Foreign.

I'm back up here. Anybody that's online, we're streaming today on Facebook again. So welcome and. Or if you catch it on YouTube later. Glad you're with us.

We're continuing a sermon series in Nehemiah, we just started last week, and it's called into the Breach. The idea is that there are breaches, as Nehemiah's day and Ezra's day is. They had breaches in the walls around Jerusalem and in the city gates. The temple had been started to be built, but was put to a halt as there were enemies or opponents of the people of God and they didn't want to see them with the temple. And so they, you know, they found that as a problem.

But we. We've got. Well, we've got our into the Breach. You know, little thing there shows a wall and then a sword and trowel on there. And that comes later.

One of my favorite parts of the the story of Nehemiah was when the men had to work to rebuild the wall, but they had a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. They had their. Their construction tools, but they also had to. To defend themselves because they were building under quite adverse circumstances. The idea is that the story of Nehemiah and Ezra before him, kind of one of his contemporaries that was working around the same time as him.

The idea is that even though that happened a long time ago, the stories contained in the Word of God, they're not just old or ancient, they're actually quite timeless. These are stories that are relevant to us today. And so I believe there's quite a message for us today from the story of Nehemiah. I'm actually going to read all of chapter two. It's quite a few verses, but hang with me here.

It's really good stuff. And I want you to see this mainly because I don't trust that you're going to remember to go home and read it for yourself later if I tell you to. How's that? Seriously, who read Chapter one? Yeah, I'm just kidding.

So here we go then. In the month of Nissan. By the way, the months are different names than what ours are. But what. What we see when you, like, look it up.

The Internet's really nice for things like this is we find out that the first chapter in Nehemiah, the things that took place there were four months prior to this. Nehemiah spent four months fasting and praying to get to the point of where we find ourselves in chapter two. So in the month of Nisan, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought to me, I took the wine and gave it to the king. By the way, the last line of chapter one says that he was the cup bearer to the king. He was the one that presented wine to the king when he would be having some type of a celebration or a party or just was in the spirit for it, you know.

And so part of his job was probably selection, making sure he got something perfect for the moment, but also making sure that somebody hadn't poisoned it. So if somebody wanted to kill the king, they have to get through Nehemiah first and he's the one that dies. And then the king says, well, I'm not drinking that wine, you know, give me another cup bear and another wine. I guess so anyway, wine was brought to him. He takes it and hands it to the king.

Now he says, previously to this, I had not been depressed in the king's presence. So the king said to me, why do you appear to be depressed when you aren't sick? What can this be other than sadness of the heart? Now this made me very fearful. Side note, if you show up in the king's presence back in the day and you don't appear happy because if you're working for the king, everything should be great.

That's the mentality of it. Even though Nehemiah is a foreigner slave for the king, he's probably been made into a eunuch. So he doesn't like that part very much. And, you know, things aren't necessarily that great and happy for him, but yet he's supposed to appear happy before the king. But he had gone so long with this thing that was going on, this sorrow that he had received from the report from Jerusalem in, in the first chapter that he's, he's at the point where he can't fake it anymore.

Have you ever been there? You just can't put on a smile in front of people anymore. You, that you get so, so into the what's going on in your life that you can't even act like it's all okay anymore. And somebody says, how are you doing today? And you're like, not good.

I can't even say things are going well. Well, that's where Nehemiah is at. And so he's fearful because the king has recognized that he's not able to even fake it anymore. So he replies to the king, oh, king, live forever. That's a standard thing that you agree to king with.

Why would I not appear dejected? When the city with the graves of my ancestors lies desolate and its gates are destroyed by fire, the king responded, what is it you are seeking? Then I quickly prayed to the God of heaven and to the king, if the king is so inclined, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, dispatch me to Judah to the city with the graves of my ancestors so that I can rebuild it. Then the king, with his consort sitting beside him, replied, how long would your trip take and when would you return? Since the king was amenable to dispatching me, I gave him a time.

Could I ask somebody to come up and pray with my brother up here? Nobody needs to pray alone. And Pastor Kendall or someone. Yeah, Elaine, Anyone? I said to the king, if the king is so inclined, let him give me letters for the governors of Trans Euphrates that will enable me to safely travel until I reach Judah.

And a letter for asap, the keeper of the king's nature preserver forest, so that he will give me timber for the beams for the gates of the fortress adjacent to the temple and for the city wall and for the house to which I go. So the king granted me these requests for the good hand of my God was on me. Then I went to the governors of Trans Euphrates, and I presented to them the letters for the king. The king had sent me with officers of the army and horsemen. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, heard this, they were very displeased that someone had come to seek for the benefit of the Israelites.

Let's pray for a moment before we read the rest of this, okay? Lord, we just thank you this morning that your spirit is moving among us, that you're speaking to us, you're ministering to our hearts. Lord, I pray for my brother here, Lord. What. What?

The things that he might be experiencing right now that you would meet and be very real to him in his life, in this moment, right now, Lord, for each of us, the things that are on our hearts, the things that we can't hide anymore, that we can't even act like. It's not a big deal in our lives, Lord. May. May we be honest about that so that we would receive healing and wholeness from you, God. Lord, we thank you for the words in scripture.

We thank you for what Nehemiah has. Has for us today. Lord, as we continue reading, may you speak to us and minister to us through your word. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

He says in verse 11, Nehemiah says, so I came to Jerusalem. Now, what has happened at this point is the king, he made a big request to the king, and the king gave him everything he asked for. Because Nehemiah spent time in prayer over this for four months leading up to it. And then in the moment, if you were paying attention and saw the details, I love the details. As.

As he's with the king and the king says, what's going on? What can I do for you? Nehemiah stopped and he prayed for a moment. In that moment, the scene might have changed. There's a couple indications that they had moved from maybe a banquet facility into the place where the throne room is.

When the king and the queen are sitting there. We're not 100% sure, but there's a chance that it went from a bigger room to kind of a smaller, more intimate setting. And so Nehemiah takes that moment to pray. And as he prays, he presents bold requests to the king for supplies, for permits, permission to build the walls of the city, and then for letters for safety as they go there. And then also that he would provide for him because he needs housing when he gets there.

And then not only that, but like a leave of absence from his job as cupbearer. So the king grants him all these things because he says that the great hand of his God was on him. So when he gets there. When he. When he went to Jerusalem, in verse 11, he says he went there for three days and he got up during the night along with a few men who were with him.

But he didn't tell anyone what God was putting on his heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no animals with him, except for the horse that he was riding. He said, I proceeded through the valley gate by night and then in the direction of the well of the dragons. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds pretty interesting to me. And then to the dung gate.

I have an idea what that is. They didn't exactly have plumbing, but they had toilet buckets. You can imagine what gets flung out the dung gate. How'd you like to be the workers that are like, hey, you guys are rebuilding the gates? You're like, oh, cool, which one do I get?

The dung gate. Okay, can we maybe just hear me out for the time that I'm going to be rebuilding that section? Can we assign a different place for the toilet buckets to get dumped? You know, like, they're just. While I'm working, maybe.

Can we just maybe direct that somewhere else? Seriously, who wants that job anyway? Inspecting. He was inspecting the walls of Jerusalem that had been breached and its gates which had been destroyed by fire. Verse 14.

He says, I passed on by the gate of the well and the king's pool, where there wasn't even enough room for my animal to pass with me. In other words, the crumbling ruins were so bad he couldn't even fit a horse through there. He says, the officials, or he says, I turned back and came to the valley gate and then I returned into the city. Now the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had been doing. For up to this point, I had not told any of the Jews or the priests or the nobles or the officials or the rest of the workers.

Then I said to them, you see the problem that we have? Jerusalem is desolate and its gates are burned. Come on, let's rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that this reproach will not continue. Then I related to them how the good hand of my God was on me and what the king had said to me. And they replied, let's begin rebuilding right away.

So they readied themselves for this good project. But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah, the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard all this, they derided us and expressed contempt toward us. They said, what is this you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king? I responded to them by saying, the God of heaven will prosper us, we his servants will start the rebuilding.

But you have no just or ancient right in Jerusalem. Okay, there, that was a lot of verses. I don't usually read that long, but I wanted us to kind of get a picture of the whole thing that's going on here. I really encourage you though, to read the entirety of the book of Nehemiah. Actually Ezra and Nehemiah was one work in two volumes.

And so I would suggest you read through that. It'll take you maybe like less than an hour. Especially if you have the audio Bible on your phone and you just hit play, you can listen to it. It's a good time. So Nehemiah, in chapter one, he had prayed this prayer.

And down in one of the last lines of it, it says, he says, lord, today grant me favor with this man. Now the interesting thing and the man he's talking about is the king. The interesting thing about that is it seems like by him saying that it's at the end of that four month period of prayer and fasting, Nehemiah has bathed everything in prayer. Like these big bold prayers that are, that are made you know, to pave the way for what God is doing. And so he has these things and he prays these things.

And then finally he got to a point where he says, enough's enough. Like, I've been on my face before God. I've been. I've been prostrated on the ground. I've been weeping.

I've been crying. I got no more tears. I got no more anything left. All that I really need is just God for you to do something. And he says, maybe today is that day.

Today was the day of God's action. So he prays these big, bold prayers. He bathes everything he's doing in prayer. And then he prays that one simple prayer that. That today might be the thing.

And so then he meets the king. The king says, why are you so sad? What's going on? And he tells him. And then the king says, what do you want?

He prays again. A brief prayer, a silent prayer. We don't see many quick little silent prayers. There's a couple of them that come to mind that people prayed in the Bible, but we don't see that too often. But Nehemiah did this because he knew that it didn't matter where he was standing, how loud he said it.

He didn't matter the number of words he prayed a simple prayer. He prayed a little more complex one in chapter one here, he just prays a quick prayer. Lord, give me the strength to say this. And then he approaches the king. It could be his head on the line, but he knows that it's not worth keeping his head in place if he can't have an answer or a finality to the thing that he's been praying for.

And so he. He tells the king what he's looking for. And it's some big stuff. He says there's a city that a king, previous to this one, had invaded and torn down. And now I'm asking if I can go home and rebuild that city.

It's a city where my ancestors are buried. It's a city where there was a temple there that one of the prior kings had destroyed. And now I'm asking that this God that I serve, the God of heaven that created the earth and everything in it, that I can go and rebuild a temple to him so that our people might worship there. And then I also want. Well, they'd already started rebuilding that.

He wants to finish it, but he wants to protect it. What's. What's been started and. And to do that, they have to have walls around their city. I don't know any other nation on this earth that would have a conversation about putting a wall up around their border.

But anyway, apparently that was only in Nehemiah's day that that was an issue. You know, that's a joke. Come on. It's funny. And so Nehemiah is saying, like, I want to go build a wall.

And the king says, sounds like a good plan. Build the wall, build the gates. Not only that, but I will supply all the materials you need for it. And so now, this king that was considered a quite evil ruler. Like, I mean, he had killed his brother so that he was sure to have the throne.

This king killed his brother so that he could be the one that. That was the king. And, you know, that doesn't seem like the best thing to do. The nicest kind of guy. He had a lot of other evil things about him.

And yet in this case, he was there to support the people of God. I don't think that he actually cared about the God of heaven. I don't think he cared about the God of the Jews. And yet maybe he was hedging his bets. Maybe he's just trying to make sure that.

That he's, you know, kind of got, like, the right. The right. You know, every box checked, you know, like, well, I helped this nation with their God, and I helped build a temple for this one. Yeah, I'll build one for the Jews, too. I'm not sure what his motivations were, but I do believe that God was at work in his life, that God was motivating him to do these things.

And so as God is doing that, as God was. Was. Was working with this king to do it, Nehemiah made the bold requests. I know for me, sometimes I've kind of given up on any hope that the government is going to do the right thing. Like, more and more comes out about them being, like, crooked, stealing stuff, just having all these terrible motives and actions.

And I just think, like, is there any hope in all of this? And then. And then I get to thinking, or we have conversations where it's like, well, the church has abdicated some of our responsibilities. There's things that we were supposed to do, and we quit doing them. And then I look at history and I say, well, some of that was things.

The government said, well, we'll take care of that. And the church said, okay, fine, you're bigger than us. Maybe you can handle that. And then they fail at it after a number of years, and we find ourselves saying, who's going to take care of these folks. But there are certain things, though, that I'll admit, as much as I would like a very tiny government, like the smaller the better, as far as I care.

Because the bigger the government, the less freedoms we have, the. The less of our income we have because they take it in taxes and they spend it on whatever things they deem necessary. And I'm sick of that. But as much as I agree with that, as much as I feel that way, I do know that there are certain things that the government is the one that can handle this. Like, I'm not very good at building roads.

I get that. But beyond that, there's certain things that the government has to do, and I've got a list of them. I made bullet points. I want to go over a couple of those. There's things like zoning.

Let's say we wanted to build housing that people could actually afford to live in, which seems to be like impossible to do these days. Last night I was just reading about one that's supposed to go over on 54 and Curley Road and it was supposed to be low income housing. And they said no, because that would be owned by a nonprofit, therefore not bringing any taxable revenue in, and they shut it down. Now, the government should be the one that paves the way for people to be able to do such things. And yet in the end they end up saying, well, no.

So we need government to actually be good and to do things like paving the way for zoning and permitting and planning projects and things like that. They don't have to build them, but they have to allow those who want to to be able to do it. There's other regulations about things like where you provide services to the poor or homeless people, where sometimes we're told, well, you can't do that here because of this rule or that regulation or that restriction. Yeah, there's places that have wanted to put in portable shower trailers for people that are maybe living on the streets and would like a shower and can't get access to one. And then they say, well, no, you can't have a portable shower trailer on your property within the city limits.

Why? I don't know, but apparently that's a problem. There's things like, well, you can't serve meals here in this park because of this rule or that rule. And so they change all these things. So there's times where the government needs to actually just allow the church to do the things that the church wants to do to help the poor among us and those that are in need there's other things the government can do to step in and stop things like predatory lending and the rates that pawn shops charge people or title shops where you pawn your title to your vehicle and things like that.

They can reallocate taxes to bring local change for the strengthening of the city. Rather than courting more and more businesses and, and developers to come in, we can help fund and utilize the resources that exist so that they're able to do the things that they have set themselves up to do. And I believe that builds stronger neighborhoods and stronger neighborhoods build stronger cities and nations. Amen. Strong neighborhoods are a good place for strong families.

Without strong families, we don't have a strong nation. Then we also have things like houses of worship, churches and whatnot, where a lot of times we're wondering if they will still continue to allow the status of like, we have no taxation on our land and things like that. But if that changes, it becomes quite a thing. That makes it impossible for many churches to continue the work that we do. And so government still has to pave the way or allow those things to continue taking place.

Sometimes they might even provide land or resources or permitting or building materials and financing for projects that further the mission of the people of God to help those that are in need. The church, in other words, we don't abdicate our responsibilities. All throughout scripture Christ tells us, or the prophets in the Old Testament tell us to take care of people like widows and orphans and aliens among us. The. The Bible tells us that those who are least able to care for themselves, one of the things that we naturally do is we provide care for them.

Part of that isn't just to give handouts perpetually over and over. What we're actually looking for is to help better people, to elevate them to the next level, to get them up to where they're supporting themselves and no longer need that care. And the church wants to do those things. I don't just mean this local church. I mean the church of, of Jesus Christ in general.

We want to do these things. And yet many times the government stands in our way. And yet I see in Nehemiah's day a king that was. Was. We have every reason to think he wasn't a good guy, and yet he was the one that was supporting this.

But then you had those three guys that it mentioned that that stood in the way. As soon as Nehemiah shows up and they find out what he's doing, they start throwing up roadblocks. Again. I am not talking about our country today at all that's sarcasm. There's good things that we want to do, and yet so many times people stand in the way and they say, oh no, we can't do that.

Why? Why not? It's good, it helps people. It's going to further our society, it's going to bring families closer together, it's going to reunite the family unit. I'm sure you guys have noticed that families have been under attack for decades now.

It's not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. I might blame Hollywood and New York for it a little bit, but really we've stood by and allowed it to happen. We've prioritized other things in our lives and in our society and allowed the family unit to falter and to fail. It's considered quite acceptable to say, well, you know, we have this non traditional family. I won't go into all that.

You can figure out any combination of people living together, raising kids that you can think of, they're doing it. And what it ends up boiling down to is there's nothing that we can actually rely on and say, here's what you do to grow a family. And then that family grows up. Especially if they're in church, they're in Christ, they become a Christian, they serve Christ, and then they end up serving their community and it ends up building strong communities and a strong nation. We've seen that eroding away at least the amount of years that I've been alive.

And it's probably dated back further than that. Today's not a sermon on how all that happened, but I do want to mention that that's what's going on. And it's time for the church to stand up and say, I don't care what letter is after the elected officials names, I don't care what party they got elected into or serve or whatever. If they are willing to stand up and to serve the American people who are standing up for the things of God and for families and saying we're going to make strong families and strong Christians in our nation, then I don't care how evil that person might be perceived as we're going to let them do the things that God might have put on their heart because the people of God have spent time in prayer over it. We spent time praying for leaders, whether we like them or not.

And Nehemiah probably didn't like the king, but he had learned how to work with him. And so Nehemiah said, lord, give me success with this man. Today I've got some big, bold requests for him and we're ready to go to work. Nehemiah decided to step into the breach that he had found in the society in Jerusalem. It aroused the anger of those who didn't support what he was doing.

The interesting thing is I see the same spirits alive today. And when I say spirits, I mean demonic spirits. You see, times are different, people are different, nations are different, but there's demonic influences that were at work in Nehemiah's day to oppose the things that he was doing, and those are still alive and well today. The people are different, the issues are a little bit different, but there's demonic spirits that are working to tell people to work against the things of God. Nehemiah, after his time of prayer, after his journey to get there, he.

He shows up and he spends three days observing what is happening. He spent three days just getting the lay of the land in Jerusalem. Nehemiah had made a trip there years before. It was maybe as many as 14 years previous or more. He.

We believe Nehemiah had been in Jerusalem and seen when they had started the rebuilding process of the temple. And then he went back to serve the king. And as he had been doing that all this time, now is where we get to our story, where he gets the report of everything coming to a halt and the city still lying in ruins. And that's where we found him today, just broken before God and before the king. And now he's made this journey back.

He spent three days there kind of refamiliarizing himself with the city of Jerusalem. And as he sees everything that's going on, and then as he spends a nighttime walking around the walls and inspecting them with a few men beside him, he knows what needs to happen. And you know what I find so interesting is he came back and he talked with them. The next morning, he gets a meeting together of all the people, the leaders. He hasn't talked with them yet.

He brings the leaders, he brings people, strong men and boys that are going to be doing the work. And he pulls them together. He says, men, it's time. It is time. Listen, if you need any convincing, here's what God has been doing.

And he tells everything that God has been doing back in the other kingdom where he was serving that king. And he says, here's what God has been doing and here's how why he has brought me here. Now let's get to work. And I imagine there was a shout of joy, a manly shout, deep baritone bass. And it was.

It was just yelling like, yes, is ready. They, these men Were so ready for just someone, anyone, to stand up, to charge into the breach and say, I. I will stand here and I will get in the middle of this place and I will begin the work of rebuilding it. What we'll see in the next couple chapters is that everyone took their spot. Everyone took their place, that they were assigned, even some that had to rebuild that dung gate.

And they were there, and they had to rebuild that, and they took joy and pleasure in it, even when people were fighting against them. You're going to love this. They didn't even have time to wash their clothes. Do you imagine how stinky this was? Like, at the end of a hard day of outside labor, I'm like, I just need a shower.

And, like, different clothes. These guys didn't do it for 51 days. Okay? Like, it's. It was nasty.

Like, no wonder they just kept working, because if they went home, their wives were like, you're staying outside. You know, like, you're not bringing that in here. And so, you know, like, we don't have a mudroom, you know, where you can, like, change and go straight to the shower. Like, you're. You're staying outside for as long as this job's going on.

He's like, that's okay. My shift starts again in three hours anyway. You know, they just work all night. So I'm. I'm supposed to give you an annual report of this church, and I'm going to spend the next, like, four and a half minutes doing that.

So here's my annual report. If you want stats and figures, I will provide them to you. You come talk to me later, and I will get as many things to you as you want. But I will give you a couple of things, a couple numbers of note in the past year in this church. By the way, our fiscal year starts the 1st of March, so that's why it's that time of year.

We had 26 people receive Christ for salvation. Many of those were from our daycare in chapel that Gail holds on Wednesday mornings. And so several of those were adults from here in the congregation. We had five baptisms that I can remember. I don't think we did more than that.

I'm terrible about keeping numbers. So, anyway, that's. But that's a good number for us, you know, that's great. We've had unmeasurable spiritual growth. Like, it's hard to put a number on it, but we've.

I've seen you all growing spiritually, especially those that attend the Bible study at 11 on Wednesdays. Sunday school that we have after the service. We've had a great time every month of having our welcome lunches where we gather in the first week of the month over in the gymnasium and have lunch together. It's a great time for people to get to know one another. I always encourage you to find somebody you didn't know pretty previously or didn't know them well, like you don't know everybody's name that's in here.

So go at least learn their name, maybe where they are from, you know, and just start from there. But it's a great time for that. We've. We build a new sound booth. Pastor Kendall just kind of got it like 90 something percent finished, which in my work history is pretty much 100%.

Like I get it down. I'm the king of 90%, you know what I'm saying? Like I can get jobs 90% finished. And it can sit there for months until somebody nags me enough to finish it. But I know he's going to get it wrapped up on that with the, the drywall and the things like that nature.

But we've got that built. But that's one's visible. But there's countless other projects that we've had to do with repair and maintenance and all those things. Unfortunately, we have a really big looming project. We, we have a roof that kind of got torn up a few months ago with Hurricane Milton and we've had funding issues with insurance and things like that, to put it kindly.

And so we in our board meeting last week decided to start a fundraiser program for that called Raise the Roof. Really cheesy, I know, but we're raising money for the roof and so one of the things that we're doing in that is we started to go fund me on, just online and it was amazing how many people shared that and also how few actually donated to it. I mean it was like a 10 to 1 sharing to donation ratio. It was, I couldn't believe it. It's like thanks for sharing it.

And I want to say now at least put in 10 bucks if you're going to share it, you know. So anyway, I'm just saying for all of you who shared that on Facebook, thank you. Like when you're able to put some money behind it or you know, in the offering market for roof, something like that, that'd be great. We're going to work towards that. God's providing.

I know he is. He already has. We're, we're praying for more of that. If you want numbers, I Got numbers for how much it costs, by the way. I don't want to blasted out there, but it's like 80 to 90,000 there.

I just did so there. But we also had great success in our children's program with the growth and effectiveness of it. I could go on and on about how awesome it is. There's usually eight to 10 kids upstairs, a teenage helper and, you know, and a couple adults that are volunteers in that program as well. But one of the neat things about our children's program that's on Sunday mornings is, is the fact that they are all involved.

They're involved in some aspect. They're. Gail is creating, who happens to be my mom. She's creating leaders out of these kids. They go on usually month or six week, I think, rotations of doing different parts of the service of their kids, church service, and they're all learning all these things.

They collect offerings that they give and that goes, you know, marked for their giving credit and all those things. Some of them have given more than some of you all. So anyway, I'm just throwing that out there, you know, like you're having little kids showing you up just in giving. So. And attendance.

I mean, they're here like every week. So, you know, if you want the kids to be doing better, that's fine. You know, we can start a competition. I don't care. But anyway, we've got a couple things we're going to be doing this year.

And this concludes these last two things can kind of conclude my little report. One of them I talked about is the raise the roof thing. That's obviously a necessity because water eventually will kill the building and anything that we do over there. So that's not good. We can't have that.

But one of the other things we're going to be working on is kind of an overhaul of some of the way our daycare operates because we want to see more. More spiritual fruit out of that. And so we're going to be addressing some of the ways that we operate and some of the things that we do there and address some of our curriculum and just things along that nature. There's a lot more to it, but we're going to be working on that over the next few months. And so these are things that all need your prayers.

Just like Nehemiah spent time in prayer, we need to spend time in prayer. The last thing that's going to be, I'll call it a major initiative of this congregation is what we've called Bless Every Home we have it Usually on the slide scroll and I've talked about it last couple weeks. Bless every home is the opportunity that you have not only to pray for your neighbors that are around you, but also to share life with them, to get to know them, maybe share a meal with them. And eventually the goal is, you know, not just be friends with them, but lead them to the best friend they could ever have, which is Jesus Christ. And so that's part of what we'll do.

We'll have more training and information on that. All of this has to be bathed in prayer. We have some big, bold things that we want to do. Again, time is limited and I don't want to share, like every single detail, but I'd love to talk with you guys about this more about what things we have planned in those areas. But with those things, it doesn't happen without prayer.

It just doesn't. And without prayer, none of these things will ever take place. They won't take root, and nothing good will happen. So what we're doing is we're going to ask that we all join together. We need a time of prayer and fasting for our church.

I propose that the first two weeks of April, we'll sarda sign up. We'll have that out by next week. And what it'll be is we'll break that up for those two weeks into segments that are like four or six hours long. And that you'll take that time to be the one that signed up during those time slots that you'll say, I'm going to spend that time. I'm going to block out my schedule, turn off my phone.

I'm going to spend that time in prayer and fasting for the needs of this church, that we might not only have them provided for, but that we might also go out and be an effective minister in our community to help build our community and our city as our part of building a strong nation for Christ. Amen. So there will be more preparation for that. There will be a sign up for that. But my last thing is basically to say there are breaches in our city, in our community and society, and God is looking for those of us who will charge into the breach.

I believe, like Nehemiah, what he found was that there were people that were ready to do it. They were excited to do it, but they hadn't. They hadn't had somebody step up and say, this is what we're doing. So take that as the conclusion of my report and my sermon that I'm saying, these are the things we're doing. We're working on behalf of our city and our nation, and we're going to stand in the gap and we're going to charge into that breach and say, lord, we know that you are doing something big.

You're doing something here. Amen. Are you willing to take that? Are you willing to take on that role and charge into the breach? It's worth fighting for.

Pastor Kendall's coming up. He's going to close us with that. Stay tuned. We've got more coming.