We have spent a month building up to this point today. We spent a month looking at lots of different things around the fruit of the Spirit. We've been looking at several different things considering how do we be filled? How can we be filled with the Spirit? How do we walk with Him?

How do we focus on leaving behind a life of sin and walking in the light of the Spirit of God? How are we led by Him? We've been looking at lots of different things. One of the things from a few weeks ago that we looked at is much like the food that you eat today is what your body is going to utilize to replenish and rebuild its cells. In other words, if you're taking in unhealthy things into your, your mouth and digestive system, then it'll be unhealthy things that are growing inside of your body.

Or if you put a seed or a plant in soil that is stripped of nutrients, it'll have a hard time growing in that growing medium. In the same way, if our life is rooted in the desires of the flesh and these sinful desires, we won't see good fruit coming out of our lives. It'll be a place where the Spirit of God finds no room to dwell because we've filled our lives with these other things. And yet, on the other hand, if we allow God to convict us of sin, to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, and to fill us with His Spirit, we find that there is fruit that is born in our lives as evidence of the Spirit being there. So I have a goal today, my goal, that kind of capstones this entire series, is that you would have a desire building within you to be being filled with the Spirit.

I didn't say that in error. That's actually the way the Scriptures should be translated. Be being filled, be in a state of continually being filled with the Holy Spirit. And so that would be my goal for you today, is that that desire would be increasing in you and that you would begin to or continue to bear the fruit or the evidence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. In Acts chapter six.

I'm going to throw out, by the way, through the morning a few different scripture references. You might jot them down and look at them later. I'm not going to read all of them and I'm not going to go into their context because I know for me what I would do is I'd want to teach on every single one of them, and I'm not going to do that. That's for you to go back and look at them like the Christians or the new believers in the town of Berea did when Paul went through there, and they actually searched the Scriptures after hearing him preach. And they said that we want to check and see what he says.

So I encourage you to write those scripture references down as I bring them to you and look at them later. But in Acts, chapter 7, verses 40, or verse 48, and also in First Corinthians 6:19, we see that there's this evidence of the Spirit within us, and we see things that he does in our lives. But we also see that it grieves or saddens the Spirit when we don't let him show fruit in our lives. In other words, if we are not allowing the Spirit of God room in our lives to show this fruit, then it grieves him or it saddens him. So today, our scripture once again will be In Galatians, chapter 5, verses 13 through 25.

I want to read it with you today. If you want to use one of the Bibles in the rack in front of you, it's on page 1315.

I keep thinking I'm going to invert those numbers because my in law's home address is 1513. And so I'm like, nope, I said it right every time. 13:15. And now I don't have to worry about it. Again in Galatians 5, the apostle Paul is writing to this church that he knew them well, and he had helped form them and disciple them and grow them.

And so he's continuing this. Galatians is quite a book of discipleship. It covers a lot of different things in the growth of a Christian community. And here he speaks to them, and he says, in verse 13, you are called to freedom, brothers and sisters only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love, serve one another.

For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, you must love your neighbor as yourself. However, if you continually bite and devour one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, live by the Spirit. And you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh.

For for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot just do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, Hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things as these, there is no law. Now, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So if we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another and being jealous of one another.

Let me pray over the word of God. Lord, we thank you for this word, and we thank you for this message that we have the message of living life by the Spirit and not by the desires of the flesh. Lord, every time I read this, I hear it in a new light and in a new way that speaks to me directly. Lord, I know that there's a cleansing of my heart that you want to do, a set of desires that you want to remove from me and place your desires in my heart. And Lord, that's what I want.

And yet I echo what Paul says in another place. What is wrong with me? The things that I want to do, I find so hard to do. And the things I don't want to do, I find myself doing them. What a wretched man I am.

Yet who will save me from this? Christ Jesus. And so, Lord, I thank you for that. I thank you for your saving grace in my life, and that's available to each and every one of us today. Replace our desires with yours.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Paul mentions in one verse here, he says that the law is summed up in this one thing. Now, when he speaks of the law, he's talking to a group of people that had at least somewhat understood the Mosaic Law, the Old Testament law, the law that the Jews had to follow. And he sums it all up with one thing.

Love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself. He didn't leave much of a wiggle room there. Jesus had covered this pretty sufficiently when somebody said, well, who's my neighbor? And he told the story or the parable of the Good Samaritan that you might be familiar with. But Paul says if you want to understand what the perfect law of God is, you're.

First of all, he's probably assuming that you already have a desire for God. So he assumes that you'll be kind of working on that part where the main law, Jesus says the number one law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and your mind and your strength. That was the prayer that Jewish people prayed every single morning called the Shema. But Paul says, echoing what Jesus said, that the second greatest commandment was love your neighbor as yourself. Paul is saying that is summed up right there by that statement.

And if you love your neighbor as yourself, then there's no law that really tells you how to do that. But living by the Spirit will result in loving your neighbor. So it's hard for you to be an adversary against your neighbor and yet have evidence of the Spirit of God within you. And so if you love your neighbor, you will be in the process, most likely, of bearing spiritual fruit. You will have that fruit evidenced in your lives.

So as I look at the end of this, as I look at wanting to just kind of make sure that we've covered all the bases and questions and objections we might have, because those are real, those are important, I think that we might have questions about at least three different things. Maybe you haven't had these questions, or maybe you just didn't ask them recently. I think it's the who, when, and how question. Who receives the Holy Spirit? When do they receive the Holy Spirit?

And how does that take place? Now, I know that some of us come from different traditions within Christianity that might have different answers on this. I know that there's going to be doctrinal differences from people that have written books and preached sermons and done all these things over several hundred years that just kind of muddies the waters. And I want to share with you that I think it might be a lot simpler than we've been led to believe, that it might be a lot easier if we just kind of erase all that knowledge for just a moment. It's kind of like when you go to college or seminary or something like that, you know, especially if you're going to be preaching, it's good to learn all you can and then can all you learn just set it in a can, just tuck it aside, and every now and then you might need to reference that.

But. But it's like they'll teach you so many things and then you'll say, you'll open the Word of God and say, well, where in the world did they get this idea? It comes from so much over the just building layer upon layer that nobody can sort their way through it. So sometimes it's good to just open the Word of God and say, okay, Lord, what do you have for. So again, with a few scripture references in First Corinthians 12:13.

In fact, chapters 12, 13 and 14 are great if you want to understand a lot of things about the Spirit of God and how he interacts with the people of God, and how he leads the people of God, and how we should employ the gifts that he gives us in love towards our neighbor. But if you look in this verse specifically, we see that all who receive the Spirit are one church. First Corinthians 12:13 says that we have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, is one church, one group of people. And so if you wonder who receives the Spirit, it's all who have believed on Jesus Christ. So then you might say, well, when do you receive the Holy Spirit?

This is again where different doctrinal creeds, different practices of different denominations comes into play, saying that, that there's. They have different ideas of when this happens and to what degree it happens. I want to tell you that we are filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. If you look at Ephesians 1:13, it mentions this. Now there is this difference between being filled with the Spirit.

We call this the indwelling of the Spirit. He inwardly dwells in you. He resides in you. You are indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God from the moment you receive Jesus Christ. Now you might look at some of the scriptures in the Book of Acts and say, well, wait a minute.

There were times where we clearly see people being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And it seems like it happened in different ways or at different times or after a different thing. Whether it was the laying on of hands or whether it was at baptism or for some it was just even. It seemed like it just happened like randomly. We don't even know if they were really believing yet or not.

I want to say this. This is like think of the frontier days in America where it was just kind of like you go from one town to another and you don't know how different. One city, one town is going to have their rules and their laws and it's going to be different depending on where you go. I'm not saying God was acting like it was a lawless wild, wild west, but in the early days of the church, it was a lot of changes happening in a short amount of time. First you've got just a few, like 120 Jewish believers, and then they start preaching in tongues that there's all these travelers from all over the known world that show up that are Jews and converts to Judaism and they start sharing the gospel of Christ in those people's language.

And so now you've got all these folks and so they're carrying the gospel back to where they live, and churches and Bible groups are springing up, I'm sure. But then you've got, um, you've got. All of a sudden somebody gets the idea that they're going to go to the Samaritans. Now, they don't like the Samaritans, but by the Spirit of God, they're led to go preach the word of God to them. And they do.

And Samaritans believe and they receive the Holy Spirit. And then, then Peter preaches to Cornelius, and then Philip goes down and preaches to an Ethiopian eunuch in a chariot. You know, it's like all this weird stuff going on, this crazy stuff, because the Spirit of God is saying this Gospel is for everyone and the Holy Spirit is for everyone. And so what we ought to be careful with is to be careful not to build a formula or a roadmap trying to use what looks like, well, not a process, but looks like what's the pattern that was set in those times? Because I would say there is no steady pattern that was set for how people received the Holy Spirit or when.

What we see is that there was a time where a people group, a group of people representative of that, representative of the Samaritans, representative of the Hellenistic or Greek speaking Jews, representative of the Gentiles who had no prior faith in the God of Abraham at those times, God had somebody preach the gospel to these different groups of people that represented that, and they received the Holy Spirit. And therefore showing that the Gospel of Christ wasn't limited to the Jewish people that Christ had been born into, but that it was for the whole world. But all the evidence in scripture after that shows that anybody who receives Jesus Christ at that moment receives the Holy Spirit. And so as we walk in that, and as we see that in things like Ephesians 1:13 or Second Corinthians 1:22, we recognize that there is an indwelling of the Spirit of God from the moment that you have received salvation. Now, there's a lot of discussion that groups might have about how that is evidenced or, you know, speaking in tongues and all those things.

We've actually covered that in our Sunday school class a few weeks ago, and we put all these online, we even record our classes most of the time and put them on a podcast site that we have so you can find that we send out a message every week. And if you don't get those in a text message, then put your name on a contact card or if you're watching online, drop a note and we'll contact you back or something. And just kind of let us know that you'd like to receive those updates every week. But we kind of covered that in a fairly good, fairly in depth way a few weeks ago, so I'm not going to get into it now. You can look us up on that podcast, Discovering Jesus with First Naz, I believe, is what it's called.

I forget it was a long name, but it's a good opportunity for you to go back and look at that. But the how part, we figured out who and when. Now, how are you filled with the Holy Spirit? It's in two ways. Now, I'm going to sound contradictory to myself here.

You're filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation, we mentioned that. But also at baptism, you see, you're filled with the Holy Spirit at the time of baptism as well. Now, I say that because I've seen it evidenced that way. And I also see it in Scripture. I see it in scripture that Jesus, although he had the Spirit of God dwelling in him from the moment, well, from conception.

And we see that also with John the Baptist, that the Holy Spirit dwelt in John the Baptist while he was in his mother's womb. That we see that. And yet Jesus is further filled with the Holy Spirit when he's baptized. As he came up out of the water, the heavens broke open. The voice of his father spoke and said, this is my son, whom I love in him, I am well pleased.

And the Holy Spirit came down out of heaven in the form of a dove and alighted on Jesus and filled him in that moment. It wasn't just a sign or a symbol. It was Jesus being empowered for his ministry that he was about to embark on and being prepared for the moment that he would be right after that, with his hair still wet from the river, being led out into the wilderness to be baptized. Maybe some time had passed, but I love the metaphor of Jesus getting right to business. He gets baptized, he's like, okay, time to go.

What's next? And the spirit says, 40 days of fasting and prayer in the wilderness. Get to it. Jesus had to go through that, but he was filled with the Spirit for that task. We see some of this listed in Ephesians 5:18 as a little evidence of that as well.

So we are filled with the Spirit both at salvation and further at baptism. And that's why? The more I've understood that, the more I've come to believe that the closer those two things can be in timeframe. The moment you receive Christ, you should be baptized. Maybe you receive Christ in the moment of baptism, if you choose to do it that way.

If that's when you make that declaration, I've got no problem with that from a scriptural viewpoint. Thank you for that. Good. So, additionally to these things, people might wonder how, like what? What might keep us from being filled with the Holy Spirit?

Is there something that. That would prevent you from being filled with God's Spirit? I would say yes, there are some things that would prevent you from being filled with the Spirit. If we look at 1st Thessalonians 5:19, it mentions a few things. One of them is when people fail to rejoice or pray or give thanks to God for the things that he does in their lives, that person might be quenching the Holy Spirit.

Now, we're not talking like Gatorade, the thirst quencher, where you have thirst and now you don't have thirst anymore. What we're actually talking about is the Holy Spirit being symbolized by tongues of fire. And if you pour water on that, it can quench the fire. It can put the fire out. We're able to quench the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives by failing to properly give thanks to God, to dwell on his presence, and to rejoice in the good things he's given us.

In addition to that, 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says that we can be. If we're contentious and embracing evil, we're snuffing out the flames of the Holy Spirit. I'd encourage you to look over those verses around 1 Thessalonians 5. A couple more is Ephesians 4:31. It says people who are full of bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander and malice can grieve the Holy Spirit.

Now, I think brawling can be. It can be played out in a nonviolent way. Like it doesn't have to be fisticuffs. There are people that will brawl with one another by simply just having anger, bitterness and rage. As it mentioned earlier, they can have this struggle with them where it's this kind of cold war that goes on.

I've. I've known people that were in churches that did this for a long time. They had a. Maybe it was towards their pastor, maybe it was towards a board member that they served with. Maybe it was towards a Sunday school teacher or a volunteer or a leader or Maybe just somebody that sat on the opposite side of the sanctuary from them, that they had beef with them from a long time ago because somebody made a better casserole than they did or something.

Who knows what it could have been? But it's this cold war brawling that they have where everybody knows about it, nobody addresses it, and it goes on and on and on. The Spirit of God wants no part of that, either in their personal life or sometimes in the life of the entire congregation. There's churches that have brawled over things like what songs we're going to sing. Are we going to sing these new fangled ones or the old ones?

Are we going to have a full band or just a piano and an organ? What are we going to do? And they talk about all these different things and they have this ongoing battle about it and it tends to grieve the Spirit of God because he says, that is not the atmosphere that I seek to promote or to build amongst these people. Remember Paul said that the law is summed up in one commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. The Spirit of God dwells within.

That spirit of love towards our neighbor is where the Spirit of God dwells. And if we are creating an environment that is opposed to that, we have grieved the Spirit of God and we would not expect him to find a welcome place there. I don't remember if I mentioned that's Ephesians 4:31. So with all that being said, let's finally look at the fruit of the Spirit. I'm going to read just that part again.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law. Now, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires, so that if we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another and being jealous of one another. Folks, this isn't like.

This isn't like going to the doctor for a wellness checkup and seeing your vital signs and seeing your different levels, like if you had a blood test or something like that, and they look at all them to see if there's something missing. And yet at the same time, perhaps there is something wrong. If these things are missing in large part in our life, perhaps it is a bit of an indicator or a warning sign. If we look at our lives and we don't see an abundance of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self control, Perhaps you've got some of those in spades and yet others you would not believe are part of your life at all. If that's the case, perhaps we need to take a look at what's going on in our life.

Jesus told this story in Luke, chapter 13. It's just three verses, six through nine. I guess technically that's four verses. Six, seven, eight, nine. Anyway, he told a story there about a man who owned a vineyard.

And the Scriptures in the Old Testament are rife with imagery of both vineyards and fig trees. That is, you know, talking about God's children of Israel. And yet this has something to say to us today as well. This man that is, in his little parable, his little story, owned a vineyard. And in that vineyard, he also had a fig tree.

It was fairly common. The fig tree actually would produce some things for the soil that was good for the grapevines. And so it was a kind of a symbiotic relationship that they had. But he had this fig tree, and the fig tree wasn't producing any fruit. Now, Jesus, he had a thing.

And sometimes I think this is a good indicator of how much of a disciple of Jesus you are. Like, if you see a fig tree, do you curse it? Because Jesus did. And we want to be like Jesus. I mean, if it doesn't have fruit on it, you should curse it anyway.

Jesus cursed a fig tree that didn't bear fruit. Of course, he was hungry, and in his humanity, he wanted some figs. But also it was symbolic, as he was walking into Jerusalem, that should have been bearing fruit of God and yet wasn't. And so Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered and died. It's a warning to the people of God, then to the children of Israel.

Now to us as Christians, it's a warning that we ought to bear fruit. And so as such, Jesus, he cursed this fig tree, but he told the story of the vineyard with the fig tree in it. And that fig tree was not bearing fruit. And so the guy that owned it walks up to the manager of the vineyard and he says, hey, what's up with this tree? It's not bearing fruit.

As a landowner, as a business owner, he wants to see that any of his assets are making an increase or a profit, he wants to see it doing well. But also, if it's taking up nutrients, but it's not providing anything of value, it's actually robbing nutrients from the grapevines. So there's no point in that fig tree staying around. Now he says, I've been Coming after it for three years, looking for fruit on it. Now, if you've ever planted fruit trees, you probably know that three years is actually a pretty solid amount of time you should wait before you expect fruit on most varieties of fruit trees.

I actually kind of worry if I'm at a nursery or Lowe's or something like that in their little nursery, and I see, you know, potted, like, citrus trees, and they've got little fruit on them, I think that shouldn't be there yet. It's still too young to be bearing fruit. But three years, you should probably start expecting fruit in the third year after it's growing. And so it seems to me that in this. I'm literally talking longer than it took Jesus to tell this parable.

But it seems to me that three years is not a long time to wait to expect fruit on it. I don't know if this fruit tree had been growing a lot longer than that, and for three years it hadn't borne fruit or what the deal is. But for some reason, this guy expected fruit on it, and there wasn't any. But the guy that's in charge of it, the man who worked the soil and worked the plants, and he was the vine dresser, he says, hold on a second, Master. Don't give up on it yet.

I think we can still do something with this fig tree. I don't think it's a lost cause. Let me trench around it. Let me aerify the soil, let me aerate the soil. And if the soil is the problem, let me put some fertilizer in there.

He used the word manure. They would have composted their manure and put it in there and let me enrich the soil so that it's got a fighting chance. But next year, if it doesn't produce anything, then we'll cut it down. We see grace of God, his mercy that extends even when there's times in our lives where we aren't bearing fruit, we see the patience of God. We see his patience in there waiting for us to bear fruit.

And yet he seems to expect it out of us. I want to bear fruit. I deal with this very few verses on a very personal level. That hits me in two ways. One is seeing it just personally in my life.

Am I doing the things that honor and glorify God? Am I speaking in ways that honor and glorify God? Am I putting forth words that lead people towards Christ rather than away from him, but then also overseeing a congregation? I have a responsibility to see that we, as a group are bearing fruit that there's something evidenced in what we do that impacts the lives of people beyond just Sunday to Sunday, but that it actually has an impact in changing lives for the sake of eternity. And so I take.

Even though it's just those four verses about the vineyard and the fig tree, or it's just the other ones where Jesus cursed the fig tree or, or whatever it is that talks about bearing fruit in scripture, I take those very seriously and very personally. They weigh heavily on me. Personally, I want to see my life full of the love of God. Sometimes I fail at that really hard. Sometimes I fail at that in such a way that I wonder what's wrong with me that I could be this long in serving Christ and yet this hard to love others.

I had a guy check me on that just a couple days ago. We were working and cutting up trees. It's been a large part of my life lately, it seems like. But I was helping out another church, cutting up some trees that had fallen on their property. And the guy said something about going to Walmart and I said, well, I try to avoid that as much as possible.

I really hate going to Walmart. It's not the store, it's the people. I really hate going there amongst so many of the people that are shopping at Walmart. It just irritates me so much. I don't know why it is.

It just does. It's just mass chaos and anarchy in Walmart, you know, it really is. I get annoyed just driving into the parking lot because either somebody has stopped to let too many people cross or didn't stop enough. Like, you can't satisfy me. I'm just saying, like, I'm unpleasable when it comes to Walmart.

There's no, there's no time or place where I've really enjoyed it anyway. I almost got kicked out of Walmart once when I was a teenager for hanging out when they had like a furniture section and I was just sitting there because it was so much better to sit on their couch. And they kept coming by saying, can I help you? I said, well, yeah, you can just kind of let me sit here, you know, like, just leave me alone, you know, that's how you can help me. And I still feel that way.

But anyway, I used to go to Target when we would shop there quite a bit and they have these chairs in the, near the cribs, the baby section, and they have these chairs for the nursery and they were kind of comfy and I just spent a lot of time there while My wife would walk the aisles and they would occasionally ask if I needed help. And I say, no, I'm happy right here. I think every store needs like the men's section. Sometimes I want to ask that when I go to Hobby Lobby or something like, where's the men's section? They're like, what do you mean?

Like the couches and chairs where we can just sit while our wives shop. You know, that's what. Why do you think I'm here? You know, if I'm wandering, I'm not clearly looking for something. I shop like a man.

If I know that there's something at Hobby Lobby I need, I go in, I go right to where I think it should be. I pick that thing up and I go and I buy it and I'm done. I'm a man. That's how I shop. And so if I'm wandering the aisles, it's probably because my wife is in there somewhere and I would just rather not be.

And so I just wanna sit in a chair. But they put all their chairs in the front little room as you're walking in the store. And it just kind of seems weird to sit there. So I don't.

But I have a problem with this love towards others sometimes. Sometimes the joy of the Lord isn't evident on my face or in my life. Sometimes it feels non existent. It seems like there's a lack of peace. And I question why that should be.

When we're called to be the people of peace, we're called to be the ones that in the chaos of the world, we know where this world is headed. We know where this life is headed and we know the one that holds our todays and our tomorrows. And I should have peace in the midst of that. And yet at times I feel like the chaos is threatening to end me. Patience.

I've been getting better with this one. But boy, do I struggle sometimes. Kindness. I can be awfully kind and I can be awfully unkind. I wonder how these things dwell within the same person.

I might be okay on goodness and faithfulness at times. Sometimes gentleness is a stretch in self control. I feel like if I had more of that, I would eat less food that is bad for me and do more exercising. And yet I struggle with those things. So I look at this and I say, lord, what is missing?

Oh wretched man that I am, who can save me from this? I want the spirit of God to so dominate my life that I can look at these things and not with a spirit of pride or haughtiness. But I can just look at this with this peaceful joy and say, thank you, Lord. You accepted me as who I was, but you refused to leave me there. You accept everything that I am as a person, and yet you refuse to allow these bad things within me that are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

See, Christ made me, but he didn't create sin in me. That entered me, and I've dealt with it ever since. We all have. But it's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. Is what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20.

I want to get to the point where that is by far the testimony that I can make. It's not me that's living in here. It's Christ who's living in me.

Our response today to all of this is not only to desire to be indwelt with the Spirit of God, but that he would so fill us that he that fruit is produced in our lives so that when people see us, they no longer see me or you, but they see Christ in you, filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And then that the Holy Spirit would give you gifts, that he would give you the gifts that he chooses to give that are useful for you to carry the gospel message, whether by words or deeds, that you would carry that gospel message to others so that God's salvation would spread through this whole world. I tell you, I believe that our nation is about to see revival. I don't know when about to means. See, we're a people that says Christ is coming back soon.

But we've been saying that for nearly a couple thousand years. And to us that might seem like a long time, but to God it's just the blink of an eye. It's nothing. And so I don't know when soon is, but I believe that our nation is fit to see a revival. Not just a revival where some people that were already believers and already in church get a little more serious about their faith.

We ought to, we all ought to do that. But yet what I believe is that God is calling to Himself a people who are, as of now, not followers of him who will be receiving Christ both now and in eternity. That only happens when the people of God who are called by the name of God are.