In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for the church to wake up and be active in their faith. He urges believers to prioritize prayer and seek a personal relationship with Jesus. The preacher also expresses a burden for pastors and a desire to encourage and support them. He highlights the importance of revival and references the early revivals in the Bible, emphasizing the need for a vision and faith in God's power to bring about a revival.

Well, I'm glad to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. I trust that Jesus Christ is very special to you. He is to me. He's my life. In the New Testament it says, in Him we live and move and have our being. He's our life. Are you excited about Jesus? I tell you, He picked me up out of my sin and out of my life and He changed me. My life's never been the same since and I have no desire to go back where I was before I was saved. But it's taken me a while to learn to live by grace. It's taken me a while to get my wings. If you ever go out to the academy out in Colorado Springs, they get their wings and they graduate and they can fly. It's taken me a long time to learn to fly on Eagle's Wings. But God can lift you up on Eagle's Wings. My friend, no matter where you're at, what kind of problem you've got, God can take you through it. You see, God specializes in impossibilities. He specializes in those situations where you see there's no hope. There's no way out. Jesus Christ said, I am the way. He said, I am the truth. I am the life. If you don't have Jesus, you don't have life. The scripture says, he that has the Son has life. We're here to be an encouragement to you. We love the preachers. The pastor that I'm working with now, using his church as the base of my presence, being there, being under his ministry, helping him when I can, we have a burden for pastors. And whenever we get a chance, we're off in a preacher's meeting somewhere. We have a schedule that looks pretty tough for this spring. And I don't know what the summer's going to hold for it. A lot of traveling. But to get out there among the preachers, that's where we want to be. I believe America needs preachers to be fired up, filled with the Spirit, bold for Jesus, willing to pay it all, give it all, do it all, whatever it takes for revival in America. Let's don't give up. The New Agers haven't got us yet. God's got a program that's better than theirs. I believe God has on his agenda an awakening for America. My vision is for us to turn back to God. I've been reading in a book, Revival Sketches, put out by American Tract Society about revivals in the past, learning all I can. One of the things that I've learned is that many times, one of the main characteristics of an awakening, a major revival in an area, was that the situation would get just almost unbearably bad. Let me pick you up a little bit before we get into our desert survival series again and share a little bit more with you on the cross and the life of Moses and share just a little bit more about revivals. This book was printed in 1859 and did a study of revivals up to that period of time. I don't even know if you can find one. I don't remember where I got this one. I think I got it from one of the Bible colleges that was getting rid of old books. I've got several good old books that were being discarded because they were old, but they are good. Remember last week I shared a little bit with you about what is a revival? A genuine revival is the fruit or effect of a supernatural divine influence. My friend, we just don't drum up a revival. I'm not preaching that. The Spirit of God does the reviving. What we have learned is there are some principles of prayer and making restitution, dealing with sin in our life, being open with others, open with God. And when we begin to meet God with an open face, then God begins to respond with power and blessing. And to have a church that is in a revival atmosphere is an unusual thing in our land, whereas in times past and years past, it was nothing unusual to be in a revival atmosphere for years. We have got away from God so far, so far that we hardly know what the New Testament church is anymore. We go to church on Sunday, we put on our three-piece suit and put on our nice dress, and we go in there and we sit and we give our nod to God and we say, Hi Brother Jones, how are you doing? Sister Sue, it's sure nice to see you. Isn't God good? Wonderful day. Praise the Lord. Wasn't that a good message? Or wasn't that a bad message? Whatever your case is. And then you go on back home, take off your Sunday clothes and go do your thing. But I remember in the days where you just didn't go on home, where God continued to work for hours on that Sunday, where you were broken over your sin, or you were excited in helping others that were getting saved and getting right with God. Are you seeing things in your life like this? Is life exciting? Is Jesus exciting? Do you get up in the morning and say, Well, I wonder what the Lord's going to do today? Praise the Lord, I'm so excited. Lord, here I am. I'm dead to self. I'm alive to your Spirit. Fill me with your Spirit and let's go. I am your servant. You know what? My flesh doesn't like to be a servant. God's been dealing with me about this in the last few months. And if He's going to get into that area, He's a-tromping around on the area of pride, my pride. And it's been pretty rough. I haven't liked it. But I want it because I want to be like Jesus. And He's been showing me that I really don't want to be a servant. There's not much honor. Very humbling to be a servant. You tell the servant what to do. When to get up, where to go, what to do. You want somebody? No. We want to be the boss. And that's one of the problems in our churches today is we don't have servant hearts. We've got boss hearts. We want to boss the preacher. We want to boss somebody. And if we can't get our way, we huff and puff and we run. We're going to be like Moses. We're going to just go do something. We go throw a bomb into the meeting and blow it up. And then we run and leave and the church splits. And all kinds of things happen. All because Jesus Christ is not Lord of our own heart. We get bitter, mad, upset, jealous. We hold grudges. Boy, that's a heavy thing to hold is a grudge. Because whoever holds it gets hurt. You get burnt just like holding a hot coal. It just burns you. Get rid of it. What are you going to do when you stand before Jesus? Well, Lord, I've got this grudge against Brother Sloan's over there. I hope you really judge him. Lord Jesus, I'm afraid he's going to judge you for holding the grudge. We've got our rights. The early revivals, the early revivals dealt with the self-life. People were shown to be sinners. You know, in the book, the Day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted, this revival, this major awakening that shook Israel went on for years. Major, major. I don't think we've seen anything like it since. It went on for years as God worked. In the fourth chapter of Acts, we read that when Peter and John preached Jesus and the resurrection from the dead, many who heard the word believed, and the number of men was about 5,000. How would you like to have 5,000 in your town get saved in one day? You'd say, I don't believe it can happen. My friend, you won't see revival if you don't have that kind of a vision. Because that's what we're believing God to do. And we're getting ourselves ready. We're trying to get this church ready to handle it. We're expecting God to do those kind of things. And you say, you're out in left field. I may be out in left field, but it's only because I believe Jesus is out in left field. He was thought of strange. John the Baptist was strange, but he came on the scene preaching and there was a major awakening in the land. The scripture says they came to him. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And they came from all over the place. And he was preparing the way for Jesus. And I believe that God is raising up men and women today that are going to have the John the Baptist heart. And they're going to prepare the way for the Lord to come back. My prayer and my faith and my belief is that God will come back. The Lord Jesus Christ will come back and take the church out in the midst of a great awakening. And that, my friend, will shake the world and it will shake Israel too. Because after that, there's going to be 144,000 Jewish evangelists take off like wildfire and start preaching Jesus. They're going to turn back to their Savior. They're going to start getting saved. That's why I believe in giving to Jewish missions that are soul winning missions. That are getting the word out and seeing people saved, getting, reaching the Jews, tough mission field. But they're God's chosen people and he's going to give them their land. He's going to give them their kingdom. He's already given them their seed through Jesus Christ. He was their Messiah. Five thousand. The book of Acts chapter six in conjunction, connection with the solemn service of choosing and setting apart deacons. The scripture says the word of the Lord increased and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. We just are not believing God anymore. We say it can't happen. In chapter eight, the disciples were scattered by persecution throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria. They went everywhere preaching the word. And we're in such a day that the believers say, oh, I don't think I'll go to church. The weather looks a little too rough. But they went everywhere preaching the word. They left it all and preached the word. They left their families if they had to. They left their farms if they had to. And we today in the church, we're a bunch of skunks. We stink. We're rotten to the core. We're chicken. We're worse than that. We're dead chickens. And those of us in southwest Missouri knows, we know what dead chickens can smell like. Especially when you get 18 inches of snow on your roof and it caves in and kills a lot of them. It stinks. There's no aroma of Christ. If there's no aroma of Christ and there's aroma of self, then you need revival in your church. And so, okay, we're going to get Brother so-and-so to come in again this spring. And he's going to come in for his four days or his seven-day meeting or eight days, if you're really spiritual. And we're going to have a revival. And you get a couple or three people saved. If you really have one going, maybe you've got a big church and you get a dozen saved, that's something. But here we are up here in a little old no place in northwestern Nebraska, and we can see a dozen get saved every month. Sometimes we can almost see that many in a week. I've never been in a place where continuous revival has taken place. And those that are coming in or going on with Jesus, are they peel out of here. And that's the way the early church was. The real ones kept going and the fakes quit. Go find you a place that's comfortable. Go find you a preacher that won't step on your toes. We need a revival in America. Our country, our government only reflects the church. The problem isn't really up there on the hill at the Capitol. It's in our hearts, in our churches. We need to start right here. God, when He wants to start something to shake this world, He's going to start with His people. You've gone down through the book of Acts, and you'll see that God worked powerfully. That's what it was about. The history of the early church was a revival atmosphere. It was not mainly by isolated conversions that the churches were built up. Did you know that? But under the outpouring of the Spirit, turning many at once from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, the mighty awakenings in church history have been those things that sparked the church to life, and thousands would get saved. We believe that God wants to do this again. That's what we've seen here. Over a thousand prayed to receive Christ. I've never gone into a town like this. And I've been into a lot of towns. I've never been in a church like this, and I've been in a lot of churches. Outwardly, it doesn't look like much. But inwardly, there is something happening. God is working. This book that I'm reading on revival history says that the revival epoch which began on the day of Pentecost extended down through the second and into the third century, and though ecclesiastical history throws less light on the subject than we could wish, more than enough is found in the writings of the early fathers to show that the Christian religion rapidly spread throughout the Roman Empire and even beyond its boundaries, and in spite of all the rage of earth, and hell to crush it out. What we're seeing today is an evangelistic movement of Satan. His religions are popping up more and more. His movement is moving ahead. The church is asleep. My friend, it's time to ring the bell. Ring the fire bell. Ring the alarm. Wake up. Wake up. What do you do when you get awake? You go and pray. You won't do nothing until you pray. And if you don't pray, you won't do anything. If you're not praying, you won't see anything happen. Pray. Pliny the Younger, who was sometime governor of Bithynia, under the bloody emperor Trajan, he earnestly dissuaded him from persisting in his persecuting edicts against the Christians in that providence, not only by assuring him that they were a harmless people, chargeable with no crime, meeting together to sing hymns and worship Christ as God, but that they were very numerous all over the providence and that the more they were punished, the more they increased. Tertullian, who lived a century later and died in 216, writing to the Roman government in vindication of the new religion, as it was called, says, though we are strangers of no long standing, yet we have filled all places of your dominions, cities and islands, corporations, councils, armies, tribes, the senate, the palace, the courts. If the Christians had a mind to avenge themselves, their numbers are abundant, for they have a party, not in this or that providence, but in all quarters of the world. Nay, if they were to combine and forsake the Roman empire, how vast would be the loss. The world would be amazed at the solitude which would ensue. That's history for you. It was a big revival. It lasted a long time and I believe God wants to do it again. He wants to start it in your heart. He wants to start it in your church. Do you want it? Are you desperate enough to see it? We're seeing little old flickers here and there. Oh, but we're praying for a mighty movement of God across our land. Praying that he will start. Somewhere it's going to start and spread across the country. Will it be in your church? We're praying that it'll start right here. You better get busy because we want to beat you to it. We want to see God start something here that's going to reach the land. Now in the next few minutes, the time we have left, I want to share with you a little bit more about Moses. What revival will do in your life. It'll take you to the cross. When you go to the cross, you're going to be crucified. We left off last week with Moses' encounter with really what was considered a tragedy. He went out and tried to help his people. He killed an Egyptian and they turned on him. He had a burden for them. He had all this training and he knew that God wanted to use him to set Egypt free. But all of a sudden he found himself in a jam. And he learned that he made a mistake. Now you and I know a little bit about mistakes. I probably know more than you do. Maybe you know more than I do. But we know that we don't like them. I don't like to make a mistake. Sometimes I'm really slow in doing something when I'm building something. Doing a carpenter project or something. I don't like to make mistakes. But I go ahead and make them anyway, I guess. But anyway, he committed sin. He killed an Egyptian. And not only was there sin in that area, but I believe there was sin in the area of taking charge of this situation before God's time. How do you know that? Because the scripture says in Exodus chapter 2, that Moses feared in verse 14. And Moses feared and said, surely this thing is not. Now he wasn't afraid of the king. Because the book of Hebrews tells us that he was not afraid of the king. But he was afraid because he realized he had made a tragic mistake. A big mistake. And that was this. That he assumed that Israel understood that he was to be their deliverer. And that he assumed that they were behind him. And the fact of the matter was, that they were not behind him. And that they didn't know that he was their leader. And if you can't ask God's blessing on it, then don't do it. I don't think God's blessing was on it. God took it and used it to make Moses into a man though. You know what we want to do when things get tough? We want to run. And that's what Moses did. He headed out in the desert. That was the best place he could go. That's where God wanted him. Come on Moses, come on out here. Spend some time with me now. You spent 40 years in the ways of Egypt. That's not what I want you to learn though. I don't want you to use that. Primarily I want you to know me. And the scripture says that Moses knew the ways of God. Everybody else saw his acts, the psalmist says, but Moses knew his ways. And so he ran. What are you running from? You're running from your family situation. You're trying to run from your job, your church. Hop from church to church to church. Pastors want to run and get away to another church. Oh, if I get out of here, this place is a mess. Deacons want to resign and get out of that mess. Instead of get before God and pray and seek his face and see him to come in and clean the mess up, clean us up, because we're usually the mess, we're the problem. We run. And so Moses fled. Let me share three things with you about this. Remember last week I shared with you about his training. The seven major areas that he was trained in. And God used all those areas. Administration, leadership. But his training didn't prepare him to deliver Israel. No. What prepared him for that was his time in the desert with God. Did you know that the thing that you're probably fighting against the most is the thing that God is doing himself? And you're not really kicking against your boss. You're not really kicking against your wife or your husband or your teenagers or whatever your problem is. You're really kicking against God. He's trying to get you to the point to where he can have you for himself, where your will would be broken. You know, the horse that's broke is good for service. But the horse that is never broke, and we're out here in horse country. My wife was raised on a ranch and there's a lot of cattle and there's thousands of acres. But you're not going to just go out there and hop on a horse and go out and go get some cows in. If that horse has not been broken, you're going to have a little problem. He's going to want to do what he wants to do. And he's not going to do what you want to do if he's not been broken and trained. He's no good. All he does, he's just a hay burner. You just look at him. If he's never been broke, all he does is eat for himself. You're not going to get any riding out of him. You're not going to get any work. And our churches are full of people that are just like that. We're unbroken horses. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. That preacher's not going to tell me what to do. That deacon's not going to tell me what to do. Old Sister Sue's not going to tell me what to do. I've got my rights. As long as you've got your rights, you're an unbroken person. And by the way, maybe you've never received Christ as your Savior. And your whole life is nothing but you getting your way. And what have you got? Look at your life. Look inside. Well, you say, I've got these cars. I've got this big house. I've got this big payroll. Yeah, you've got all that. Now, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? The Scripture says, what good is it going to do you? You don't have Jesus. You don't have anything. And if Jesus doesn't have your will, you're no good to him. Matter of fact, you're a rebel. Well, Moses was a rebel as far as the flesh. He wanted to do it his way. Now, God had to get him out in that desert and teach him that his training was not what he needed to deliver Israel. What he needed was special training with God. And then secondly, he didn't understand. Moses didn't understand that before he could lead Israel, he had to learn to follow God. No one that's going to be a leader is going to be a rebel. Will ever become a leader without first learning how to follow themselves. You look at our military men that are standing before you in the news media and sharing with you, and they've got all these little stars all over their shoulders. They didn't get there overnight. You look at the gray hair. You look at the wisdom. You look at the carefulness, how they answer and try to get by some of the tricky questions that the news media throw at them. They got there because they first learned to follow. And God's not going to lift you up, preacher, or he's not going to lift you up, my friend, to a position of leadership where you can lead many until you first learn to follow. So you learn to know God in your experience, your desert experience, right where you're at, whatever it is, you learn to know Jesus and love him and let him have his way with thee. Then you'll see that God will be able to use you. So he didn't understand that before he could lead Israel, he had to learn to follow God. Jesus said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. One of the reasons that you're not reaching others for Jesus Christ, you're not talking about Jesus Christ, it's because you're not following Jesus. You're still trying to have it your way. And then thirdly, Moses knew what God wanted. That was not the problem. And many of us, we know what God wants. We know what God wants of our church. We know what God wants in our life. But the problem is, Moses didn't know God's timing. He did not know when and how. And he did not wait on God to do it. You know, one of the reasons that we don't pray in our churches is because we do not have the time to wait on God. And God has said, pray. The early church, Jesus Christ commanded them, he said, you wait until you get the power and then you go. They would have never experienced the revival that went on for hundreds of years after Pentecost if they had not first waited for the Holy Spirit to come. And you look at your prayer meeting. I can come in and look at your prayer meeting, anybody can, and I'll tell you what kind of state your church is in. If you're in a state of continuous revival, you're going to have a hot prayer meeting. And you're going to have people there on their face before God. And you're going to be praying for spiritual needs and not primarily Sister Sue's sore toe. 95 to 98 percent of our prayer requests are for spiritual conditions. Three to five percent maybe for physical. And we've got physical hurts just like anybody else. But it shows your attitude. Moses knew what God wanted, do you? But he did not know when and how. God's timing is as important as God's training. Will you let him have his way with you? Quit kicking against the pricks as Paul did. And start seeing Jesus in every situation you're in. You know, when Christ came, they didn't understand God's program. They didn't understand God's timing. They didn't understand God's ways. God's ways was the way of the cross. God's way with you will be the way of the cross. Crosses are for dying on. When it comes up, when God presents a cross to you, die on it. Die to self. Die to your self will. Die to your plans, your program. I had to die this morning. My wife needed me. My wife needed me to sit down and spend an hour with her. And I had my plans to come and get this program going today. I wanted to get some programs taped. And I just had to take some time with her. She had to share her heart with me. And I had to confess some things to her that I had to confess I was wrong. She needed me many times. Our plans are not God's plans. And I saw right then, God, this is your plan for me to take this time with my wife. How's your communication with your wife, by the way? Husband? Pastor? Do you know where they're at? They're a sensitive, delicate creature. Beautiful in the sight of God. Tender, lovely. A special thing to you, a gift. Take time with her. Take time with her. She needs you. But they didn't understand God's timing, God's ways. And as a result, they got into trouble. Israel didn't see their Savior. Oh, my friend, don't miss Jesus. You miss Jesus, you're going to live a burdened life. If you don't receive Him as your Savior, you're going to die and go to hell. Ask Jesus to save you. Well, our time's gone. Until next time, I trust that God will richly bless you and that He'll be your blessing.