Mike Bickle emphasizes the urgency of living righteously in anticipation of Jesus' return, highlighting the significance of our choices and their eternal impact. He stresses the power of corporate intercessory worship as a means through which God governs and releases His blessings, urging believers to gather in solemn assemblies to seek God's mercy and intervention in times of crisis. Bickle reminds us that our choices matter, and through prayer and worship, we can influence the spiritual realm and the quality of life we experience. He calls for a radical turning of our hearts towards God, emphasizing the need for humility and repentance in our approach to Him.

Lord, I ask you that the things that we've learned and discussed with one another would become living understanding that we actually do something about. Lord, I ask that these truths would create fire in our spirit, they would grab a hold of us, and not just be interesting truths that we can talk about with a certain joy and glee and curiosity, but I ask that these things would lay hold of our spirits, set us on fire, that we do something about them in such a time as this. We thank you in Jesus' name, Amen. In session 8, how then shall we live? If Jesus is coming back, the greatest revival in history is coming, the greatest crisis in history is coming, the two Jerusalems are coming together. What we do now determines our assignment in the age to come. We can determine a certain amount of the quality of life and the spirit that we experience by our responses to God. How then shall we live? Roman numeral 1, God's government through corporate intercessory worship. I love that sentence, corporate intercessory worship. God releases His government, His power, and when I say government, I mean His power, His authority. Paragraph A, God has given the human race great dignity. As humans, believers and unbelievers, we have great dignity, and the dignity is that we have a free will, which means we have the ability to make choices that really make a difference. That's the dignity we have. Our choices count forever. That's our dignity. That's a terrible thing if we use our choices wrong. But the choices we make, they last forever. Now if we make a bad choice, we can repent of it, but then it overrides it, and we ask for mercy, and if our repentance is real, the Lord will remove that. Some of the consequences will still have an impact. But we make righteous choices. We can really make a difference. These choices for righteousness or sin will either bring blessing or evil to us and to the people that we love. If you make righteous choices, blessing is released through you and your influence to people around you. If you make sinful choices, other people really get hurt who are connected to you. It's real. That's the dignity of the human spirit. Our choices matter. If we choose righteousness, we open doors of blessing. If we choose righteousness, God opens doors in the spirit, so to speak. He releases blessing upon us in many different ways. The choices we make provide the legal entry point for angels and demons to be more active in the natural realm. When we make right choices, angels and demons are affected by those choices. We make wrong choices, angels and demons, their activity are affected. We affect the quality of life by what we do. Some of our choices actually will affect us forever. This life is not a practice game. You live in meekness 500 years and 5,000 years from now, you will still be reaping the benefit of your meekness in this age. It will affect your assignment in the age to come, good or bad. Paragraph B, God governs the universe in intimate partnership with his people through intercession. He governs the universe, meaning he releases his power and his blessing when his people pray, intercession, that means people praying, asking God to do what he said he would do. When we take time and ask him to do it, he actually releases his power. Not always in the time frame we want, but every prayer is registered in heaven and gets answered, every prayer that's in the will of God, even though there's a time delay on most of our prayers. Every one of those prayers that are in the will of God are alive, and they're still alive. The prayers we prayed 10, 20, 30 years ago are still alive in God's heart. They matter. The majesty, I call it the majesty and the mystery of intercession. It's mysterious to me how a human being can tell God what he tells them to tell him. We can tell God what God promises, and because we tell him, there's a mystery. God does something. He releases his power, his government. There's a majesty to this because God releases his power in that way more than any other way. It's majestic. It's awesome that I can partner with God who created in Genesis 1. I can be in a partnership with him. That's majestic that I can do that by simply saying what he says to say. But it's very mysterious as well, and this is seen foremost in Jesus' relationship with the Father. Did you know that Jesus, not just in the past but also in the future, that God will release his power through Jesus as Jesus prays even in the future? There's a number of passages that we won't go into where Jesus will ask the Father, and then the Father will cause nations to come under Jesus' leadership. But Jesus is doing the same thing as we are. He's asking the Father. He's not just leaving it. He says, well, God, you know it's true, so I'll just leave it there. No, Jesus stands up and he says, Father, you said, and he asked him, and that's how Jesus releases his power or his government. I use those words synonymous in many cases. That's how Jesus does it. We will do that forever, and my point is if that's how we're going to work together with God a thousand years and a million years from now, that's how we work together with God even in our life right now. The governmental center of the universe is the prayer room. I said that to one person. They go, wow, you think that IHOP is the guy? I said, no, not our prayer room. Capital P prayer room. So I've got to be careful. I said, no, no, not our little thing. The governmental center of the universe is the prayer room, and what I mean by that, it includes all the holy prayers in heaven, the prayer room in heaven, all the prayers in heaven and worship, and all the prayer rooms of the earth. They all converge together as one grand prayer room before God, and the prayers come together in unity, and that is the governmental center of the whole created order. Our prayers on the earth and the prayers of the saints in heaven, the prayers of angels, Jesus's prayer, the Holy Spirit groans and makes intercession for us. All of those work together as one reality before God. It's fantastic. God has given us, his people, a dynamic role in determining, in determining some of the measure of the quality of life we experience. We make significant contributions by praying and believing and obeying. It really matters. I mean, think about it. How does a God who did Genesis 1, you know, in the Milky Way galaxy, they say there's a hundred billion stars, a hundred billion stars. In the Milky Way galaxy, they say the sun is one of the smaller ones, a hundred billion, and there's a hundred million galaxies, of which the Milky Way is one of them. There's a hundred million galaxies, and Milky Way is one of the smaller ones. And Jesus created them. Now, how is a God like that going to find me interesting in our fellowship? I mean, how are we supposed to work together? Jesus, I love you. Oh, I love when you love me. Oh, Jesus, you created a hundred million galaxies. I can't get my daytimers straight. What are we going to talk about? How are we going to rule together? He says, I've already figured it out. You tell me what I tell you to tell me. That's called intercession, prayer. And you do what I tell you to do, and there will be waves of power that will break forth. My entire government will work through that. It means you do that, and we'll be equally yoked in partnership together. As simple as that is, you know what? Many believers, they won't do that. They want to do everything else but that. This is God who wants to have partnership with his people. And it's not just now. That's how we're going to have partnership with him in eternity. We partner with him in meekness, serving. I mean, out of the way things that nobody even sees, we partner with meekness. We partner with intercession. We partner with worship. We partner with obedience. Those things have spiritual power in them before the presence of God. It's majestic and mysterious, but it's powerful. Roman numeral 2. Corporate intercessory worship is the primary means that God has chosen to release his power. Beloved, it's not the only means, but I want to say this boldly. When you study the scriptures, Genesis to Revelation, clearly at the top of the list in the way that God releases power is through corporate intercessory worship. That's clearly at the top of the list. When God wants to release his power through these partners with him in the universe, governing the universe, who can't keep their daytimers straight, and he made 100 million galaxies, he says it's through corporate intercessory worship. Our hearts connect. That's the point they connect in. Then you obey. You walk in meekness out of that and servanthood. Corporate intercessory worship is the primary means God has chosen to release his power. It is the highest expression of government. There is no higher expression of God's government in time or eternity, not just now until the second coming. Beloved, a million years from now, there will not be anything more powerful than when we worship and pray together. When I call intercessory worship, I'm saying how they all flow together. Paragraph B, God's primary call to a nation in crisis, and many nations are going to be in crisis, right? His primary call when a nation is in crisis is to gather together in solemn assemblies. That's what the book of Joel is all about, and that's basically what I'm going to say for the rest of this session. Solemn assemblies, Joel 2. We're going to look at it in just a minute. All right. In other words, they gather together in corporate intercessory worship. That is what is needed most in this hour. That's the most powerful reality. That's the most powerful vehicle of which, most effective vehicle of which God releases his power, and that's what God wants his church to do. Number one, corporate. God's looking for prayer that's corporate. Corporate, the corporate part, doing it together takes humility. I mean, we've been doing IHOP, you know, we're getting close now to seven years in May, a few months from now. And I tell you, there's a bunch of times when I think, you know what, I could just do just as good, slipping over to the side over here, just kind of not interfacing with all the human dynamics in that prayer room. And the Lord says, no, you need to do that. That's my will for you sometimes, but I want you to know this. The human dynamics in the prayer room, the corporateness is part of the will of God. It creates humility. It creates character. The corporateness creates bonding. It creates nameless and faceless people, so to speak. In other words, not people who are getting all the attention and glory. We're all in it together. Whose prayer worked when you're in a corporate prayer meeting? Number two, it's intercessory. God wants intercessory. He's looking for prayer that stands in the gap, that tells God what God tells them to believe for. It's intercessory. It's not just devotional prayer. It's not only prayer that says, I love you and help me in my own life. Those are good. But it's prayers that we're asking God to break in for a nation or to turn abortion, turn that thing around, or to stop a tragedy in a nation, or to release the power of the Spirit, whether here or there in the lives of others, or to heal the sick, or to drive cancer out of someone's body, to cause a demonized person to go free. It's intercessory, meaning we're doing it for others. And number three, it's worship. It's worship. There's a worship. There's an I love you dimension. But worship also has a music dimension, and this is mysterious because the Holy Spirit has a musical spirit. God is musical. The human spirit is musical because we're made in the image of God. Music is first in God's spirit before it's anywhere else. It's in His personality. It's in His heart. The Holy Spirit's a musical spirit. I don't know if that's the best way to say that. I don't exactly know. Meaning His spirit is full of music. It's God the Father and God the Son. The human spirit is too. And so when we worship, there's something. You can get 100,000 people in a stadium, and there's something about music when it's blessed of God. 100,000 of us can go to the same place and feel the same thing and have it sustained for a long period of time when music's involved. God wants a music and an I love you dimension in our prayer, in our corporateness. Those three things come together. Corporate, there's a family dimension, there's humility. Intercessory, we're praying for others and believing God. We're saying what God says. And there's a music and an I love you dimension that we all can feel it together for sustained periods of time in a way you can't do it any other way. It's brilliant that God invented music. Roman numeral three, four contributing factors to crisis and the events in the earth. There's four factors. We've looked at this several times. Number one, God's zeal. We're in paragraph A. Satan's rage, man's sin, and the groan of creation. Creation groans, that's the earthquakes and hurricanes and all of that that the scripture talks about. B, God's enemy, his number one enemy is sin. He will oppose it. He's patient, but he will oppose it. I mean, oppose it with such zeal that Jesus became human and was crushed by the wrath of God. That's the zeal that God has against sin. God has, well, that's his commitment of his love for us as well. The fact that Jesus became human. Jesus was always God and always will be God, but he became human at a point in time. An entirely new experience. It's really hard for God to have a new experience. But God did something he's never done before. He became human, second person of the Trinity. And then he was crushed by the wrath of God, by the Father. The Father crushed him. And that is the Father's and the Son's, that's God's zeal. He hates sin. He will go to such an extreme that his Son would become human and become human forever. You know, a billion years from now, Jesus will still be human. And he will still be Jewish. His humanity is forever. He didn't, like, accomplish redemption and go to heaven and lay aside his humanity, like, take off a garment, throw it away. He's human forever. That was part of the agreement. It's amazing. And God crushed him with wrath. God would say in that, Do you know how much I am against sin? I would go to that extreme. That's zeal. The Great Tribulation is God's zeal against sin, but that's not near as intense as the cross. Great Tribulation is a far softer display of judgment than what Jesus went through. Paragraph C. God's zeal or his passion to establish his people in love. Oh, he's zealous. He looks at the church across the world. He looks at the church in the West, which I consider to be amongst the weakest believers on the planet, the church in the West, just so larger numbers than most places and most equipment and resource and opportunity for learning, but so much compromise, so much passivity. Even us. God looks. He so wants us to partner with him in ruling the earth. He so loves us. He goes, I love you guys so much, and I am not going to let you be about the way you're going. I'm not going to let this end that way. I am going to give you a mid-course correction, or maybe it's the end of the course here that we're at before the Lord's return. His purpose in sending judgment is to remove everything that hinders love. God's role in causing a crisis is often ignored. Normally when we talk about crisis, the church talks about the role of Satan or the role of sinful men. We are real shy about God's contribution in a crisis. We don't like that because we don't have a revelation of his zeal. He's doing it to remove the things that hinder love, and God has a far more active role in the end-time crisis than people want to own up to because it embarrasses them because they have a humanistic mindset, and that part of God embarrasses them. Again, you find the guys on the national TV programs' interviews, and when the subject did God do it, it's cough and hiccup. Well, you know, I don't know. It's mysterious how Mother Nature works. God is far more active in judgment because of his zeal to establish love in the earth. He's not contradicting himself. He's actually manifesting his love for his people and for those that are yet to become his people. Paragraph D. Satan's rage is permitted by God to be expressed within the boundaries that God sets. We looked at this at another session. Satan's rage is part of the problems of the end-time. Satan hates humans. Man's sin. I mean, evil people can do evil things. Terrorists can really blow things up. You know, the Adolf Hitlers and the Joseph Stalins, those are men that did evil things. They really did them, and God really let them exercise their free will and do them. They really do hurt people. Evil men do. Men really murder people, and they rape people, and they hurt people, and it's real. And it's not just God or the devil. I mean, obviously the devil is energizing, but the human spirit has sin in it. It's real. And creation's grown. Paul talked about it in Romans 8, that just because there's this dynamic relationship between our sin and the earth, that there's convulsions happening in nature. And all those convulsions, they don't all need, all of them don't need a present tense where activity of God, where God says, you know, nature was going this way, now I'm reversing it, that some of the convulsions of nature are just the ongoing process of sin being on its, you know, defiling it. There has a reaction of which the natural creation, I don't understand how it works, but Paul in the Scripture talks about it. Creation convulses and travails under man's sin. Paragraph E. The biggest problem for a nation, the persistent sin. That's the key phrase, the persistent sin is not Satan. Satan's in trouble. We don't ever like Satan's role. The biggest problem for a nation in sin isn't Satan. The biggest problem for a nation in sin isn't terrorists or even natural disasters. It's God's zeal for that nation. That's their biggest trouble. Israel's biggest problem is not Satan or Islamic terrorists. It's God loves Israel and says, you will not go the other way. My point in saying this, all of us, every nation, we have to reckon with the God who won't let go. That's the part of the equation that we're not facing in a real direct way. God won't let go. God is not going to let America go a certain way. He'll give us time because He wants to honor our free will, but He will break in in His zeal with judgments to bring us back in a direction, and those judgments really do hurt, and they really are sent by God. I am far more afraid of God. I'm saying that in the biblical, in the reverent sense. I'm far more terrified of God if our nation stays in sin than I am the devil or terrorism. God's looking at America, He goes, America, I love you. Church in America. Church in America, I love you. I am coming after you. Oh, yes. No, yes. No, yes. The preacher said, the only thing worse than God not showing up is God showing up if there's sin in the camp. The only thing worse than God not showing up is Him actually showing up if we're not in unity with Him as a church in the nation. That's more severe because He wants to correct us. Roman numeral 4, Solemn Assemblies. There's many examples of the Solemn Assemblies in the scripture, but this is the grand passage. The book of Joel. I want to encourage you to study the book of Joel. It's only three chapters. That's the book that Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost. As the prophet Joel says, I will pour out my spirit and you will dream dreams and have visions and many of these things. The book of Joel is the briefest, it's only three chapters, most succinct statement in the Bible of the positive and the negative of the end times. It's only three chapters. But boy, is it succinct. I just finished a study guide on it. A pretty, well, I was going to say pretty lengthy, but that's not really true. A couple hundred pages. It's not so lengthy, but I have really loved line by line, phrase by phrase, the book of Joel because it's the extreme positive and extreme negative in a most succinct, concise way. I really urge you to study the book of Joel. And there's a number of good commentaries. It's not just my study guide. I like my study guide. But there's a number of books. There's some real liberal ones, so beware of that. But you want to study it in a way where it's pushing it, the positive and the negative, to its full ramifications that the prophet Joel meant it. And it leads people, and this is the book of Joel, the centerpiece of the book of Joel is right here, get together and cry out and fasting and prayer. That's what God wants. It is absolutely simple what he wants. The nations are mystified. What do you want? God says, it's clear what I want. The thing I want is the thing that most of my people aren't doing. It's not mysterious. Solemn assemblies. It says right here. Therefore, says the Lord, Joel 2, verse 12, turn to me with all of your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart, or that word read, tear your heart. Don't tear your garment, tear your heart. Because in the ancient world, they would tear their garment to show their remorse. He goes, don't tear your garment. Keep your shirt on. Tear your heart instead. And return to the Lord. And then Joel goes on, he's speaking for the Lord. Here's why you turn to the Lord. He's very, very gracious. In other words, he'll give you a new beginning. He will be nice to you if you turn to him. Wow. He's merciful. He doesn't get angry fast at all. He's got a really patient approach to sin. He looks, and he gives us another chance. And yet another, and yet another, and then another. He's slow. He doesn't want to show judgment. But he will if it goes too far. It says turn to him, because I love this phrase, the word great. And of great kindness. And then the fifth thing, it says, and he relents, or he changes. He relents, he takes back the judgment he was planning to send. He relents from sending judgment, from doing harm. He changes his plan if the people will change their plan. Beloved, he will change his plan if we change our plan. He's planning to send judgment to an area. If the people change, the Lord will lift that plan. I mean, one of the grand examples in the Bible is in the little book of Jonah. It's only three chapters. Again, Jonah goes in and preaches to the city of Nineveh, which, by the way, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, which was the number one enemy of Israel. Going into Nineveh, I mean, Assyria was the most cruel nation in the ancient world. Going into Nineveh, the prophet, the Hebrew prophet Jonah, went in and preached, repent. And you know what Nineveh did? They repented. Like it worked. And Jonah was really upset. He goes, God, they repented. And the Lord says, now I'm not going to judge them. I'm changing my plan. What? They're our enemy. He says, yeah, but they repented. They're going to obey me and walk in meekness. Can you imagine a Jewish prophet going into Nazi Germany, into Berlin, and prophesying to the nation of Germany, and they repent? And God says, okay, good. I'm going to bless you now. I mean, Jonah was really upset because God will really change his plan if the geographic area will change their plan, or the people, or the man, or the woman, or the family. He will change his plan if we change our plan. Now, obviously, he's smarter than it all. He knows what he's doing. He's not, like, tricking himself. He knows, you know, and for us little guys, you know, whether it's a 100 IQ, or a 200 IQ, or a 5,000 IQ, we're dealing with a billion, billion, billion IQ, so it doesn't really matter what the number is. Some guys try to sort it all out. How can God change if he knows, don't go there. You change your ways, something that was going to happen, negative from heaven, God will stop it. And he's smart enough to do all the theology right. But he'll still stop it. And he really was going to send it. Did he know he was going to stop it? Of course he did. That's not the issue. It's not the issue. He said, if we change, he'll change. He says, you just go with that, it'll work. He goes on to say, verse 14, who knows? He goes, if you repent, who knows? If he will turn and relent and leave a blessing behind. He leaves that element of mystery. He goes, who knows? The level, the measure, when? Who, what, when, where, and why? Who knows exactly? There's a mystery involved. But then he goes on, he says, here's what you need to do. Verse 15, blow the trumpet. Get everyone's attention. Consecrate a fast, call a fast. Call a sacred assembly. That's the New King James translation I use. I used to use the New American Standard translation. They called it solemn assemblies, and that's just how I got used to it. Call a solemn assembly, a sacred one. Gather all the people. Sanctify the congregation. Get all the elders and the leaders. Get all the kids, and let them cry out to God. Let the priests, the leaders cry out, and the people, everyone. Let them weep between the porch of the altar. Spare your people. And God says, if you do that, I'll send blessing to you. Again, the main thing God wants is the main thing that most of the church won't do. But God's going to have people all over the earth who do this with great focus. Paragraph A, in this passage, the Lord deals, I mean, the Lord tells us exactly what we're to do. We want mercy in a time, and deliverance in a time of crisis. We are to gather in solemn assemblies. He tells, there is no mystery. When Katrina hits, when 9-1-1 hits, when the economy is about to just completely go in a real negative way, a war is about to break out, call solemn assemblies. There is no mystery to what happens. I mean, to what we're supposed to do. It's not the only thing we do, but that's the main thing we do. Get together. Corporate intercessory worship. Get a bunch of you together. It's corporate intercession. Ask God to release His promise, His protection, and worship. Say, I love you, and throw some music at it. He goes, and when you do it, turn from your sin. If you do that, my blessing will be released. Lord, I can figure that. I get it. Even I get it. I get it. There you go. Now, just do it. And don't do it once. Just do it as a lifestyle. Just do it as a lifestyle. Paragraph B, God's primary call to a people. This is God's primary call to a people or to a nation in crisis. Again, I don't want to sound like I know it all. Because there's so much I don't know. And so much that I can't figure out. But again, I hear the men of God. In the big national interview, the big crisis. What do we do now? Let's bring aid to them. Yeah, that's a good answer. Let's bring aid to them. We've got to do that. But I almost never hear anyone. I don't know that I ever have. Probably I haven't. I just forgot. But Joel said, gather the people together in a room and have fasting and prayer and turning to God. That is the main response the Bible asks for. It worked for Jonah in Nineveh, in the most wicked kingdom in Israel's in relationship to Israel in that time. See, it's the clearest passage in the Scripture that describes what God wants when there's a national or local crisis. Paragraph D, the Lord doesn't leave us guessing to what He wants. We can have holy confidence about this. That's why I'm excited. I mean, we can't, you know, when the Lord led us to do IHOP, and so many of you that jumped into this 24-hour prayer thing, we are a perpetual solemn assembly. We don't do it that great. And there's, you know, a lot of weakness and a lot of things, but we're in the vein of this. And you just can't do it because it's a good idea. The Lord really told us to. It's His idea, it wasn't ours. And it's hard. And, again, we don't do it, me individually and us as a ministry, we don't do it in the full capacity of what we could. But I'm thrilled. I go, Lord, of all the things the Bible says to do, you said get the people together in a room, worship and pray, and you really want us to do this, and we get to do this. Yes, we can do it better, and, yes, it's hard, and, yes, this and that. It's the negative dimensions of just our humanity, but I like this. This is good. Lord, thank you. I don't know how many of you have ever stopped to tell the Lord, Lord, thank you for getting me in the middle of this. And there's other places doing it in different ways and different styles. It doesn't matter the way and the style. The point is the number one thing God says from heaven is to gather in solemn assemblies to pray fast and repent. If you do it, you're in the power alley, so to speak, of God's blessing. If you don't do it, it doesn't mean God still won't bless. That's the power alley. That is where the optimum blessing and favor is released on the planet in all of history in this age and also in the age to come. This isn't something that's over when Jesus returns. Crying out in worship and prayer, even with resurrected bodies, we don't have the fasting element and the repenting element, but worship and prayer, we will release God's power forever in this way. Never, ever will God improve this method. And so let's not resist it. Let's give ourselves to this method now. God's not going to improve it. This is what Jesus has been doing for years, and Jesus will do this for billions of years. It's clear in the Bible. Let's not try to find another way that's better than how Jesus is doing it. Let's just give in to it and say, let's just do it. It doesn't take a lot of gift. It doesn't take a lot of skill. You know the great thing about fasting? You don't do anything. Fasting is the ultimate doing nothing. That's the point. What do you do? Nothing? Well, I guess you fasted then. It worked. In worship and intercession, you tell God what he tells you to tell him. God says, I love you. I love you too. I love you. I love you too. I want you. I want you. You don't have to be overly anything, skilled or rich or famous, nothing. Just got a heart that beats. And this thing works, the most powerful avenue of God's blessing that cannot be improved upon in eternity, that Jesus doesn't, this is the highest form of blessing, we can all do it. And yet when we study the end times, these messages of the glory and of the negative are supposed to draw us into the wisdom of the Solemn Assembly. And it will, worldwide. It's working in places all around the world. But this is where God is taking the church in the Solemn Assembly. I tell leaders and pastors, I've been a pastor for 30 years now, and I tell them, in all of thy doing, whatever you do in your building, your buildings, your organizations, your outreaches, in all of thy getting, get prayer meetings. In all of thy doing, get some people together and worship and pray. Make sure that is absolutely mainstream on your church strategy and your ministry strategy or your family strategy, your business strategy, your social strategy. Find friends that like God. And hang out with them. Find friends that like the presence of God. Bond to them and go after it together. Make it a part of your social life. It's like we don't do God and then we put him on pause and go do social life. We want to find people that love the presence of God, that love the word of God, that love the heart of God, and jump in and do fasting and prayer and crying out and Bible study and conversation. That's our joy, that's our excitement. Paragraph Roman numeral five. Turn your heart to God with all of your heart. Turn to me with all of your heart. Hey, God wants our hearts more than anything else. Isn't that wonderful? He wants our love. I mean, God has everything. God, what do you want? I just want you to love me. Oh, wow. God, you have everything. You created a hundred million universes. What do you want? What could I possibly give you? I just want you to love me, Mike. That's what I want you to do. He wants our hearts. Beloved, this reveals his heart for us so much that what he wants most is just our heart. Isn't that awesome? That the king of the universe, that's what he wants most, is your heart, you. He just likes you. What does it be? What does it look like to turn to God with all of our heart? Because we have to do it God's way. We can't come up with another way to turn to God with all of our heart. We have to do it His way. We turn from sin. We fast and pray. We do it like Joel said. That's what God told Joel to tell the people. And it's not okay to have a version of turning to God that doesn't have these components in it. It doesn't mean all of our turning to God is only this, but our turning to God must have these components of fasting and weeping over our sin and rending our heart, tearing our hearts when there's something contrary to heart. There is not a wholeheartedness that is opposite or other than these elements. Again, there are other elements. We serve, we love God, we receive from God. Even when we receive from Him, that's part of our loving Him back. Even when we receive from Him. That's what Psalm 116 says. Verse 12. It's kind of getting off here for a second. The psalmist says, What can I render to the Lord for all of His benefits? What can I pay God back for all of His benefits? Psalm 116. What can I render? What can I do to pay you back for all that you've done? And the psalmist answers. Verse 17. It says, Take the cup of salvation and say thank you. The Lord says, You want to pay me back? Just take and say thank you. Keep taking. That's part of your love. Just keep taking. So that's part of turning to God. Taking His blessing. Not just His circumstantial blessings, those two, but His internal blessings as well. Paragraph C. The place of immunity or protection from God's judgments. The place of immunity. The judgments, beloved, are going to increase across the earth. God's zeal and judgment is going to increase in the book of Revelation like we can't even hardly imagine. When we read the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls, that's God's zealous for the earth. The place of protection or the place of immunity from God's judgments is corporate, long-term, not just for an afternoon. We want to build a history together. We want to do this for years together. And I don't mean just us here. I'm talking about the body of Christ. We want to do it in groups. We want people that long-term in geographic areas, we're building a history in God of long-term wholeheartedness that has fasting and prayer in it. It's in this way. We receive God's favor. It's in this way we are kept in a place of safety from the primary cause of pressure. You know what the primary cause of pressure in the end times is? God's zeal against sin. It's not the devil. It's not evil men. They're there. The primary cause is God wants the planet. He wants a people that agree with him. He wants to take over the planet. That's the zeal. That's what's creating the pressure in a world that has sin in it. Paragraph 6. Roman numeral 6. Rend your heart. Paragraph A. Traditionally in the generation Joel prophesied, people would tear. They would rend or tear their garment to show grief. But to rend means to tear something violently or forcefully. Paragraph B. What God desires is the rending or the tearing of the heart, which speaks of dealing radical with the issues of the heart, the matters of the heart. This is the most challenging aspect of the book of Joel, the tearing of the heart part. Ouch. See, we must tear our heart away from sin. God desires the tearing of our heart. This is what he wants. We can't come up with a wholeheartedness that doesn't have this element in it. I've heard people talk, we're going to give everything to Jesus, but the tearing of the heart isn't in it. You don't hear that sound. Jesus said here in Matthew 5, he says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Now, he's just talking about radical obedience. He's not talking about cut your eye out. He's talking about be radical to deal with things, even costly. Go out of your way to deal with that issue of the heart. Paragraph E. We cannot pursue wholeheartedness in a casual way. I know that sounds strange, but there's a lot of folks imagining they're wholehearted, but they're pretty casual about their walk with God. It's a little bit of the Word, just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and just kind of on the road in normal life like everybody else. We can't pursue wholeheartedness in a casual way. That's an oxymoron. That's opposite. You can't be wholehearted and casual. Those are opposites. We sometimes hope for a wholeheartedness that's gentle and tame. Wholeheartedness is violent. There's issues in my heart. The Lord says, no, I want you to face them. It's like, whoa, humility is violent. Our pride is so natural. Our pride is so strong. Our lusts are so powerful. Our opinions and our ways that were established that are so strong in us and yielding and serving and doing with no credit as before God and bearing patiently, those are violent things to the human spirit. Those are not things I do naturally at all. Those things are like, oh, why can't I just like wake up and just feel humble automatically when things go negative? There's a violence to it. F, God is against much of what the church labels today as having our liberty and grace. I hear a lot about liberty and grace over the years, over the 30 years of being in ministry. Well, brother, we got to have liberty and grace. Jude verse 3 and verse 4 talks about the people who turn the message of the grace of God into compromise. There's a lot of doctrine, a lot of phraseology called liberty and grace and you can say it different ways and it's just people living in compromise trying to ask for God's blessing without wholeheartedness. Many of the liberties the church fights for are the very things God's fighting against. I've just heard the arguments over the years of different ones. They argue with energy for why they can get out on the edges and live in a little bit of darkness and why it's okay and I don't want a religious spirit. They're so afraid of legalism and religious spirit. That's a good thing to be afraid of. But what they're really afraid of is wholeheartedness more than anything else. Paragraph G, God the Father's heart was torn when He gave Jesus His life away to the cross. The Father's heart was torn when He gave Jesus up when Jesus gave His life at the cross. And it continues to be torn in His patient long suffering with His people. God's heart is torn in His patience. God tears His heart. He wants us to tear our heart. He looks at the church of our nation. He loves us. And some of our resistance to Him, it tears His heart. Jesus tore His heart when He went to the cross. And He says, I want you to tear your heart. We're in this thing together. Let's go all the way together. Roman number seven, repenting with confidence in God's tender heart. A five-fold revelation. Beloved, Joel didn't just say tear your heart and repent. He said do it, but with these five things in mind. God's gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and He relents. Paragraph A, Joel summons the people to return to the Lord. He gives five reasons why it's doable and it's wise to turn to God. He gives five reasons. It's doable. God wants to help us. God wants to deliver us. God wants to give us the breakthrough in these areas. I mean the areas of the heart. B, first, the Lord is gracious in that He evaluates us differently than anyone else does. He remembers our frailty that we are but dust. He's not like a harsh military leader. He's not an angry coach that rejects every form of weakness. God's style of relating is human friendly. He knows the human spirit. He wants to help us and free us. C, the Lord delights in mercy. He delights in mercy. He's merciful. I'm reading the verse here in Micah 7, 18. It says, Who is like the Lord who pardons iniquity or sin? That's the same idea of sin. Why does God pardon our sin? Because He delights. He loves to give mercy. He loves it. I have this written that, you know, I don't know exactly the best way to say it, but one of God's favorite things in leading the universe is to show us mercy and when it connects with us that we've sinned and God's going to be kind and give us a new beginning and we go, Oh, yes! The Lord's giving me a new beginning! And when it connects, the Lord, He loves that. He goes, look, He's getting it. He's getting it. Oh, I love you, God! And the Lord says, I delight in giving you mercy. I love to give you mercy. I love what it does in you when it connects with you that I did it for you. You know you get a brand new beginning and the Lord says, I'm going to erase it and give you a new start. But Lord, this is like the hundredth time. I know. Oh, I love you, God. And the Lord says, Oh, I love it when it hits you that way. He delights in mercy. Paragraph D. The Lord is slow to anger. I have a passage in here in Revelation 20, verse 20 to 23. He tells the church at Thyatira. He goes, You tell them to quit their acts of immorality. I am giving them time to repent, but I am going to break in on them soon. But I've been giving them time to get out of their immorality. What a gracious thing. He gives, He's slow to anger. He gives us time. Paragraph E. The Lord has great kindness. When we see God's kindness, it gives us confidence to press through to repentance. When I know that God's on my team, so to speak, and He's cheering me on. Go, Mike. Yield to my spirit. Fill yourself with the word. I will be kind to you. I will help you. Beloved, our repentance is never met with rejection by God. God doesn't reject us when we genuinely repent. Roman numeral 8. The Lord relents from sending judgment. He relents. He changes the plan. Paragraph A. God is willing to relent or He's willing to cancel the decree of judgment. That's a very interesting thing. God decrees a judgment over a nation and there's times when the decree is made and God cancels it instead of sending it, issuing it over a nation. I'm reading the verse here in Zephaniah, chapter 2, verse 1 to 3. It says, Gather together, that's solemn assembly, gather together before the decree is issued. Before the divine decree over a nation is sent. When it's issued, it's sent. The decree has already been formed in the court of heaven but the court case is going on in heaven. The decree has already been formed but it hasn't been sent. It's not been issued and if you gather together and cry out before God pushes send, you can stop, you can cancel the decree. Is that an amazing thing? I give the analogy of this like an email. You've written an email and you say, well, before I send it I'm going to think on it for a while. You kind of put it in the draft box. It's made. It's determined. It's already thought through. You just want to sit on it and wait and see. And there's a time where you send it. Maybe it's a minute later. Maybe it's a year later. Maybe you never send it. God forms his decrees of judgment and if the people will gather before the decree is issued, before God pushes send, God will change the decree. He'll change the outcome. Isn't that fantastic? Paragraph B. There are two stages in God's decree. First, the decree is established in the heavenly court. Second, it's issued as God releases angels to go execute the judgment. There's many verses in the scripture where God releases the angels. I'm thinking of those, several of them, in the book of Ezekiel where he sends executing angels to go forth and they actually execute the decree. There's a number of places in the scripture. The book of Revelation has several of those examples. Paragraph D. There are three steps in our partnership with God. First, God initiates. Because some people go, now wait a second. How does this work? Is God in charge or is the prayer ministry in charge? I mean, who's really leading who? People get troubled by this. If our prayers can change God, does that mean change some of the events that God releases in history? Does that mean we have power over God? Now watch it. We're messing with His sovereignty. No, we're not. No, we're not. God's solidly sovereign and fully secured. He knows everything He's doing. He's real big and we're real little. But He really wants to work with us really bad. Three steps in our partnership. First, God initiates what He wants. He puts it in His word. Whatever God wants, He initiates. He puts it in His word. Secondly, we respond in obedience and prayer. Third, He answers our response by releasing more blessing or stopping a judgment. So first, God initiates. He puts it in His word. We respond and God answers our response. It's called partnership. Let's go to Roman numeral 9. I love this verse. Those of you who have been around for a few years, I quote this verse. It seems like in a message at least once a month for years. I love Zephaniah chapter 2, verse 3. I call it the mysterious perhaps of God. He releases pockets of mercy. Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth. Those who are obeying God. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. It may be. The new American standard, the translation I learned this verse in some years ago, says perhaps. Perhaps. I like that word perhaps. New King James says it may be. I go, I like that word perhaps. Perhaps you'll be hidden. You'll be protected when God's anger is released. Perhaps God will protect you. Perhaps, and I call that protection, a pocket of mercy. There'll be pockets of mercy all over the earth. When the end time judgments are breaking out, there'll be whole geographic areas, families, neighborhoods that are hidden. He puts his hand over them. He protects them when the wrath is going through the land. There's so many examples in the Bible about this. Paragraph C. The Lord desires to relent from judgment according to the response of his people. He really wants to relent, but he does it based on response. Roman numeral 10. Now he goes on, he says, gather the people. Blow the trumpet. Call a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Get the people there. Paragraph A. How do we respond? What does God want us to do when the worldwide crises are breaking? The Lord has made it so clear. The effective battle plan. It takes faith to actually do this. We have to believe that God's really behind it or we won't bother with it. And I don't think of just so much of the Bible crisis as lazy. They don't really believe it will matter if they gather. It's really an issue of faith, not just an issue of compromise. They don't really believe it will change anything if they gather or if they don't gather. So it really becomes an issue of faith. Paragraph B. We blow the trumpet in Zion. The elders assemble. We gather the people. Even the children are to be a part. Even the children are to gather. Why? Since no one will be exempt from the coming crisis in judgment, no one is exempt from crying out in mercy. I tell you, when judgment comes across the land, the 10-year-olds and the bride and the bridegroom get hit with the same judgment. You look at the tsunami in Southeast Asia. There was more 10-year-olds that got hit by it and died than there were 50- and 60-year-olds. There was just a massive number of young people. The Lord says, bring the young people and let them be involved. Maybe not at the same intensity, the same level, but let them be a part of this thing. Paragraph 11, I mean, Roman numeral 11. Oh, I love this part. This is in, I spent a couple chapters on this in this study guide that I did on the book of Joel. I just, I love this. Here's what it says. I'm just going to kind of tell you and then you can read it on your own. If you want to. He says, hear this, Joel chapter 1, verse 2 and 3. Talking about establishing a Joel 2 or a solemn assembly kind of values in the spiritual culture of our ministry and church and family. We want this in our spiritual culture. Every ministry has a spiritual culture. They have what most of the people think is good and normal and right. And every spiritual, every ministry has things they think are kind of off. And we want people to think it's right to believe in a great revival, the end time judgment, the coming of the Lord, and that prayer and fasting matters. We want them to think this is normal and right, not odd. Here's what he tells the elders. Hear this, you elders. Give ear, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your day? Or even the days of your father? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children. Let their children tell another generation. There's four generations being told. In paragraph A, the first exhortation is to give ear. Pay attention. He says, give ear. Pay attention to the book of Revelation. Give ear to what's about to happen. Listen. And what he's saying in paragraph B, hearing does not come automatic. Just because we're Christian, we have to be deliberate to develop this understanding. Love it. I have the chance to watch many young people here at IHOP, hundreds of them, that are doing this thing full time, studying and filling their mind with understanding of revival and what the Bible says about the coming revival and the coming judgments. And they're deliberately giving ear. They're going out of their way to fill their mind with this. It's fantastic. We have to give ear. It won't come automatically. The thing Jesus said more than any other exhortation in the whole Bible by his lips, the number one exhortation, he said, let him who has ears hear. In other words, deliberately go out of your way to hear this, to hear what he's saying. He said, he that has ears, let him hear more than any other exhortation. That's the one he gave most. In other words, take care. Be careful to pay attention. Paragraph C, Joel said, has anything like this ever happened in your day or your father's day? In other words, it's an unprecedented. But the fact that it's unprecedented, what's happening is so far beyond anything that's ever happened in our father's day because it's so unprecedented, so big, it's unfamiliar, it's difficult. We naturally disconnect from it. That's why we have to put effort to give ear to this. We have to deliberately cultivate understanding and faith. Paragraph D, Noah. I just have that in there. Noah's the example. I mean, Noah's such a great example. Can you imagine in Noah's day, talking about unprecedented, in Noah's day, the way that God watered the earth before Noah, from Adam to Noah, the water came up. It didn't come from the sky. It came up from the ground. The fountains below the earth were opened and then the water came and the earth was watered from beneath. So Noah goes out and says, okay, it's gonna rain from above. First it's gonna rain for 40 days. They go, rain? What's rain? The water's gonna come from above. And they go, Noah, you're crazy. You're silly. You don't know basic science. The water can't come from the sky. How could water stay up there? Water's heavy. Water's below. You obviously don't know your science or your math or you haven't done your research. You don't get it. He says, I don't know how water's coming from up above. I've never seen it because it's never rained before. It never happened. Beloved, something is going to happen. Jesus said, this will be like the days of Noah. Something is gonna happen that's never happened before. It's in the book of Revelation. It takes time. We gotta give ear because it's unprecedented. Roman numeral 12. He said, tell your children and tell them to tell their children. Paragraph B. God wants a holy environment of faith and revelation. It's four generations here. Tell children and their children and their children and their children. He wants a holy spiritual environment of faith and revelation in the church. Prayer and fasting and revival and end time judgment must be normal to everybody, not odd and unfamiliar. Right now, you say this in the church. Most of the church has grown up in a spiritual atmosphere when they were 10 and 20 and 30 and 40. And now that they're 50, they've never heard of the end times. They've never dawned on it. They don't know anything about Solomon. They've never thought about fasting and prayer. These are the normal things from Genesis to Revelation the Bible talks about. But I tell you what, we get the five and 10 year olds in an atmosphere when they're 20, 30, 40, 50, it will be so normal. When they're 20 and 30, they'll say, Dad, they don't pray and fast. They don't even think anything's happening. Isn't that weird? Now, it's weird if you do think something unusual is going to happen. But the days are coming. If we develop a spiritual culture and the children start young, they will think it's strange if the people of God don't believe in the great revival and the breaking in of God with fasting and prayer. We got to develop a spiritual culture. The pastor I have here, the Western Church today has a scoffing and passive spirit that considers it extreme to believe God's word about the end times. Peter warned the people, look at this in 2 Peter, he said, First of all, I want you to know this. The first thing I want you to know that a scoffing spirit is coming in the last days. Beloved, Peter, I mean of all the things Peter wanted us to know first, I would think this would be maybe number 10 on the list. He goes, Know this, that a scoffing spirit of unbelief will be your number one thing that will attack you. Because it will put faith out. It will extinguish your spirit. I mean revelation of your spirit. And as a preacher and a messenger of these things, I tell you, a scoffing spirit within the church is clearly the number one enemy that I run up against. Ah, it's too extreme to do that. Let's just, business as usual, let's just do what, it's never rained before anyway. Why are you getting so extreme? Amen.