Mike Bickle emphasizes the urgency of preparing our hearts for the end times, as described in Luke 21, where Jesus warns of increased pressure and fear in the world. He highlights the importance of cultivating a vibrant heart through prayer and connection with God to avoid being weighed down by distractions and sin. Bickle stresses that believers must guard their hearts and prepare themselves spiritually to withstand the challenges ahead, as the time to connect with God is now, before the pressures of the end times intensify. He encourages the church to focus on being rich towards God rather than indulging in worldly pleasures that lead to spiritual lethargy. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a commitment to prayer and a lifestyle that prioritizes spiritual vitality over temporary relief from life's pressures.

Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus. And Lord, we ask you to come and inspire our hearts. We ask you to come and touch us and awaken us, empower us supernaturally at the heart level. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen. Luke chapter 21, most of you are familiar with this chapter a little bit. It's Jesus describing the end-time drama. In the generation the Lord returns, there will be a great significant increase of the positive, glorious activity of the Holy Spirit. Revival touching all the nations of the earth. And on the other side, there's going to be an increase of the negative, of pressure. Sin will abound. The judgment of God will shake everything that can be shaken. It will be a very, very dramatic time. The most dramatic time in history. The greatest hour for the church and the harvest. But the most difficult time in terms of struggle and pressure. That's why the harvest is coming forth. It's the optimum setting to bring forth the harvest. And history will prove that to be true. And in Matthew, I mean in Luke 21, Jesus describing the negative dimensions. In Matthew 24, he has the same conversation and he emphasizes that the harvest of all the nations of the earth will come in as well. He gives the positive. But in the midst of the negatives, he's aiming for the heart of the people of God to be prepared. Now, he's obviously writing for the generation that he's talking to, but he understands that the conditions described in this chapter actually won't happen to the generation he returns. And so it's applicable all through history. This chapter, obviously. But it has particular, particular application for this time of history. He was actually thinking of us. Our hearts, our families, our neighbors, our friends, our ministries. Verse 26, he tells us what the heart response of the majority of the people on the earth. Not all the people, but the majority. I believe we're gonna see a billion saved, but that's gonna leave five or six or eight billion unsaved. So I use the word the majority of the earth. Verse 26, he says, men's hearts. Failing from fear. Their hearts will fail them for fear. This describes believers and unbelievers because many believers are living in nearly the same lifestyle and value system, nearly, not exactly, as unbelievers. Their minds are unrenewed. They think like unbelievers think. They spend time and money nearly like unbelievers do. Their dreams are nearly the same, little bit of differences. But they'll be swept into the spirit of fear except they have a heart of vitality, except they have a heart that's on fire. It goes on in verse 34 and describes this fear in a very poignant and direct way. And the reason he's giving this exhortation is so that we would avoid it, that we would take serious the hour that is coming, prepare ourself in the time when it is easy so that we're able to stand and to soar and have victory in the time when it's difficult. He says in verse 34 to 36. He's elaborating on verse 26. Jesus says, take heed. Now he's talking to this hour of history. Of course he's talking to his own generation, but particularly because this is the hour where the events he's describing are going to unfold in its fullest dimension because the generation of Jesus was gonna experience trauma, especially the Roman armies would surround the city of Jerusalem about 40 years after this prophecy and decimate the city of Jerusalem. So it had a real application in that day. I don't wanna minimize that, but it has its full application now. Jesus says in verse 34 to 36, take heed to yourself, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, with drunkenness, with the cares of this life so that the day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come. It will come like a snare. It will come like a trap on all of those who dwell upon the face of the whole earth. The day will come like a snare, like a trap upon the entire population of the planet. We will experience the pressure and the glory of that day, that timeframe. It will touch the whole world. All 262 nations of the earth will experience this reality. So in light of this sudden, unexpected breaking in of heightened activity of positive and negative, although he's focusing on the negative, he says, I have an exhortation for you. Verse 36, watch therefore. So simplistic, not too simplistic, but it seems so simple. Watch therefore, develop your heart in God, develop your life before God in prayer. The word watch is used all the way through the scripture, Old and New Testament, talking of the prayer life, talking of the life of communion, the heart connect with God. He says, cultivate the heart connect, the prayer life. Pray always. He goes on to describe exactly what he's saying. Pray always. He's talking about praying. Watching involves more than prayer, but the very center of watching, the very core of watching is prayer. It's communing with God. The watching involves more than the prayer dimension, though that's the core of watching. Watching also involves paying attention to the prophetic signs, watching in a way that causes your heart to get on fire with prayer. He goes, here's why. He goes, here's my desire, that you would be counted worthy to escape all the things that will come to pass, and you will be found worthy to stand before the Son of God, the Son of Man. This passage is absolutely filled with significance. Each phrase, those of you that are preachers, you could spend significant amount of time, many of you could on each one of these phrases. Let's look at that. Let's look at some of the phrases. In verse 34, he says, take heed to yourself, lest your hearts be weighed down. First, he tells them to take heed, to prepare themselves, to stand guard, to pay attention, to change their lifestyle in a way where their heart is guarded. He said, by guarding and taking heed, it means live a lifestyle where the heart is empowered and guarded from being weighed down. That's what it means by taking heed. Prepare yourself so your heart's guarded, so your heart is strong, is the idea. It's not God's desire that his people's hearts would fail, verse 26, or be weighed down, verse 34. It's the same idea. He says, I don't want your hearts failing in fear, nor weighed down in a spirit of compromise, a spirit of darkness, a spirit of heaviness. Now, what we're doing, first, we prepare ourselves. We set a guard up in our heart. We live a lifestyle to where our heart is guarded, and secondly, then we prepare others. He's not focusing on the mandate to prepare others, but that's a biblical concept that Jesus emphasizes many times, but forerunners are those preparing the unprepared. We prepare ourselves first, but that doesn't end our mandate, and then we prepare the unprepared because we're already ready. We're already ready. It's really difficult to ready ourselves. I mean, it's really difficult to prepare others while we're busy readying our own heart. On the airplane, they always say on the, you sit down and, you know, before they take off, they say, in case of a disaster, they don't say it that way, they say it nicer, but in case of a disaster, when the air, when the oxygen drops down, put the oxygen on yourself first, and then help your children. They say that, then help the little ones next to you because if you don't have it on you, you're gonna lose your way trying to help them. And when I hear that, I think of that when I'm on an airplane, I hear that, I go, yes, that's the forerunner message. Prepare your heart, and then you will have the ability to prepare the unprepared. But so many people will be in the heat of the battle, needing to help those they love, but lost themselves at the heart level, filled with fear, panicked, no discernment, no understanding, trying to be a help to those they love. So Jesus puts the energy on this, the focus, guard your own heart first, set a guard up on your heart. There's nothing wrong with focusing on yourself. I use the phrase sanctified selfishness. Take care of your own heart first, and that is the greatest gift you can give to the people you're trying to serve. Do you have a vibrant heart? You'll have something to give them. You're alive in the spirit, you have something to give the people you love. Then he goes on and he says, see to it, in essence, that your own heart is not weighed down. This phrase, a weighed down heart, the weighed down heart is the opposite of God's plan, it's the opposite of our inheritance. God would that our hearts would be tender, alive, not weighed down. Our inheritance is to have a vibrant, a tender heart in the Holy Spirit. To flow with God's heart, to feel God. Now we don't go by feelings, but I'm telling you feelings make a big difference and you all know that. When the feelings are gone, we don't have them, we fly by the instruments, the word of God, the truth. When we're in the storm and we can't feel, we're all disoriented, the pilot goes by the instruments, we go by, thus says the Lord, is it not written? So we don't live by feelings, but feelings are really, really helpful along the journey. Vibrant heart, to have a strong heart, to feel loved from him, to feel love back to him, to feel love for people, for others, friends and enemies. The heart that's alive has courage, it has strength, it has confidence. Even in the midst of this calamity, the heart that God wants his people to have is a heart of courage, confidence. Even unto death, even walking into martyrdom, but fearless with understanding of the wisdom of what we're doing. Walking into martyrdom with a heart of courage, believing in the wisdom of it with no doubting. Feeling loved while in persecution and feeling love towards our enemies. Beloved, that's the way to go. And that's the inheritance of every single believer in the body of Christ. Do we've lived a lifestyle to where we're easily stimulated by the Holy Spirit's presence, easily. And what I mean by the Holy Spirit's presence, I don't mean just that sovereign breakdown where I'm breaking, where the Holy Spirit breaks in like the mighty Russian wind and everybody's flat on their face. That's not what I mean. Everyone is stimulated by that. I'm talking about in just the daily routine of walking with God, feeling the presence of God when we read the word, feeling the presence of God in prayer, feeling the presence of God in fasting, feeling the presence of God in worship. Not that we wait till we feel, but beloved, I assure you it's within the reach of your experience to feel God more than we do now. I know it's within, I know I have that vision for my life and heart, and I know that you do for yours as well. This is within the reach of weak people. One guy says, well, you know, I'm not that smart. I can't figure out what all those Bible verses mean. I just, it's not really for me. And I'm really bad at prayer. And, you know, I came to the Lord. I was all abused and a lot of addictions, had a few demons and man, that's, I just don't feel like normal people feel. Let me tell you, the whole human race is not that smart. And they're not that prone to feel God. It's a gift of God. It's the work of God. It's within reach of every believer in the grace of God. It's not just for the PhDs and those that are scholarly who know Genesis or Revelation. That's the group that feels God. That's not what, gee, it's within the reach of every believer. You don't wanna sell out your inheritance. There's a verse in Luke chapter 12, verse 21. I'll just quote it to you. Jesus said, be rich towards God. Oh, I love that phrase. Luke 21, 12. No, the other way around. Luke 12, 21. Be rich in your heart towards God. Be rich. Refuse to settle for less than a heart like this. So much of the church in the Western world, which is my burden right now. I mean, I'm excited what we're doing in reaching out to the unsaved nations. I thought that we are so in need of doing this, the announcement given by Terry Hartley earlier. My burden is for the lost in the other parts of the earth, but the church in the Western world is so given to compromise and so willing to settle for second best. We compare ourselves with ourselves and we're a little bit better than the group down the road and so we're content. That burdens me because the Lord has so much more he wants to give us. Today's norm in the church. I'm not just talking about the world. He's talking about the world and the church. When he says, you don't want your heart weighed down, he's talking to the unbelievers. He's saying they need to get into the flow of this, but he's also talking to the believing community. Particularly actually. And what we find today is the heart weighed down. There's so much of God's people, particularly in the West, their spirits are sluggish, unresponsive to God. They read the word of God and it is boring. I've known that for years. I know what it means to go to prayer and to hit the brass heavens. I mean, for a long time. I don't mean a long time, just in one day. I'm talking about for months and months and months. In my earlier beginnings in prayer, it was like really boring. Beloved, it's worth pressing through and getting our minds renewed and getting rewired on the inside where we flow in this thing. It's worth the hassle. So much of God's people. I have no doubt there's a large percentage of people in this room, a higher percentage than we would guess. Their hearts are weighed down. We're committed to the word of God, but there's not a heart flow. We're committed to prayer, but it's like, oh, it's my time in the prayer thing. Oh, okay, I'll do it. It's an unmoved heart. My point isn't to give a rebuke. It's not to make people feel bad about it. My point is to say God has offered his people something more than that. And in the West, I believe we have a particular crisis in our culture of luring us into the things that create a heavy heart. At every option, the door, the enticing door that weighs the heart down beckons us to come. I mean, at every move, there's a door inviting us. Some legitimate pleasures, some illegitimate. Both categories. We go through the doors. We do it too much, the legitimate. It weighs our heart down. We end up with a heavy, sluggish heart, unresponsive to God. And we compare ourselves to others, and we're a little bit happy because we're doing a little bit better than them. And the Lord says, I have so much more for you than this. The weighed down heart is the heart that's addicted. Immorality. There's so much immorality in the church, in the West, and I'm sure around the other parts of the world, but there is so much our culture, our entertainment is inundated with immorality at every turn. There's more stirrings towards immorality in this room than we would imagine. Again, my point isn't to say, isn't everybody bad? That's not my point. My point is to say a weighed down heart is not our inheritance. We don't need to look at it and give in and give up. We look at the weighed down heart. We measure it in our own lives. We can't measure it accurately, but we discern and we recognize it's there. And we say, no, this is not my lot. I'm gonna see something change. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about how bad everybody is. I'm talking about rising up and saying, this is not my portion to stay in this place, to be stuck here with a weighed down heart. I'm not gonna do it. Weighed down addicted to compromise. A lot of people's hearts are weighed down. In the church, in the world with anger. Anger is such a hard word that it's just everybody else has got the problem and we never have it. Let's call it regularly annoyed. That's what anger is. It really, really is. Anger isn't just when you break out in a rage and kill everybody at McDonald's, like the guy did some years ago. I'm talking about an angry spirit. Your spouse annoys you regularly. Your children annoy you. The ministry annoys you. The workplace annoys you. Your neighbors annoy you. Driving here annoys you. Anywhere. I'm talking about a lot of people live weighed down. They feel bugged by almost every group of people they have regular contact with. Lord says, I've got more for you than living angry. Again, angry is too hard of a word to relate to. It's an accurate word, but let's call it regularly annoyed. It's a weighed down heart. Again, the point isn't to see it and go, I'm terrible. The point is to see it and say, I didn't even think I had a weighed down heart. Oh my goodness. The Lord says, I wanna liberate you. The weighed down heart is fearful. It cowers to pressure. Fearful of calamity, of sickness, of loss of finance, of persecution. Just fearful, fearful, fearful. The church is weighed down. The community, the unbelieving community is weighed down. And one of the more perilous expressions of being weighed down is just simply living bored. A lot of the church is bored. They call it burned out. Burned out's the operative word. It's boredom. I talked to a lot of people. They go, you know, I'm really burned out with church. And the idea is I work so hard and I'm just tired from working. And it's not that people work hard. It's they work with the wrong spirit. They work unstimulated at the heart level with God. And no matter what your work is, whether it's the right work, because a lot of people are just doing the wrong work, but it's mostly they do it the wrong way. It's not usually the amount of work that burns people out. It's the spirit in which they do the work. They do it disconnected. At the heart level. I have found through experience, both sides, I can work long hours. I could be tired, but my spirit alive. And I mean, I can do things that aren't even my passion, aren't even the things I really want, but my spirit's alive because we can give a cup of cold water. We can be cleaning the parking lot. We can do anything as unto the Lord and our spirit's alive in the work, even if it's not the work we like. We have this idea we work too hard or we're doing the wrong work. And that's why we're burned out. And the truth of the matter is we don't live connected because we could work in the most difficult place in Colossians 3, verse 25. And the Lord says, if you do it unto the Lord, not as pleasing man, you feel the Lord's reward in your heart, even in the act of an uncomely task. So we call it burnout, but mostly it's a bored, it's spiritually bored. And it's hard to do hard work spiritually bored, but let me give you a secret if you don't know. It's hard to do nothing with a bored heart too. People imagine it's the long work. No, it's the disconnect at the heart level. So they let the hard work go and they live idle and they're just as burnt out. It's called boredom. It's a weighed down heart. It's a heart that's sluggish, that's not responding. Now, verse 34, Jesus is gonna tell them how they get the weighed down heart. He's gonna give three examples of how the heart gets weighed down. This is not comprehensive, by the way. He's pointing to three different categories of activity. And here's the underlying point he's making. What you do with your time and money dynamically affects how your heart flows. That's the new idea to people. We all know it in a certain way. We know it theoretically on a whiteboard. What we do with time and money dynamically, directly affects the level of the heart flow, good or bad. We all know that, but then we live a lifestyle forgetting that it applies to us. What you do today, it's noon, between 12 and 12 today, the next 12 hours, what you do will affect your heart flow in the next three days and three weeks. Absolutely will. We have this idea that it's a true principle, but it's not applicable today. It's not about this afternoon. It's just a truth, but it's not about really today or this afternoon or tomorrow morning. It's about sometime, I know, for somebody, but not really about this afternoon. And Jesus is telling them, the underlying principle, the way they spend time and money is directly related to how their heart flows, good or bad. And if they want their heart to flow good, they change the way they spend time and money. And if they don't mind and they stay wherever they're at, they keep doing the same investment of time and money, their heart will continue to flow bad. No matter what's happening in our circumstances, we still have access to God. We can have the most horrible circumstances, but we can still have a heart flow if we want it. But we can't have a heart flow by coming up to the prayer line and saying, pray for me to give me the heart flow. Let's say you need to spend time and money differently in the next three years, and you will feel a difference over the months, but you'll feel a lot of difference over the years. And Jesus is warning them. He said, get connected now when it's easy, because the day is coming where suddenly the intensity increases, and then it's gonna be difficult to work through the pressure then to get connected. Not impossible, it's just more difficult. It is not impossible when the negative increases to connect, it's just more difficult to connect then. It will never be easier than it is today, never. It will not be easier in 10 years than it is today. Well, I think it will be because the person says, there's gonna be a greater activity of the Holy Spirit. And in that greater activity of the Holy Spirit, it will just be the pickings will be easier. I will just wake up and have, the worship will be more anointed, the atmosphere will be more anointed, the preaching will be more anointed, just everything. And I think there's truth to that. But it doesn't mean it will be easier to change your schedule. Today is the easiest time. When I look between now and when the Lord returns, there is never going to be a day for us, the believers that's easier than 2004, 2005. It will never get easier in 10 years. There's a verse that Jeremiah, I mean, there's a verse I think of Jeremiah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah and then he preached it, Jeremiah 12, verse five, and here's what he said. He goes, if you can't run with the footman, how are you gonna run with the horse? Horses. He says, if you can't make it in the time of peace, Jeremiah 12, five, how will you make it in the time of adversity? And there's a lot of people, I don't know the percentage, it may be 10%, it may be 80%, I don't know, but there's a good number of people in the body of Christ all over the West and in this room right now, they can't make it with a vibrant heart now in the time of peace. And they're just hoping that they'll wake up vibrant and flowing in the time of adversity. And that's called deception. This is the hour, Jesus said, before the day breaks suddenly, prepare yourself. Before the intensity comes, get connected now. This is the day it's easiest. Because when the connect, when the pressure comes, the human heart gravitates towards temporary, instant relief systems. When the pressure increases, the human heart wants instant relief and gratification. They want it this afternoon. That's what the drunkenness is about. That's what the carousing is about in this verse. That's what the anxiety is about. They're seeking for relief this afternoon because the pressure increased. Lord says, get a hold of me now. Get a flowing heart, get a vibrant heart today. Don't wait till then. Be prepared and then go prepare the unprepared. He talks about three areas, lifestyle. Again, this is not comprehensive. It's three of a number of areas, just carousing. Now the word carousing, I've done a little bit of study on that word. Different commentaries and dictionaries. Because I'm very interested in this word carousing. The NIV and the New American Standard of the NIV say dissipation. This is a very powerful word because for something to dissipate, the dictionary definition, it says it gets very thin as if to vanish. It goes away. He says you're living a life where your strength is dissipating. Your strength is going away. And what carousing means, when it's all said, when it sums up, is that we spend, here's what carousing means in dissipation. Spending your life aimlessly. Now we think of carousing as at a party, but it's not limited to just a wild party per se. That's one of the definitions, is the wild party, carousing. But the more fundamental definition is dissipating. Spending your life, it's wasted. It comes to nothing. Spending your strength on nothing. In the Western culture, I believe it's first on Jesus's list. I believe it's the number one problem in the culture in the West is dissipation. It's called entertainment and recreation. I don't mean a little bit. A little bit of entertainments, I believe appropriate. A little bit of recreations are appropriate. I'm not talking about, you know, 25 minutes on the bike in the morning. That's not what I mean by recreation. That's just plain old good for you. No, Diane, you can't quote me tomorrow morning. I bind that spirit of an image. I could feel it. No. We went on that fast last November. I haven't got back to the bike since, and I was gonna get back to it in December. It's coming, it's coming. I mean, it's only February. It's gonna happen. There's a party spirit in the Western church. Let me say it differently than a party spirit, because most people don't relate to a party spirit. Because they think of that term, and they think wild parties, drunken orgies. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an inordinate pursuit of fun. Playing, playing too much. We're reaching the most critical time in human history, and the church in the West is caught up in the Western culture that we have a right to play. If we work hard and get enough money, it gives us the right to spend our strength on playing. We work hard so we can retire so we can play. We use our time, we use our money, we use our prosperity, which is mostly time. It's far, prosperity is a lot more time than money. We use it to play instead of to empower our hearts and to empower others in the harvest. And people are, they will protect their right to play almost before they will protect any other part of their inheritance in God. You press in, they begin to get uncomfortable, they demand and they will fight with zeal for the right to play. And they're so concerned. If they pray too much or work too much or fast too much, they might be tired and they might not feel good tomorrow, but I've got to play to stay healthy. It's a serious lie in the Western culture. It's everywhere. It's all over IHOP. It's all over the church of Kansas City. It's all the church in America. Because if we play, we will be rested. And if we're rested, we could do the work of God. But we never get rested. It's always going to be, it's always next month, we're gonna finally get rested. Society, I talk to people, society. I talk to, because it's a volunteer ministry and the amount of people that disconnect when they feel bad. It's the idea that faithfulness is when you feel good is when faithfulness counts. Beloved, faithfulness isn't just what you do when you feel good, faithfulness is what you do when you don't feel good. The realm of faithfulness is related to the realm of not feeling in the mood or the energy to do it. There's a significant amount of unfaithfulness in the church, in the realm of prayer, in the realm of fasting, in the realm of worship, not just IHOP, I'm talking about the whole church everywhere because those are things we do when we feel good. And if I feel a little bit bad, I'm sick and I don't do it. Beloved, faithfulness is related to what you do when the resources and the energy are not there. That's where faithfulness is measured. The reason I feel energy about this is I'm not worried so much about the operations or this or that, I'm concerned about living in reality before God and the paradigm of comfort and ease and rest and replenishing is askew. It's significantly off from reality, the way the Western church and the Western world views it. We've redefined faithfulness. If we've rested and feel good, faithfulness is something we deal with. We've just redefined it and recategorized it in a way that works for us. Carousing is top of the list. It's a stronghold. I don't know that it's a demon in that sense. I don't mean it's a name of a demon, but it's a mindset that is trapped believers and unbelievers and they can't go forward because they're lost in protecting this right that frees them, which in fact enslaves them. The next category, the other two I'm just gonna spend a second on, it's the carousing. I feel strength about it in my own life. I'm not just meaning about you or about the folks out there. I wanna be faithful. I wake up in the morning, lots of times I don't feel A, B and C, but I wanna be faithful. I wanna do the will of God when I'm running short in several other dimensions of life, energy, strength, money. I still wanna do the will of God when the audience isn't there, when the gaze of man, when no one's there, I want to do it for faithfulness reasons before God. And not just because I want God, please, I want a vibrant heart. And I know the way into the presence of God is the way he's describing. The lazy spirit, the play spirit. Again, I'm not talking about a demon, I'm talking about a mindset. It's all over the West. It's so hard to see it because we're so used to it. God talked about working six days a week and resting one. And then the day they rested was the day they sat in the presence of God. The Sabbath day was the day to engage God. The West is fighting for 40 hour weeks and 70 hours of play. It's not biblical. It's nowhere in the Bible where that's God's layout of how society works. And the net result is we have an entire culture with their hearts locked in the greatest hour of human history. He talks about drunkenness. You know what drunkenness is about? You can put any kind of addiction you want in there. It's about finding relief this afternoon because of pressures. Pressures are bearing and we got to get some escape. And the Lord said, there's another way of escape besides doling yourself out. He said, dole out your senses. And he goes, if you do it that way, you will end up with a heavy heart. You'll dole your senses now and your heart will get heavier and heavier and will weigh down on you. The next one he talks about anxiety, worry. And you understand that. We need to resist that. We don't just give into it because it's a private affair that nobody else, what if we don't tell nobody? We lose our life strength giving ourselves to that. Rehearsing the situation yet a thousand, the thousandth time. The Lord says that will cause your heart to be burdened and crushed. You'll lose your vitality. He talks about that day. Verse 35 and 34, coming upon the whole world like a trap or a snare. Because the trap is the increased pressure will cause people to seek comfort in another way outside of God. And they'll compromise in that pursuit, believers and unbelievers. And it will seek, they will seek to avoid pressure or conflict or persecution. The pressure will come and they go, I don't want the pressure. I don't want, I mean, the pressure will come and say, I don't want the persecution, the conflict. I got to get some relief. And Jesus says it will trap many of people. Many of people will make lifestyle choices under that pressure and it will become a snare and it will trap them in a spirit of compromise. And he said, pray this. He goes, pray. It's not that you just pray this sentence. It's live the life of prayer, live in the spirit, get a heart connected. And here's what the Lord's saying. You will be worthy to escape. Let's look at that phrase worthy to escape. It's talking about able to overcome. Escaping does not mean, it doesn't mean the rapture. Worthy to escape. I've heard people teach this, that the people that pray will be taken up in the rapture. That's not what it's talking about. It's talking about escaping the snare of compromising by looking for relief in illegitimate ways or avoiding persecution and compromising. He said, you can escape the snare of that spirit, that lifestyle, because if you yield to that lifestyle, you will not be able to stand before the Son of Man. And it's talking about standing before Him in this age and the age to come. But in this age, we wanna be stand. We wanna be loyal. We wanna be true. We wanna be victorious. We wanna stand and not fall before Him is the idea. But it goes on more than that. That's the initial application. We wanna stand versus fall. We wanna be loyal versus betray Him in our lifestyles under pressure. We don't wanna betray Him in persecution, but we don't wanna betray Him in getting comfort in ways outside of the will of God. God says, I have plenty of comfort for you. Your spirit will resonate inside of you. You'll be alive if you do the way I said. You won't need to have an escape hatch in the afternoon when you're under pressure or in the evening, whatever. It does also mean that people who profess Jesus will actually get snared and will fall away and they won't stand before God in eternity too. It does mean in the in time sense of, I mean, the eternal sense, Jesus says, you don't want to lose your relationship with me. You wanna be able to stand before me, but it's not just an eternity, it's in time as well. Many people, I don't believe most, but I believe it will be several hundred million believers will deny their faith under the pressures of what's coming. They are so unready for what's coming. They're compromising, they're pursuing a lifestyle of play and throwing in a little God on the run in the day of ease. And when the pressure increases, they just imagine they're gonna wake up one day vibrant. They're gonna go to a prayer line and somebody's gonna lay hands on them. That's gonna get fixed in that day. Beloved, if we can't flow now, how do we imagine with increased pressures we're gonna resist persecution, work our way through the truths and get connected when everything is attacking us? And I believe we can connect then if we don't now, it's just a lot more difficult, just a lot more difficult. The day is gonna come sudden. It's not, the day's not here yet. God is giving us significant time even in this generation to get ready. This is the easiest time. The easiest time to respond is right now. I was talking to my wife once after one of the Saturday night meetings. And she told me, she goes, I talked to this lady, she says, man, she was really scared after hearing all this. She goes, she's really troubled. I go, good. I go, that's really good. And we're having a fun conversation. We're just playing a little bit, but we're serious, we're playing a little bit. And she goes, well, that was very pastoral. And she was having fun. And I said that I got serious. I said, actually, it is. I said, it is pastoral. I said, what benefit and what quality of pastoral care is it to comfort people in their spiritual superficiality where they fall in the day of pressure? I said, what benefit is that that we make them feel good today while having no spiritual depth and they walk into a lion's den tomorrow and lose their walk with God? I go, where is that pastoral? She goes, hey, I was having fun. You know, I believe all that. Gee whiz, you know, can I get you a sandwich? You know, what's happening? Because obviously we all believe that in this room. All of us do. The goal isn't the right to comfort while spiritually superficial. Why do we want a church at ease when many of them will fall away in the day of pressure? And I'm talking about in eternity, they will end up in the lake of fire. Jesus makes that point really clear and so does the apostles. They fall away in the real sense, not just they trip a little bit and kind of get a wrong spirit and then settle out. They actually yield and they get, because whatever decisions we make today, they're easier to make tomorrow. If we press into the presence of God, and it's difficult because it's not connecting. It's not there. It's boring. It's barren. You stay there. You stay there. It gets easier tomorrow if you press in today. But if you give in to compromise today, compromise is a lot easier tomorrow because the pressure increases. Whatever spirit you're feeding on today will be easier to feed on tomorrow. It's absolutely true. If you find it easy to do a little pornography today, you will find it really easy to do pornography a lot tomorrow. That's where it's going. If you find it a little bit difficult to press into God, the Lord says it will be easier tomorrow. You just keep pressing in. It's going to take some spiritual violence, press into this thing and go for it. Let's turn to James chapter five. I'm going to end here in just a moment. I'm going to read two verses to you. Just want you to see them. James chapter five. This is the Lord's half brother. His, I mean, his natural brother, the apostle James. He writes this. He writes just like his older brother, Jesus. James five, verse five. He says, you have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury. And you have fattened your heart as in the day of slaughter. Now the word luxury in the margin and it's a, I think the better translation is you've lived in pleasure and you've lived in indulgence. See, when we think of luxury, we think of the other side of town. And when we think of luxury, we need to think of the other side of the world. Because we think of luxury. We say we don't live like they live. And the Lord says, no, you got the wrong paradigm. Look at the third world. Your culture is inundated in luxury. All of us in this room live in pleasure and in luxury. And I'm not saying that therefore we're all condemned. My point isn't that we're all now therefore wrong because we're Westerners. My point is it's not compared. You don't compare and discern luxury from one part of town to the other in America. You compare yourself from America to India. Our whole culture, this is the poorest nearly. There could be a few exceptions, but 98% of everyone in America lives better than the kings did a couple hundred years ago. The kings of the earth. We live better than the kings of the earth. Among the poorest in our nation lives better than the kings did. Well, it's just a couple hundred years ago, the kings of the earth. My point isn't that that's bad. That's not so bad. My point is, is that it's all around us. And we don't imagine this verse is talking to the Western church. We imagine it's talking to the group on the other part of town. We don't connect with the fact that Americans are living in one, the top 1% of the entire human history in luxury. Almost all Americans are. Top 1% of all the human beings in history. We're in the top 1% of luxury. This verse is talking about us. We have indulgence. We have so many options, legitimate options. We have options on every turn to keep us out of developing what he says. Pray always. Now who on earth has taken that serious? Pray always. And you will have the ability to overcome in the hour of adversity. Well, the pray always, that's just hypothetical. I don't like prayer. I'm not called to prayer. But I'm going to escape anyway. I'm going to have a vibrant heart anyway. Do you have a vibrant heart now? No, but I'm going to. I just know I will. But the pray always thing isn't about my life. It's about, I'm not called to that. Turn to Hebrews 2, 12. It's just a page or two to the left. Hebrews 12, verse one. It's just one verse. Therefore, since we have surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Hebrews 12, one. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance. There's two categories. There's the weights that ensnare us, the weights. And then there's the sins. The weights are not sins in and of themselves. The weights are legitimate activities we do too much of. And it kills our hearts. Just too much play. Too many things that don't stimulate our spirit in God. Those are called weights. There's another category called sin. And I'll end with a story. Bob Jones had a vision years ago. Is Derrick on his way up? Okay. Bob Jones had a vision some years ago. Most of you know him. He's a prophet of the Lord. He said in the late 80s. And he came to us. He said, I had one of these night visions. And in this night vision, he was taken to California. And the church in California was symbolic in this dream, though there's some truth, but certainly there's exceptions for sure. It was the picture of a sleepy church of compromise just with pleasure in the culture. And obviously there's truth to that, but it's true here. And it's true east, west coast is everywhere in America. But that's a word picture. We can all relate to that. And it said, all these believers, these believers, again, this is a negative view. It was a warning to us. It was a warning to us in Kansas City, all of us. But it was just this graphic picture. And they put all this gold in their pockets. They pursued gold as their number one goal. Prosperity in the will of God is a blessing. But they put all this gold in their pocket. And there was these aqueducts, these cement canals that bring the water in from Colorado. And you've seen them, most of you have. And there was this ladder, and many of them had their pockets filled with gold. I mean, just coats on everything, all their coats everywhere, not just their pants, but they had garments on absolutely. They could hardly walk with gold. And they got down the stairway into these aqueducts. They were dry, because they wanted to cross the aqueduct to go to the other side, because there was a big party going on over there. They wanted to bring their gold. They wanted to go to the easy life. They worked hard. They were just going to take it easy, because they got all the resources to do it. And they're on their way. They just got down the ladder. And suddenly, they looked up. It's this big cement canal, and nothing's going on. It looks safe. Suddenly, a wall of water, a flash flood came 10 feet high, rushing. And they looked at it. They went, ah! Well, that's my version. But they looked at it. There were three responses. Response number one, got all the gold. One guy said, I'm going to go for it. He runs across to beat the flash flood, and it sweeps him away. He tries to swim, and all the gold in their pockets, he drowns. He loses his heart. In the midst of the conflict, the other guy turns around. The second option, this is bad, too. He decides to climb back up with the ladder. He goes, I'm forgetting the party. I'm getting out of this thing. But he won't let go of his god, which is all the gold in his pocket. And he can't get up the ladder, because it was really hard to even get down it. He can't get up it. And the flood comes. He's hanging on the ladder, and he loses his strength. He's captured away in it. He can't get out. The third guy unloads his gold and escapes with his life, barely. He said, that's a word picture. It's not about having money. That's not the point. It's about the pursuit of it in an inordinate way. It is the will of God to provide great wealth for the harvest. The provision of wealth and the pursuit of it is not about giving us the right to play. It's about empowering our lives and empowering others for the great harvest. And he said, and this angel or whatever, this experience in the, I don't remember all the dynamics of it, although he told the story so many times in the 80s. I just remember I used to say it all the time. The Lord spoke to him in one way or the other, the angel or him or the Lord just himself and said this, the church in the West or the church in America is so in pursuit of wrong things. And they don't know a storm is coming. And they think they're going to get across that little canal to the party, or at least they'll get away with all of their dreams intact. And the flood will sweep them away. The flood will sweep them away. He said, the Lord's warning is church. We need to empty our own agendas before God. And we need to get connected with his agenda. Amen.