Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #155 The Presence Centered Life (7 - Restored with the Presence of God)

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#155 The Presence Centered Life (7 - Restored with the Presence of God) · The OneCry Podcast

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  Music.
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  And how they will position themselves. They will either allow things to move
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  toward ruin or they'll be a part of seeing things rebuilt.
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  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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  Well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us today.
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  I think you're going to be really challenged and blessed.
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  And I'm here, Bill Eliff, with my buddy, Kyle Reno.
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  What's up, buddy? We're going to look at an awesome passage.
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  Good to see you, my man. And as always, you know, you're a handsome guy, by the way.
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  Oh, watch it now. People are probably just listening to this, and they can't see.
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  Oh, boy. All that, but they can't see my side, and that's a good thing.
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  I think we both got looks made for radio, so we're on. We do. We totally do.
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  Hey, listen, before we get started, I want to say to people two things.
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  Number one, we're featuring a book that you can get at OneCry.com,
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  The Essential Presence, and I think it'll be a help to you.
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  And it goes right along with what we're talking in this series And then secondly,
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  I want to encourage you You know, if you're like me,
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  You pick up podcasts and you listen to as much as you can.
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  Honestly, the best part of most podcasts comes at the end because all the things
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  are weaving together and the conclusions and the applications are coming.
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  So you may have to, you know, duck out of a podcast 10 minutes in.
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  But I want to encourage you, even if you do, to come back and listen to the
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  whole thing. If you can listen to all of it.
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  And our podcasts are usually not more than about 15 or 20 minutes long regarding the teaching of that.
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  And I just hope you stay to the end, particularly today.
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  It's going to be important and really good.
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  So, Kyle, there are places that are just special to me. I think of them right
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  now, you know, walking into my mother's home, coming home from college.
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  Oh, my goodness. And she always would have stuff cooking.
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  You know, I would go to my granddad's house and and my my great aunt Roxy knew
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  how to make fried pies that just make you want to slap your brother.
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  Somebody needs to get slapped.
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  But there are special places, and you're going to talk to us a bit about that today.
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  Yeah, I think in light of that, like right now, real time, we got a home that
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  we've been remodeling and stuff.
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  And I got a guy that is taking, when Katie and I got engaged,
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  if you remember this, in Little Rock, Arkansas, where we grew up,
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  Gardendale, Alabama area.
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  We had a swing during our our dating like
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  a place in a park a literal wooden swing
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  and uh come on guys i'm gonna help you
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  out and if you're gonna get engaged one day i'm gonna raise the bar here i went
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  to the city of gardendale and bought that swing that had our initials carved
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  in it oh and brought it and brought it to little rock for her to sit on when
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  i asked her to marry me yeah so we've had let me just say this right properly
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  but you had your initials illegally legally carved upon.
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  Yeah. Hey, I bought the swing, okay?
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  It may have been more of the Lord redeeming his reputation with me buying that
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  thing. Yeah, but that's cool because it meant something. That spot meant something.
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  Well, and here's what I'm saying. We're getting it sanded and stained and around
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  that little spot, and we're hanging it again at our new home.
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  You talk about a special place, Katie.
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  We'll go and sit on that swing and, you know, pray and believe and laugh and talk about the kids.
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  And so there's just places that are meaningful.
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  And I would hope.
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  In your spiritual life, you got some holy ground places, you know,
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  that you got places that I know, Bill, man, that you got places where God's
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  met you in a profound way. Absolutely.
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  Forever marked. I went back. Katie's grandmother turned 90 years old and we
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  went back to Gardendale First Baptist Church where I'd come across at their old sanctuary.
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  And I walk. We get me crying now. I walked my kids into that old sanctuary,
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  took them around to the right side altar and said, Hey, right there, your dad was born again.
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  I was born again right there. That's a holy ground place.
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  And listen, it's not necessarily the place that makes it special,
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  but it is the person you meet with there.
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  And that it can be marked with his presence.
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  And so here's the truth.
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  Those places in our life and maybe places that have never been that can be places
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  that don't have a sense of God's presence too.
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  There's, there's, there's, if there's
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  the tangible sense, there's also the counter to that, the absence of.
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  You know, and they're in redemptive history, man, you specifically,
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  I think in the old Testament, you see these moments with Israel where God removes
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  his hand, you know, or he removes this tangible sense of his presence.
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  But there's always this restorative heart that God is wanting his people to turn.
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  And Bill's led so awesome through this whole series about the essential presence
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  of God. There's our cooperation.
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  If we'll cooperate, if we'll cooperate, if we'll lean in, if we'll repent, if we'll turn.
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  And so I want to give you just one section of thought in Ezekiel chapter 36. Okay.
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  And Ezekiel 36, there's so much more than I can give you in this one podcast.
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  You've got famous verses about I'll give you a new heart. I'll put my spirit within you.
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  You've got Ezekiel 37, you know, Valley of Dry Bones, which I know there's some
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  specific things to people.
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  It's not us, but there's principles of the kingdom there.
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  There's ways that God works all throughout these passages.
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  And so I want to just paint a picture for you in Ezekiel 36,
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  starting in verse 33, that I hope will build your faith for what God wants to
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  do in those places of your life. Maybe it's your home.
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  Maybe it's the atmosphere of your workplace. Maybe it's your church.
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  And so what I'm going to assume for a second here is like where it starts in
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  verse 33. It says, Thus says the Lord God, On the day I cleanse you from all your iniquities.
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  Basically, on the day when you return, on the day that you repent,
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  on the day that you get desperate and you mourn over your sin,
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  he says, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places shall be rebuilt.
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  He's saying, he's painting a picture physically, but also spiritually.
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  And I know some of this is future oriented, but here's just who God is and how
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  he works. that if you'll turn those places that are barren, I'll bring back.
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  Those places that are hollow, I'll breathe life into. Man, those places that
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  are broken, I'll restore.
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  No matter what that place is, what that city's like, man, what that church is
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  like, maybe what that family is like, if you'll position yourself over time
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  with the right heart, I will really move.
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  He says, the land that was desolate shall be tilled. Instead of being desolate,
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  that it was in the sight of all who passed by, they will say the land that was
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  desolate has become, and here's the picture, like the Garden of Eden.
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  Read from the ESV right here. It says it was desolate. Now it's going to be like the Garden of Eden.
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  Well, what made the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden, God's presence.
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  What made the Garden of Eden the Garden of Eden was the nearness of God.
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  And I think what you got in this moment, prophetic moment, is a picture of God
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  is going to make himself known again among his people.
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  And here's the promise for those places in your life. That's your home.
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  That's in your city. I'm believing those things in our city right now,
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  those things that look like ruin that God would restore,
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  those things that are moving toward just a terrible trajectory toward the future
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  that God would, in a transcendent way, make His presence known and restore right there.
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  Verse 36 says, the nations that are left around you will know that I am the
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  Lord, that I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that that which was desolate.
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  I am the Lord. I have spoken. I will do it.
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  The Lord says, I'm going to do something in such a way, as you've cleansed yourself
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  of your iniquity, as I've washed you clean, I'm going to do it in such a display
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  that the watching world would go, man, God is real.
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  Man, the power of God is being known and displayed in this place,
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  in this church, in this city.
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  Man, the power of God's being displayed in this family.
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  Man, in revivals of the past, what the marker has been, often God has come.
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  Man, God has come. Even the secular world would recognize something's different.
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  And we can look back as recent as the Jesus revolution,
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  the Jesus movement, and nobody can deny, man, there's something more happening
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  here among a generation that's restoring people from this drug epidemic,
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  sexual confusion, and political unrest, that God is renewing a society as a
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  whole, that he's bringing about.
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  And I've got, in my heart, I think every generation has a decision in how they
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  will position themselves,
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  that they will either allow things to move toward ruin, move toward ruin,
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  or they'll be a part of seeing things rebuilt.
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  To get back to what God intended for people and for society,
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  for future generations.
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  And I think there's a promise here for us to believe for specific places.
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  God placed you in the city you're in.
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  God placed you in the church you're in. God placed you in the family you're in.
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  God placed us in the moment we're in, in redemptive history,
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  to believe for the fullness of His presence and power to be displayed.
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  And I love when He says, man, and when I'm doing all that, verse 37,
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  thus says the Lord God, This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do
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  for them to increase their people like a flock.
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  What he's saying is, I love other translations, saying, I will let them ask,
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  I will hear, and I will answer.
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  That there's something about in a moment when people are rightly positioned
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  and God is making himself known, like the Garden of Eden, that He'll let us ask and He will answer.
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  And this, He said, will you increase our numbers like a flock?
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  And I believe it's so right. Lord, would you allow us to see you reproduce the
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  work of the kingdom and Christ's followers over and over and over and over and over again?
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  Would you let us see more people in your house, in your presence, as a part of your work?
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  He said, like the flocks for sacrifice, like the flock at Jerusalem during her
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  appointed feast, so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of people.
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  Then they will know again that I am the Lord.
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  Not that they'll know that you got a great pastor or you got the next great leader.
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  No, that they will see such a tangible work of restoration, such a tangible
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  work of God's manifest presence among the people.
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  That they'll go, he's real.
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  That the Lord is real. He's at work. He is doing things in our day.
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  So I just want to encourage you today.
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  The essential need of our day is a manifest move of God's presence among His
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  people in cities all over our nation, in churches over and over again,
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  until the flock of God is growing, growing, increasing.
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  And so I'll just beckon you to believe.
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  And so for our listeners here today, as we're wrapping up right here,
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  what's God saying to you?
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  What places of belief do you not have in your life right now?
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  What places do you need to return from and be restored in?
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  Maybe let's do this. Let's just pray for a minute. Why don't we finish this
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  episode with a sincere cry to the Lord?
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  Why don't we ask him, Lord, where's the ruins that I live in right now?
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  Maybe it's tied to your own family. Ask him.
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  Say, Lord, show me any places that need restoration in my city,
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  places that your presence is just not being known right now.
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  Ask him for your church.
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  I ask the Lord to help you get in the right posture to see an outpouring.
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  Ask Him to hear our prayers again.
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  So, Lord, I thank you. I thank you for your word that paints a picture of places that are marked by God.
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  And I am asking for every concentric circle of every listener right now and
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  others that you will bring this podcast to, that they will believe for the restorative work of God,
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  that God, you would be made known like the Garden of Eden, like your presence
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  so tangible in families and homes and workplaces, God,
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  in churches and cities,
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  Lord, that people would see things that are dead brought to life,
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  God, things that are broken, renewed, Lord, God, that you'd raise up the streets of future generations,
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  God, that you would restore holistically.
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  So, Lord, help us to believe who you've always been is who you still are,
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  and you desire to work in these powerful ways.
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  And I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
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  Well, as always, we are humbled that you'd give us a few minutes.
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  And man, this series has been powerful on the essential presence.
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  Bill said earlier, man, I hope you've hung in here with us to the end.
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  And I would encourage you, if you have, and maybe you just jumped to this episode
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  because something struck you in the title on it, go back and listen to all the
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  episodes and then for sure share it with somebody. There's great resources on
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  the OneCry website that can help you in your journey with God.
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  And I just encourage you, man, keep moving with us as we move toward Him,
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  believing for what God is doing and desires to do. And we look forward to seeing you next time.
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  Music.