in the Bible, you just don't hear about it much, but as we go through these chapters, we'll run into it over and over again. But Jesus is the greater Moses when he liberates the slaves, and he actually leads them back to Jerusalem. Like Joshua, like I said last week, he's the greater Moses that liberated the captives, the greater Joshua that led them back and took the land, the greater David that captured Jerusalem, the greater Elijah that destroyed the false prophets, and on and on and on. He's all of those things. But here's the point. Have you ever watched the documentaries after World War II, the millions of people moving through the nations? I've watched it many, many times because I think of it as a snapshot of what's going to happen with the Antichrist. So I look at that, and that's a low version of what's going to happen when this man gets in power. And millions, I mean, of just Gentiles, they're homeless, prisons, you know, the Germans that were in prison in Russia, the Russians that were in prison in Germany, they're all walking back, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles back home. No water, no food, no clothing. Millions that are migrating and moving from nation to nation. It's the most horrible couple-year story after World War II. Well, this is going to happen in a more intense way. And when Jesus says, I will feed them, that is a massive statement because you can only carry so much food and water with you when you're walking. And he says, I'm going to create supernatural food. I'm going to create water on the mountains to give my people water. I gave water in the wilderness with Moses. I'm going to have water flow on mountains. My people are going to make it back. This is massive. When he says he's going to gather them, he means the refugees in this dispersion, in this horrible situation of the refugees coming back. And many of the refugees are just all in the nations. They were never in Israel coming back to Israel. Some are coming back to Israel. Others are just in hiding. Verse 6, number 6, I mean, he'll carry them. These broken lives, I've seen the documentaries many of you have of, you know, Auschwitz and the Dachau, the camps open and the broken lives and the allies come and you see the documentaries are going, what just happened? Jesus said, I am actually going to be personally involved. I'm going to carry them tenderly. I'm going to feed them. I'm going to lead them gently. This is actual. This isn't just, this isn't just poetic symbolism. This is real because it's going to happen in real time and space. And we're on the top of page five. Again, this is the part that pretty well self-explanatory. So you don't have to go in a lot of detail of it. Although when I make my upgraded notes, I always upgrade the notes. I'll put a lot of information on this, a lot more than I have here. But he says, paragraph B, he goes, are you afraid of all this trouble? Who's the one who measures the oceans in his hand? Who measures the distance between the stars with the span of his hand? Who is so detailed that could calculate and count the pieces of sand or dust? Who has the ability and the discernment to weigh mountains? How do you weigh a mountain? You got to pull the mountain up, put it on the scale, put the mountain back. How do you weigh them? What? It's not just strength. It's skill. How do you weigh a mountain? You got to disconnect it to get it on a scale, right? He says, God does all of this easily. And you're afraid of the Antichrist and you're afraid of trouble for a short period of time? Do you realize who's on your side now? Again, the Assyrians are in Isaiah's day, but this chapter is more eschatological, although I've appreciated it for 2700 years of redemptive history, it's been a blessing. But it's going to be life to millions and millions of people in that day. Paragraph C, he says, oh, the nations are a drop in the bucket. What he means by this, he doesn't mean nations are not valuable. He means nations and their coalitions to resist the will of God. The Antichrist army and coalitions of multitudes of nations and the biggest army, the biggest resource, the biggest military buildup, the biggest public support of any leader in history. And verse 15, the Lord says, if they're nothing, that is no ability to stop me. I am the king. They're counted like a dust on scale. You take all the millions of the Antichrist armies against Israel. The Lord says, I could put how much they could resist me. It's like a part of an, not quite an ounce spec. He says in verse 17, the nations are nothing. They can't stop me. Are you kidding me? Because they have more people and more power and more military, more resource, more public support. He goes, nobody could stop me. I measure stars with the span of my hand. I measure the oceans. I count the dust. I have the detail and I have the macro and the micro all down really. Nothing escapes my notice. Nothing escapes my notice. Roman numeral seven. He goes, verse 21, paragraph A, have you heard? Have you not been told from the beginning? Cause he's a Jewish people that grew up with this knowledge, but they're overwhelmed with fear of the Assyrian, the superpower that's surrounding their, their land. He goes, haven't you been raised with this information? And though Isaiah said that to the people, his day fast forward 2,700 plus years and the body of Christ, the answer will be, wait, haven't you studied the word of God? Why are we backing away and compromise? Are we afraid of this man? So if he did kill us, we're going to live forever. Billions of years of the resurrected body and an internal city, the glory of God and our Messiah is with us forever with his reward in his hand. He goes, verse 23, he brings the princess to nothing. He makes the judges useless. So King David in Psalm two said, whoa, judges be warned. Oh, judges. Cause the judges are the one interpreting all the sentences and the penalties against the people that stand for the truth. And so people are really afraid of the leaders of government and the judges. Those are the princes of the judges. And the Lord says, are you kidding? Look at verse 24, read verse 24 through the lens of the antichrist. Scarcely has his empire been planted. Scarcely has he got started and he took a little route. He made it for three and a half years and then I, the Lord went, I blew on him and he became nothing. He has three and a half years. That's it. Paragraph top of page six, verse 25 paragraph D. Who will you like? Who you compare me to? You're terrified of the enemy and the coalition and the Kings and the judges compare me to them. Then he goes, if you get fearful, you get overwhelmed and you lose your way, which a lot of people will. And that's understandable. We're human beings. But when that happens, verse 26, go outside and look at the sky at night, look up and remember who your Lord and your beloved and your bridegroom King is. Remember who he is. See who created every one of the trillions of trillions, trillions of trillions of stars, the detail that he knows every single one he calls by name trillions and trillions. He's got a name and by naming them, he assigns them to their place and their, their place in the galaxy. He knows their name, the nature of how they function, why he created a trillions. And he says, not one is missing. Do you think he's going to overlook you? He died for you, not the stars. He goes, not one of them is missing. Matthew 10, Jesus's version of this, of this passage is God. The father knows every hair on your head and every Sparrow that falls. He knows every single, there you go. The count just changed. It's easy for him. Roman numeral eight, the application. Verse 27, why do you say, Oh Jacob, Jacob means Israel, beloved body of Christ, make it the body of Christ as well as the remnant of Israel. Why do you say my way is hidden? God doesn't see me. He sees all the stars. He knows the whole story. Why do you keep thinking he doesn't see you? Why do you say my just claim has been passed over? God forgot me. He overlooked me again. Why do you say this? Verse 28, he gives them their children's church lesson. Haven't you known? Haven't you grew up? Didn't you grow up with this teaching? The God that loves you, he's everlasting. He's the Lord, the covenant God. That was the Lord is the creator, the powerful God. He doesn't ever get tired. He doesn't lose track of you. He doesn't lose the detail of your life. He doesn't wear out because he's taking care of so many other people somewhere else. His understanding is unsearchable. It's so far beyond anything you could grasp. He said, you can't even grasp what you don't grasp about how smart he is. You know, it's the five year old wanting to understand, you know, the Houston space center mathematics. They go, I do math. Five plus five is 10. I give me some heart. Five times five, 25. I'm good at math. Number one in my class. And the guy at the Houston space says, well, son, there's a whole lot you don't really know. No, no, I'm pretty good at math. I won the contest. He goes, well, no, I don't even know what to tell you right now. Take that times a million. And that's the dilemma we have with understanding God. He says, there's so much you don't understand about what I understand about you. Paragraph B. He goes, I got good news. Verse 29 to the people in the end times. Again, this is all through history, but it's a, it's an end time passage. They're weak. Jesus called it Luke 21 verse 26. They're fainting from fear. Overwhelmed. He's talking to believers. Absolutely terrified. They have no idea. The train is off the track. They don't even know where history is going. They don't know if the crisis has any redemptive purpose. If any of it matters, where's this thing really going? Is the Bible even true? I taught, I was taught none of this would ever happen. How could they're fainting with fear? They're ready to give up because no, no, no. I give strength to weak people. I get humans. I'll give you strength. I'll give you understanding that will strengthen you. And I'll give you the presence of God manifest. I will strengthen you. Even, you know, I'm so bad. Verse 30. I am so weary. Young men that utterly fell. I have sinned so bad. I didn't fail. I utterly failed as a believer. Lord says, I got it. I know you better than you. I'll give you strength. You've utterly caved in with fear, crisis, temptation, perversion, everything you caved in. He goes, I'll give you strength. I am not writing you off at all. Never. I verse 31, but you've got to wait on me. And I have a little bit on here. You got to engage with me. You got to get in the, in the, in the conversation with me again. And I'll renew your strength. Paragraph C to wait on the Lord to be engaged, not just talking to him about your heart. For sure. That, that number one, but about his what's going on. Tell me about your leadership in the earth. What's tell me about me. What's going on. Do I fit our things? Okay. Are things going right? We wait on the Lord. We engage with him and we wait on the Lord by not drawing back in passivity, not being offended when it doesn't work right. So we'll just end with paragraph D. I want to read this to you, John, go ahead and come on up. Here's the message of comfort. I'm just going to read it. The message of comfort that prepares the way of the Lord. This is Isaiah 40. Here's the message. God is coming to Jerusalem. He's going to manifest his glory at every human being will see it openly in the sky. He will show his strength and defend Jerusalem with a strong arm. He will intervene and wipe out the antichrist. And with a tender heart, he will walk every single one of them back, feeding them, caring for them, gently leading them in his tenderness. Tell her her military conflicts are over. Tell Jerusalem her sins are forgiven. Tell Jerusalem should be given double honor in the millennium. No, when the enemy rises up that my end time plans are perfect. I have great wisdom. No detail escapes me. I can triumph over any nation and tell them this, no matter how much they failed or how afraid they are, I'll give them strength to prevail. If they want to stand up and believe me, I'll give them another try and I'll strengthen them and forgive them. Amen. And amen. That's the Isaiah 40 messenger mandate doing those. I love you songs. So people want to shout. I wouldn't say I love you. Let's stand before the Lord. I love, I love your songs. I love you. Let's just adore the Lord for a few moments. We're answering this call as a community. We're answering it. We're not that great, but we're saying yes together. We're moving forward and I love this. I just want that you have for Jesus. Put it inside of me, burn it on my heart. Like a seal, like a seal that in the famines of your presence, when the famines of persecution or in the comfort of the culture, it's still real. It's still real. Oh, we trust your leadership. I just want a heart that is fully loved. I just want a heart that is fully loved. I just want a heart that is fully loved. I just want a heart that is fully loved. The Lord is saying, I want to call you in a new way. I don't want you just to passively buy time. It doesn't mean just wait time. He means engage with me. And the Lord is saying, I'm calling you. Some of you have, you're weak in fear. Others are confusion. Others are dullness. Some have stumbled badly. Others are just your lovesick. And you're saying, I want my heart touched. I want more. And the Lord's speaking to you tonight to be more focused on waiting. You're going to have to give up some things, maybe, and take your time to spend more time eating the scroll, being in his presence. That's you. And you're saying, I would like prayer. And again, of course, you can answer that in your chair and say, I'll just talk to the Lord. But if you would like prayer about that. The Lord says, wait on me. I'll give you strength. Wait on me. I'll renew your love. Wait on me. I'll restore that which's lost. So you've utterly failed. I'll give you strength. So you've lost your first love. I will renew it. There'll be a community that is moving intentionally as a messenger calling that waits on the Lord, that interacts with your heart. We want to do it together. We want to move forward together. Holy Spirit, we ask you, release your power. That is power. It's what you wanted in the garden. Lord, I ask you for your manifest glory. It's what you wanted on the mountain. It's what you wanted on the crossroad. Just a heart that is full. I'm going to ask anybody on the ministry team, any 400 research group leaders, if any of you are leaders, I'd like to hear from you. It's what you wanted on the crossroad. Just a heart that is full. Anybody that's in leadership in the border, research group, I'd ask you to come out. Let's pray for 200 people. Lord, say I want to wait on the Lord. It's what you wanted on the crossroad. Just a heart that is full. It's what you wanted in the garden. It's what you wanted on the mountain. It's what you wanted on the crossroad. Just a heart that is full. I'll wait on you. Lord, I ask you for the seal of love, the song of Solomon 8-6. I ask for the flare of God, the seal of fire on the heart. Lord, I ask you for an anointing of intimacy with God. I ask you for that bridegroom anointing on the heart. Lord, I ask you, release that Mary of Bethany anointing to linger in your presence, to interact with your heart, that friend of the bridegroom path. Raise up voices in this community, messenger voices, voices in the wilderness. Release your glory, Lord, right now. I ask you for the song of Solomon 8-6, the fire, the seal of fire, right now. Rest on me while I cross this room. Oh, touch my heart with love, right now, Lord. Lord, I want to be restored in my love. I want to be renewed. I want to be a messenger that waits for you. I don't just want information. I want to be a voice with authenticity. Oh, Lord. The Lord says, if you've utterly failed, there's strength for you. There's a renewal for you. There's a new day for you. You come before me and wait before me. Open up the door to my heart. Open up the door to my heart. Have a way, have a way. Open up the door to my heart. I just want a life restored in my love.