Mike Bickle emphasizes the call for the church to embody justice, mercy, and humility as outlined in Micah 6:8. He stresses that true good works should stem from the understanding of being special to God, leading to a zealous commitment to serve others intentionally. Bickle warns against a self-promoting spirit in doing good works, urging believers to focus on the transformative power of justice and mercy in their communities. He highlights the importance of combining prayer with action, as true justice is rooted in a relationship with God. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a collective commitment to justice that reflects God's heart and brings glory to Him.

Father, we ask you for your blessing upon this time, even now. We ask you, Holy Spirit, to come and touch hearts and minds. We ask you for the release of your presence in this room. We acknowledge your presence, even now. We ask you to move, to stir, to impart. In Jesus' name, amen. Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, is a well-known passage that is, gives one of the, in my opinion, one of the best summaries of the kingdom lifestyle and the Word of God. Micah, chapter 6, verse 8. It says, He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Now, again, this is one of the best summaries of the kingdom lifestyle in the whole Bible. I'd put that right next to the ultimate one, which is when Jesus said the great commandment is to love God and to love people. That, to me, would be the ultimate, and this would be right below it in second place. Now, the Holy Spirit is calling the church in this hour to be workers of justice and to be lovers of mercy and to do it with a spirit of humility, not a spirit of triumphalism, not with a spirit of, hey, aren't we really something? Look what we're doing, drawing attention to ourself. Now, these are the issues that the Holy Spirit is prepared to bless, a people that would commit themselves to these values, to do justly, to do it with a passion for mercy, and to do it with a humble spirit. Now, when we stand before the Lord at the judgment seat on the last day, these are the issues He's going to talk to us about. He's saying, this is what I'm interested in. I wasn't interested so much in how big your ministry was or how much money you made or how famous you were. What I'm interested in mostly is did you do justly? Were you workers of justice? Did you truly love mercy? And, of course, that's loving mercy on His terms because there's a humanistic mercy that is in opposition to Jesus' mercy. We'll look at that in a few moments. And did you walk in humility? Paragraph 2, Titus 2, verse 14. Paul the apostle speaks. He's really touching the same theme, using different language. He talked about Jesus redeeming us so that He could purify for Himself His own special people, that He would make the people special to His heart. And then out of the revelation of how special they are to Him, they would become zealous for good works. Now, these would be good works that would exalt Jesus because they're not just works to be helpful, just in and of itself, although that's good to be helpful. But these were works that flowed out of the revelation that we are special to God. I'm talking about the whole body of Christ, the billion people of the earth. Now, when that revelation touches us and how dear we are to God, it awakens in us a zeal. So it's a zeal to bring this goodness to other people that we have freely received of His passion. The infinitely great God says, you are dear and special to my heart. Of course, we look at our sinfulness and our brokenness and our failure and we go, really? We are that dear to you? We are that special to you? You are that good? You are that kind? And it makes us, it awakens in us a zeal that others could participate in this great goodness because the God that wants us to love Him and to worship Him, He wants the others to come in as well. He wants the others to be a part of that great worship team called the great end-time harvest that would be worshipers of God. It makes us zealous for good works. When we know we're special, good works are not a burden, but we have a passion for them because we see them as the way of communicating that goodness to others and bringing them into the great goodness that's in God's heart. Now, being zealous for good works is more than just casually doing them, you know, a little bit here and a little bit there. It's more than being helpful to a neighbor. You know, every now and then when the neighbor needs a little help, you say, yeah, I'll jump in there and help. And when you leave, you kind of, you know, wave and say, God bless, and say, hey, I kind of testified a little bit today. And you do. I mean, that's actually valid. That's real. But being zealous for good works means being intentional about them. It means being committed to them. It's not the occasional, the casual, helpful hand. But it's talking about taking hold of the vision to have our life deeply committed to a plan with other people to bring the good works of God to others. It's costly. It's inconvenient. I find that whenever, it's easy to sign up for it, but it's hard to do it in a consistent way because often you don't feel like, you're not in the mood, you're running late, you feel a little tired, you got pressures on you, yet we still do these good works. So to be zealous for good works is something very specific. Again, it means that the vision of the power of what good works produces in others, it's got a hold of our heart. Now, Paul said that when we know we're special to God, it awakens this zeal for good works in us. Paragraph D. Now, Peter comes and talks about the same theme, and he starts off with talking, calling the saints, those that are special to God. He said in 1 Peter 2, 9, you are His own special people, and the thing that God wants you to do, He's going to give two things. Number one, you will proclaim His praise or His praiseworthiness. You're going to tell the nations, starting with your neighbors, you're going to tell people that He's worthy of praise, that He's praiseworthy. You're going to proclaim His greatness is what that's really saying. Verse 12, and then as you do that, as you're proclaiming how the greatness of our infinitely great God, you're going to run into opposition. And in verse 12, the opposition will be the unbelievers who hear you talk about God. They'll roll their eyes, and then they'll speak against you, and they'll speak against you as an evildoer, meaning they won't buy your testimony. God is great. He's worthy of praise. He saved me. He changed my life. They'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You're a fraud. You're a fake. You're a hypocrite. They will just say that your message is wrong. They'll call you an evildoer. Look at it, verse 12, that while you're giving this testimony, they speak against you. I mean, they take a stand. They put energy in it, and they defame your character, and they don't buy your message. So you know God, and your life has changed. You used to be immoral. Now you're not. We are, you're not. Okay, you're good, we're bad. We get it. You're a fake. You're a fraud. We don't believe anything you're about. Now, just so you don't feel picked on, this has been happening to the saints for 2,000 years all around the world. Because when we proclaim the goodness and the praiseworthiness and the glory of God and how He's changed us, it puts off other people who aren't changed because it feels like we're putting them down. So you know God, and you're good. We don't know God, we're bad. You're going to heaven. We're going to hell. You're the good team. We're the bad team. We don't buy any of it. And I understand it just from a human point of view. Well, verse 12, they will speak against you as an evildoer. They may, though, by your good works, which they observe, end up glorifying God, though. Verse 15, this is the will of God, that by doing these good works of justice, you will put to silence these foolish men. So the Lord, through Peter, is calling us to two things. Number one, we proclaim His praise. We give the message. But we understand that in the giving of the message, the message is not automatically received. A few people receive it, but most don't. Matter of fact, they resist. And some of them resist with lies about you. Peter says, don't worry, because there's a backup plan to the proclamation that's called doing good works. And when you do these good works, it will silence the opposers over time. Now let's look at each one of these phrases. Number one, proclaiming the praises of Him. That's our first mandate, to speak of the praiseworthiness, the beauty of Jesus. We are called to make His glory known, to talk about the glory of the infinitely great God. This is our passion, to make Him known. Now what's amazing is that God entrusts His reputation to His people. Now, Lord, You remember we're weak and broken people. We're frail. We're flawed. And You are entrusting Your reputation to us. And He doesn't do it entirely, but in part. He says, yes. If you proclaim the truth about me, and if you back it up with good works, with a lifestyle of loving people, in a way that those in the community could actually observe with their eyes, not just hear the story, but actually observe it with their eyes. If you'll stay steady, many will glorify God and they will change their position of animosity and they will repent and they'll come into the kingdom. Now it's amazing that God would entrust His reputation in part to His people. When we obey and we do this, it's more than just obeying in the sense of abstaining from moral scandals. Some imagine, well, you know, I don't give in to the drunkenness. I don't give in to immorality thing. I don't slander people. I did it. And Peter would say, well, no, it's more than just avoiding bad stuff. You actually have to go the next step and do the positive. You have to be involved in your community on a regular basis in good works. You have to do justly and you have to love mercy. Paragraph two. Now, the unbelievers over time will observe the good works. They won't immediately. Well, they might see them, but they will assume it's some scheme to win them over. And they'll say, yeah, yeah, we've heard about this. So, okay, you want to do something good for us? We'll see. When the pressure's on, the obstacles rise up, will you stay with it? Probably not. Because they assume it's a scheme to promote how good we are to them. And they don't buy it at all at first. But if you stay with it, it changes the way they think. Because believers, we are to be known by what we do, not by what we don't do. We're not to be known simply because we avoid pornography, immorality, and drunkenness. Nobody's going to listen to us because we avoid those things. It's important that we avoid them. But that isn't why our neighbors go, wow, I want to obey God now because you're not living in immorality and drunkenness. That's great. I must get saved. That's not how they do the logic. They go, so? You're probably doing it in secret anyway. Why don't even believe you? Now, what happens is that unbelievers are accusing God. They're accusing God of being indifferent. They're accusing God of being distant, of not caring about the hurting needs in the world, the hurting people. They go, God is no more interested and no more concerned. And the Lord says to us, I've entrusted part of my reputation to you. Now, by your good works, they will change the way they view me. Not just by your moral behavior in your inward life. You actually have to do things outwardly and they will change the way they view me. They will glorify me instead of accuse me. Paragraph three. Now, the reason they glorify God because good works, when they're observed over time, if we stay with them, that's the key. It's not for three months. It's for three years. It's for 10 years. It's for 20 years. And it's good works with the right spirit, with a love of mercy and with a spirit of humility, sticking with it. That's what it takes because when they see this, when they see this, what they conclude is that God's transforming power is real because all of us, by nature, are selfish. Everybody is. Just look at that little two-year-old. Nobody taught that little guy to say, give me everything. He was born with the urge. Give it all to me. It's mine. Give it now or else. We're all born with an instinctive drive for selfishness. Now, when we transcend or when we overcome that urge for selfishness to actually sacrificially love other people and to do it consistently, not for a weekend, not for three months, but consistently, the unbeliever says, something is happening. I mean, they can stick with it for a while. How can they keep doing this? It's costing them time. It's costing them money. And we're accusing them the whole time they're doing it. But they won't stop. We go home when we're done with our work and we just have our own. We do as much comfort and pleasure as we can get. They get off work and then they go serve other people. What is this? Well, the answer is it's people that have a connectedness to God. They know they're His special people. And they're so moved by that and they're so moved by God's desire to bring others into this reality that the desire to bring it to others is actually greater than their own natural drive and instinct for selfishness and comfort and pleasure. And when people do that, time after time after time over years in the face of adversity, the unbelievers change their position. Not all of them, but many of them. Number four. Peter said they'll speak against you as evildoers. They are naturally suspicious. They are naturally critical and prejudiced against people that say they know God and their life is changed. Because it implies they don't know God and their life isn't changed and their life needs to be changed so they can be more like you. And that message already is offensive to many people. They accuse the church of being no different than they are. And when the church tries to act different, they don't buy it. Peter said that, in verse 15, he said, it's God's plan to put to silence foolish men by sticking with the good works. They will change their view about God. They will say God is committed to the world. He isn't distant and indifferent. He's actually involved in lives moving through people. Beloved, I assure you this. Works of justice will triumph over the arguments and the accusations of the enemy over time. The works of justice will ultimately silence the critics. Again, not in a month, not in a year. Because you could be doing that as just a PR strategy. Top of page two. John the Baptist. The first forerunner. Now John the Baptist is an inspiration to us because he was proclaiming the coming of Jesus before he came. And the Lord's raising up people now across the earth that are proclaiming the second coming of Jesus. And so we look at John and we say, John, we are inspired by your dedication and we want to be inspired and instructed by your message. What did you tell the people? There's only one place where John's message is laid out in the New Testament. Here in Luke chapter three. The other place we get John's message is in Isaiah 40, where the prophet Isaiah was describing the message of the forerunners. But here in Luke three, we see what it is that John told the people that were responding to him. And in a sentence, he told the people, the Messiah's coming, and if you want to prepare for his coming, live lives of justice and mercy. That's what he said in essence. There's three groups in Luke chapter three that asked John, what are we supposed to do? And to each of the three groups, he told them a different application of the same principle. In essence, he said if you're going to prepare for the coming of the Lord, you need to, in essence, do justly, love mercy, and walk in humility. He took the message of Micah chapter six, the verse we started with, verse eight, and he broke it down and he applied it. In verse 10, the general group, the multitude, said what do we do? John said if you have two tunics, two coats, give one. If you have extra food, give it. They're going, no, we want some really heavy duty insight. He goes, let me tell you again, if you have two coats, give one away. Well, let's be practical, John. That's how you prepare that lifestyle because when you have two coats and give one away, there's a whole lot of things that happen in your heart in the process of hearing the message and giving the coat away. I mean, notice. All of us in this room probably have five coats or 10 coats, and probably none of us have given one away. Maybe one of you have. Or maybe when it got old. So there's a huge gap between hearing the message and the heart process and actually doing it. Lots of reasoning, lots of checks, lots of thought process goes, and of course John knew that. Now the tax collectors said, what do we do? He said, verse 13, don't collect more money than you're supposed to. Now the tax collectors, they knew the system. They knew how much was owed. It was a complicated system. The common man, they didn't know if they were paying 5%, 10%, 12%. They didn't really know how it worked. They just know that if the tax collector said they were wrong, they got in trouble. So the tax collectors really had nobody who knew all the details besides them. John said, tax collectors, that's a good job. You don't have to be corrupt. A lot of them were. He said, here's the deal. Just because the others don't know all the intricate details, don't make decisions in a way that extracts money from people beyond that which is right. Not just in tax collecting, in every area. Again, that takes, hear the message, that's one thing, but to actually translate that in our lives. When you sell something, sell it for the fair price. Don't, because the guy is in a difficult position, take advantage of it. Do what's just, not what's expedient, and not what you can get away with. In our culture, the value is if we can cheat people out of a little bit of money by some wheeling and dealing, that's something that's called skill. John said, don't do that. Give them the right deal. Not even the deal they're willing to take, the right one. These tax collectors are, oh man, that's pressure. I mean, we've got to really think this thing through a thousand times. That one decision, I mean that one commitment to live that way, they would have a thousand heart processes to walk this out throughout, over the years. He tells the soldiers, now the soldiers were like the police force in our society. They were responsible for the law and order. He said, don't use your authority to intimidate, to do your own thing. Only use your authority to bring order and goodness. Don't accuse falsely. Of course, they did that for bribes. Don't use your authority, whether it's the police force, whether it's in the business, whether it's in ministry. Don't use your authority in a way that intimidates so you can get your own agenda done, or that gains a little money on the side, but you have to kind of change the story a little bit. It's called falsely accusing. So John had a pretty straightforward message, and of course it was about justice and mercy. Paragraph E, let's look at what Jesus said. Now one of our favorite verses, Luke 18, or one of our primary foundational verses for IHOP, is that God will release justice in response to night and day prayer. Jesus said it. Now it's interesting that Jesus is adding to what Micah the prophet said, the verse we started with. Micah said, do justly, love mercy. Jesus came along and said, okay, let's look at do justly. Cry out for justice night and day. That's part of doing justice. Jesus brought a whole new insight to the command to do justly. He wasn't undermining the need to do works of justice. He was adding to it a foundation of prayer so that the works of justice would have their ultimate impact. Now this was a new idea that the works of justice would come forth from a lifestyle of prayer, the cry for justice. Now when we cry for justice in intercession, there is, we're in position for the power of God to be released on the works of justice. See there's humanitarian movements and even some movements in the church that they are happy to do works of justice and that's enough. But what Jesus has promised us is there could be the power of God while we're doing the works of justice. I mean here we are ministering to the sick, meeting their needs, their economic needs and practical medical needs. What if you could lay hands on them and the sick are healed? That's even better than getting medical care for them. So Jesus said if you add the element of night and day prayer, your works of justice will have a power dimension in them in time. And of course, the power of God moves even now. But I'm saying that there will be increasing power. So you're talking to the man that's oppressed and down and out and you're giving an ear and compassionately listening to his story so he doesn't feel alone. What if you had the power to cast the demon that's oppressing the guy out of him? And you're not just standing with him in tenderness and in compassion which is excellent but you're actually getting rid of the demon. Jesus said cry out for justice, for a power dimension to be released. So that's what we do with intercession but then there's another issue because when we cry out to God there's not only intercession, God break in and power, there's the worship, I love you, I love you, I love you part. And when we have a prayer life, a worship part of our life, then our heart gets connected to the Lord so that we're not burnt out in the ministry of the works of justice. One of the big downsides of people really getting zealous for good works is they burn out. Because when they do the good works, the people they do with them too aren't grateful more times than not. And the people they're even doing them with their strife and debates and setbacks and like oh I don't even want to do it but if we're connected to Jesus we can actually sustain the works of justice from the heart level and if we're crying out intercession there's a power dimension that the Lord adds to the works of justice. So Jesus had it right. Jesus had it right when He said cry out for justice. That's the foundation to doing works of justice. Now a lot in the church don't look at that part and of course the people in the world don't. But we want to take this thing at face value. We want to do justly the prayer end of justice which is critical and the good works end of justice which must go together with the prayer. Now we are not to substitute one for the other. We're not to ignore our prayer life related to justice in order to do the works and we're not to do the ignore the works because of our prayer life. We can't substitute one for the other. They're both vital dimensions because we want a power dimension in our justice works. We want healings to break forth in a greater level because there's healings breaking forth now. We don't have to wait for the healings. They're operating now. But there's a greater release. There's a greater breakthrough for the people that cry out. There's a new measure. It's not an issue of healing now or healing then. The measure increases over time. But it's not just that. The heart connect with the spirit is critical to sustaining a life of justice, of good works. A lot of people can do it for three years or five years but they can't do it for three decades because they burn out. Because they're doing it disconnected to Jesus. Though they love Him, they're too busy to connect to Him. So Jesus, as always, totally right. He's going, trust me. Do the cry out for justice part. Don't think you're bigger than that but don't limit it to only crying out. Do the works. The two parts of doing justly, crying out for it and then doing the good works. Paragraph I. Now I'm just kind of signaling a little bit ahead of time that we're coming up next month to our 10-year anniversary on September 19th. We're going to have a four-day thing, celebration. But on the night of the actual 10th anniversary, I'm going to share a vision. Our leadership team has been working on it for some months and others just for some weeks. And here's what we want to do. Now we've been, as a ministry, I need to, I'll tell you what we're going to do first. The Lord has given us a lot of understanding of what He's willing to do with us in the realm of works for justice. We're going to increase our justice ministry and our outreach ministry in a very dramatic and significant way. I mean like tenfold. And here's our commitment that we're going to make together. I'm just kind of getting you ready for it. So you can think on it for a month. Pray about it. But together on that night, we're going to cast the vision of a lot of areas of justice we're going to be involved in in the city and the nations and human trafficking and abortion, stopping the abortion thing and adoptions and children and orphans and widows and the poor and a lot of evangelism, just a whole lot of things. And our commitment is this. We want to combine the 24-hour cry for justice with a 24-hour works of justice until the Lord returns. That's going to be our commitment. Lord, by your grace, we want to commit to continue the 24-hour cry, but we want to combine 24-hour works of justice, not for a year, not for a decade, but until you return by the grace of God. Now, having said that, that's exciting to say that's a really challenging lifestyle for a people. We got lots of things that we're going to share, and it's going to really cut into, the people that commit to this, it's going to cut into their play time. A lot of folks have more play time than they need because we're not going to take it out of our prayer time. We're going to take it out of our play time, not our prayer time. The extra works. Now, having said this, this increase is going to happen, for the whole 10 years of IHOP, I'm saying this in honor because some of the folks are even in the room now, and I want them to feel honored in reality, but we've been doing works of justice the whole 10 years. There's been evangelism and healings and visiting the poor and the needy. I mean, there's been hundreds because we have thousands in our midst, but there's been some hundreds that have been steady for years and years. In the last five years, there's been evangelism going out near daily and healing rooms and prophecy teams and feeding the poor two or three times a week. There's been going on. So to those couple hundred, I want to say thank you, meaning I don't want to say IHOP is now going forward and they go, what we did, does it matter in the history of IHOP? No, it really does. We're just going to, by the grace of God, put a zero and make it tenfold amount and get the entire community involved in this together. And it will be exciting, but it will be challenging because the Lord is saying, I want you to do justly, 24-hour cry for justice. I want you to combine it with 24-hour works of justice as a people, and I will be with you. Let's turn to Isaiah 58. Now, for those of you, this is a new chapter, I'll say this. Isaiah 58 is the premier chapter in the whole Bible on the subject of justice with prayer and fasting. If you're a prayer and fasting justice guy, which I hope every one of you in this room are, Isaiah 58 is absolutely crucial for you to understand it. It's the main chapter in the Bible about the prayer movement, how fasting and prayer relates to justice. So paragraph A, Isaiah 58, gives us practical ways to do works of justice with mercy. But what Isaiah does is he points out the errors that the nation of Israel had at a time when they were serious about or they were putting a lot of time and energy into seeking God. Paragraph B, Isaiah 58, verse 3. Now, they're troubled because they're praying and fasting, but they don't think God hears their prayers. So they, starts off, verse 1, Isaiah starts off a little bit negative. God says, Isaiah, tell my people their sin, their transgression. Sin, transgression, it's the same thing. Now, these are people Isaiah lived with, so this is a problem. This is not just he sent an email to the White House type deal. He lived with these guys. Isaiah, I heard from God. Good, what'd he say? Well, well, you're sinning. Verse 2, here's what God said. They seek me daily. That's prayer meetings. They delight to know my ways. They Bible study. They're searching the ways of God in the Scripture. And they take delight in approaching God. They love the presence of God. They delight to search out His ways in the Bible. They delight to approach Him. Now, verse 2 is really quite good. But they stopped short, and they didn't do it with the right attitude. Now, if you read verse 2 and left it there, that's a good lifestyle in terms of a foundational relationship with God. To seek Him daily, delight in studying the Bible, and delight in the presence of God, like, sounds good to me. But Isaiah's gonna point out in a few moments where their attitude was wrong, and they didn't follow through with works of justice in their seeking of God. Verse 3. The nation of Israel says, Why have we fasted? They're asking God. But you don't see us. Why are we afflicting our souls? That's another word for fasting. That's another description I mean for fasting. And you don't notice. Here we are, pouring ourselves out, and you're looking the other way. Paragraph C, verse 3 and 4. Isaiah 58, verse 3 and 4. Now God answers. He says, Well, I'll tell you, in the day of your fast, what's really on your mind is you exploit the laborers. Now, He's talking to the business leaders, the leaders of Israel that had businesses, but they were going to the prayer meetings. They were the business guys. He goes, You're fasting and praying, that God would put more favor on you. They go, Yeah. Isn't that what the Bible says? Yeah, it is. But, look what you're doing with the favor God's given you. You're already exploiting the people who work under you. Now God says, Do you want me to give you more blessing, more resource? You will just exploit more people. They go, No. No, we won't. Verse 4, the Lord says, Here's what you do. You fast for strife, for debate, and to strike people. He goes, You're wanting to get the favor of God. You're wanting to get an increase of your money and your influence. And you can do this in the ministry position just as well as you can in the business world. People fast and pray. Why? They want increase. That's right. They want more influence. They want more resource. They want more power. And the Lord says, That's fine. Fasting is related to that. But He goes, What you're really after is just to get the upper hand over people. You want a big ministry so you can kind of enjoy the grandeur of your influence. He goes, What I would rather you do is fast and pray for a bigger ministry so you would have more influence to mobilize more people in order to do the works of justice. They go, I will. He says, Yeah, but you're not doing the works of justice now. Yeah, but I will when you give me a famous ministry. The Lord says, No. The guy says, Yeah, I don't have the big business, but bless me. I'm fasting and praying. The Lord says, Yeah, but the business you have, you're not blessing the people under you. You're not using it for the right in the way that I want you to. You're milking them for everything you can get out of them. And, of course, what they were thinking that when the Lord visits and their ministry gets big or their business gets big, whichever way you want to look at it. Of course, we understand that the marketplace is ministry in the kingdom context. What they imagined is when the Lord finally blessed them, they would do differently than they're doing now. They're not involved with the poor now, but they want a big ministry so they can help the poor later, but they're doing nothing for the poor now. The Lord says, No. No, you're really fasting to get the upper hand to kind of enjoy the grandeur of new influence and power, and you'll do the same thing with power that you're doing without power. You're just thinking about yourself. Now, of course, this is really focused on where the church is at as well, even the prayer movement. A lot of folks are in the prayer movement. There's nothing wrong with it. They just want more power, which is good, but more power to do what? Just to get a crowd so people know I have power. I mean, you know, it's more than that. I want people to glorify God. The Lord says, Well, then glorify God now. Don't wait for power to do it. Do it now. Do what you do without the increase. Do the same things you're going to do when you get the increase in terms of your values I'm talking about. Top of page three. Now he says, Here's the kind of fast I'm interested in you doing. One has to do with the systemic injustice in society. Paragraph one under chapter, I mean, under paragraph E, the systemic injustice in society, or you might refer to it as institutional wickedness, meaning it's the wickedness that's the injustice that's in the systems that entrap people. So what the Lord said in Isaiah 58 verse six, he goes, Now here's the fast that I'm interested in. Here's the one I chose. Here's the fast that excites me. The fasting and prayer paradigm or here's the fasting and prayer approach that excites me. I want you to loosen the bonds of wickedness. I want you to undo the heavy burdens. Let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. Now the bonds of wickedness, he's not talking about the wickedness being, the guy's a drug addict and his addiction is the wickedness. That's not what he's talking about here. The bonds of wickedness are the systemic processes of injustice in a society. Now let's think for just a moment of our inner cities of our nation. Now there's situations all over the earth where they have a different dynamic in it, but let's look at that for a moment. The bonds of wickedness, the educational opportunities, the economic opportunities, the mindsets, there are so many layers of complicated things that have operated for decades that create a situation for bondage and wickedness for people. Now those people can still choose God, but even if they choose God, their hardship is immense because of the social barriers, because of the mindsets, the limitations, and that's what the Lord is talking about in verse 6. He goes, I want you to help relieve some of the oppressed, the fruit of some of the oppressive laws, the social barriers. I want you to help in the economic, in the educational opportunities so their life can be better. I want you to lift the burden from them. Now you say, we can't change all the laws and everything for the whole world. It's too big. But the Lord says, you can do a little bit. It's not our responsibility to know how much we'll get done. Our responsibility is to do with all of our heart. We can't change everything, but we can change a few. So we're going to take a number of areas. Of course, again, honoring those that have been doing it. We're going to increase it, and we're going to start giving ourselves in a far more focused way to these areas. Number two, Isaiah says, don't just look at the institutional problems in society and all that's a part of that. He says, meet practical needs too. Some people need food, housing, and clothing. Practical. Now food, housing, and clothing is important, but you've heard the old adage that don't give a man a fish, teach him to fish. And we could give food, and housing, and clothing, but in addition, we want to train them and we want to create environment to where they don't just need handouts the rest of their life. So that's what verse six is, change the handout system. Verse seven is, give them a handout while you're waiting for change. Then verse, the next one, paragraph three, verse nine, if you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and the speaking wickedness. Now what he's saying about this, he's not talking about criticism within the church. You know, one home group's criticizing the other home group. That's not what he's talking about. I've heard guys say that, that we've got to get the critical spirit out of this church. I've heard people say that through the years, and then revival comes. And that's true. That's a good thing. But that's not what this verse is talking about. Not talking about people being a little critical in the home group one to another. It's talking about the people that are doing the works of justice and the deeds of mercy, they don't do it with a demeaning, critical spirit. A condescending. Don't point the finger and say, well, you know, we're going to help. We're going to write a check and we're going to actually come down and help a little bit. You people, if you would quit your drunkenness and your immorality, get off drugs, and get a job, we could solve this whole problem. If you people, Isaiah says, don't. That attitude is called speaking wickedness. You do not understand the complexities of the decades of what's involved in their situation. And the truth is, neither do they. They understand it better than you do, but nobody understands it. I mean, the greatest minds can't figure it all out. The Lord says, when you go do these works of mercy, don't point the finger. Don't generalize complicated problems in their mind, in their life. Well, the prostitute, she's 25 years old. She grew up with the prostitute who was on drugs, her mother. And she grew up in a neighborhood with prostitutes that were all abused by their brothers. And they were all on drugs. Two generations. Well, this girl doesn't have any education. She can't get a job. She didn't go to school. She had three kids. Part of it was the abuse that came to her. Well, why does she get a job and get off drugs and quit prostitution? The Lord says, just be quiet. Just be quiet. You don't know anything about the layers of complications in that woman's life. Go serve her. Paragraph F. Now, seeking God must include the approaching the systemic injustices in society. I mean, creating solutions, working together. Not that we have to have all the solutions. We don't just give fish. We teach them to fish. We have to solve bigger problems. But even for a few people. We don't have to do it for a million. We can do it for 10. We can do it for 100. Then 1,000. Then 10,000. It just keeps increasing as we're faithful. The Lord gives more and more opportunity. And then we meet practical needs while we're correcting bigger problems. And we do it in an attitude of respect and dignity. No matter how many years they've been sleeping on the street as a drug addict or a drunkard with no job. But we see the dignity of who they are. They are one that the Lord says, I want him as one of my special people. He's one of my guys. Go show him that I'm involved in the world by your good works. Paragraph G. Now what happens outside the prayer room, the works of justice, is essential to what happens inside the prayer room. There is no dichotomy. We can't separate what happens outside and inside because God sees it as one reality. Now again, we can't quit the prayer part. We can't overreact and get so zealous that we don't do it God's way. We have to approach justice God's way. Night and day, he said, cry for justice. You release power and you keep your heart connected. You'll be far more effective if you do it God's way. Now we worship night and day around here. We're going to connect our love songs to Jesus with acts of love to the needy. It's one reality. Because worship is love in action. The worship that moves God's heart comes from believers that are moved by the needs of others. That's the kind of worship that moves God. It comes from people that are moved by others. Even in our weakness and our brokenness. Paragraph H. You know you talk to different guys and gals in ministry. Not everyone's like this, but some are, some aren't. And they measure the strength of their ministry by how many people show up in the church building on Sunday. You know the guy says, I have 10,000 in my church. Well, the real way is to evaluate the numerical strength of ministry. Not that that's even the big point. You can't really evaluate it by how many people come to the building on Sunday. You evaluate it by how many people are mobilized in the community to do good works. That is how a ministry is evaluated numerically if you want to talk about numerical strength. So when the Lord talks to the guys, says 10,000 people showed up on Sunday, how many were involved at all in the community with good works? I mean zealously. I don't mean just kind of off the cuff here and there. Well, a couple hundred. He says, well then your church was really a couple hundred functionally. In terms of functioning as the church. So we want to talk about, think about people being engaged in intercession and intimacy with God and then engaged with works of justice. And then engaged back in intercession and intimacy with God. Then engaged and mobilized in works of justice. Paragraph I, we're not going to go through much more here. We're going to bring this to an end. You can read the, some of the other notes on your own. Paragraph I, Isaiah 58, verse 8 to 11. Now here's what God says. Because if you do the fasting and prayer like I told you to do here in Isaiah 58, we're still in the same chapter. If Isaiah 58's new to you, you know, kind of get it out and look at the notes. You'll see it's just all one passage. Here's what the Lord says. Your light will break forth like the morning. That's the glory of God coming by the way. The light of God's glory. Your healing will spring forth. Your righteousness will go before you. That means that the areas of bondage in your life, there will be freedom. Righteousness will break out. The guy says, I'm so in bondage in this one area. We need righteousness to break out in that area of his life is what he's crying for. The glory of God will be present. Verse 9, you'll call on the Lord. He'll answer your prayer life. Has a whole nother anointing when it's connected to justice. The Lord will guide you. That's the prophetic ministry. He'll satisfy your soul. That's intimacy. He'll strengthen your bones. That's healing. My point is this. There's a power dimension when the fasting and prayer is joined to the justice, the works of justice and mercy on God's terms. There's a power dimension. It's not enough to mobilize everybody in works of justice. That's good, but there's more. There's justice with power. As I said earlier, it's not just enough to produce, you know, medical resources for the person that's sick. Let's pray for the guy to get healed. There's supernatural dimensions that God wants to release. Now there's a paragraph J. I want to say this very important. We have to do works of justice on God's terms. We have to do it on God's terms in God's way with the right spirit. In other words, works of justice are rooted in night and day prayer for justice. Works of justice are rooted with the attitudes of Isaiah 58, but it's with allegiance to Jesus and on Jesus's terms. There's a false justice movement that's emerging in the earth today. It's a humanitarian movement. It hasn't come together in the way it's going to. There's all different kind of early stirrings of it in many different pockets of the earth, but it will all come together before the Lord returns. It's called the harlot Babylon. It's a humanitarian movement. It's a justice movement, but it's a false one. It has no absolutes. It's humanistic. They don't care about the word of God and they don't care about loyalty to Jesus. And millions of believers are being swept into it because of the humanitarian focus. But beloved, there's more than meeting needs. We want to meet needs that exalt Jesus. We want to meet needs that are loyal to Him on His terms and in His way. And His way is the deeds of justice connected to the cry for justice. Now, I want to say this, that the Jesus justice movement is coming out of night and day prayer. Now, everyone is not supposed to start a 24-hour a day worship prayer ministry. That's not what I'm saying at all. There'll be a few of them across the earth and, I mean, who knows the number. But the majority of the people won't have a 24-hour prayer ministry. Now, there are, by the way, there are 10,000 plus. I don't really know the number, but I know it's over 10,000. There are 10,000 plus 24-hour prayer ministries, prayer chains. There's one person in a room handing the baton off an hour later to somebody else, but there's over 10,000 of them on the earth right now in different churches all around the world. So a guy says, okay, my church doesn't have the 24-hour prayer chain or the other stuff. What do I do? Just give up? No, no, no. Because God looks at the church in a city. There's prayer going forth in the body of Christ. There may be 1,000 congregations in that city, and prayer is ascending in all kinds of ways that no man can organize or even count it all up. We need more prayer. I don't want people to take a false comfort in that and say, well, somebody else on the other side of town is praying. I'm not going to bother with it. But we all are engaged. All the ministries do a little bit of prayer. They don't have to do 24-7. That's not the point. But collectively in cities, the 24-7 goes forth. And God pours out His Spirit on cities, not just on ministries. Let's go to the back of page 4. I just want to bring one verse to you, the very end of page 4, Roman numeral 4, paragraph 8, Ephesians 2.10. We'll end with this. It says, We are His workmanship. Ephesians 2.10. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Let's look at that again. We just got it up on the PowerPoint. I skipped a couple pages on them, so it took them. It wasn't fair to them. Let's look at it here. We are His workmanship. We were created in Jesus. Why did He create us? One reason. Well, it's not the only reason for good works, but that is one of the reasons that you're saved. He wants to use you as part of His big symphony of love in the earth. Now these good works were prepared beforehand by God for you. God was thinking of you beforehand. God has a plan for you to be involved. So don't look at the ministry or chart, whether you're visiting or you're here for a while or long term. Don't look at the org chart if you're at IHOP, if you're here or back home. Say, where do I fit on the ministry or chart? My outreach fits over in this department. Don't worry about that. Don't wait for the org chart. Don't wait for permission for a leader to say, hey, would you do this? You go, yeah, I will. You've got a big city right here in Kansas City. We'll just take Kansas City. It's many cities like this around the earth. Two million people. We've got a big Holy Spirit and a big Bible and a big need. Two million people. You don't need to wait for a leader to tell you to do something. The Holy Spirit, you've got a Bible, the Holy Spirit, and two million people in need. You say, Holy Spirit, there are thousands of categories of need from real extreme ones to not so extreme. You say, give me creative ideas. I want to start. Now don't wait for a month until we bring a whole new increase. Start asking Him now. He may have you and two or three people. Go touch two or three people. Not just an evangelistic outreach on one time on a Tuesday night. I mean, those are good. But I mean more than just a one-time deal. Think Holy Spirit. Show me a way where I can do a work of justice, a work of service to someone in need. That might be somebody in the neighborhood right here. Maybe somebody in the other side of town. Maybe it is at the inner city. Ask Him. Start asking Him. Say, you prepared this for me beforehand. I fit. Don't look for ministries inside the building. Look for ministries outside the building. Well, there's ministries inside too. We still need you to help there. Don't wait for something on the org chart. Do whatever the Holy Spirit tugs your heart to do. Okay, amen. Let's stand. We'll end with that.