Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #228 Times of Harvest: Bigger Prayers, Bolder Witness, Focused Mission
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker1: I walk into the room just with faith, believing somebody's here that Jesus wants to save today.
- 0:12Speaker1: And because of that, I'm going to invite them to him.
- 0:18Speaker1: I'm not inviting them to me.
- 0:20Speaker1: I'm going to engage in what God is doing in this moment.
- 0:24Speaker1: I do, man. In the harvest time, I think people just start anticipating this
- 0:30Speaker1: saving work of Christ in the lives of people.
- 0:33Speaker0: Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
- 0:39Speaker0: The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
- 0:48Speaker1: Well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast. I'm Kyle Reno with Bill Eliff.
- 0:54Speaker1: We are humbled that you would give us a few minutes to listen to us talk about
- 0:59Speaker1: things that are in our heart, man, that God has done and is doing.
- 1:04Speaker1: And man, Bill, I know you're fired up about today. You're always fired up.
- 1:08Speaker0: I stay pretty revved up all the time.
- 1:16Speaker0: I'll be kind of revved up, and then I'm 74, so then there's this moment where the rev is just gone.
- 1:26Speaker1: Then you rest.
- 1:28Speaker0: And I have to re-rest to rev again.
- 1:33Speaker1: Yeah, you only rest to be revved again. That's why I call you the river.
- 1:38Speaker0: But I'm pretty fired up about this because I think this is something today that
- 1:45Speaker0: we're going to talk about that everyone listening really needs to pay attention to. Yeah.
- 1:52Speaker0: Because we're going to talk about, you know, what they need to do,
- 1:56Speaker0: what we need to do in a very critical time.
- 1:59Speaker1: Yeah, well, I would just launch us into it. You know, Bill, I think that we
- 2:04Speaker1: could sit here and just bounce off stories because of connections to people
- 2:08Speaker1: we know around our nation.
- 2:10Speaker1: If we broaden it to the nations, the Lord is drawing people to himself right now.
- 2:15Speaker1: I mean, people are being saved, I think, at a at a clip that we have not seen
- 2:20Speaker1: in a long time, you know, in a way.
- 2:22Speaker1: And and I know we've talked to you've heard and even our listeners heard even
- 2:27Speaker1: before this about what happens when harvest comes.
- 2:31Speaker1: And so I think today to just start the conversation, you know,
- 2:36Speaker1: when a move of God begins, it demands adjustments.
- 2:40Speaker1: It demands adjustments for us personally in the life of the leader,
- 2:45Speaker1: for the church organization, the people of God.
- 2:48Speaker1: So, man, I know that you got some thoughts around things that we need to think
- 2:52Speaker1: well about when we find ourself in harvest time. So take us there.
- 2:57Speaker0: Yeah. You know, Kyle, I was thinking about this, that God is always leading people to himself.
- 3:04Speaker0: I mean, people are always being saved. And it hit me one time,
- 3:07Speaker0: I was thinking about the city that I live in that, you know,
- 3:12Speaker0: I'm so focused as a pastor.
- 3:15Speaker0: I've been so focused on my church that I had the privilege to lead for many
- 3:19Speaker0: years. And Kyle, you led.
- 3:23Speaker0: But in our whole city, when you think about the number of people on any given
- 3:28Speaker0: week that are coming to Christ, it's a bigger number. Well, there's always some harvest going on.
- 3:37Speaker0: But there are these moments and seasons when God sends a revival to his church
- 3:44Speaker0: that leads to what we call a spiritual awakening.
- 3:47Speaker0: And that's different. That's the extraordinary movement of God producing extraordinary results.
- 3:54Speaker0: And we're in that, we believe, right now. I love what Hosea said in Hosea 6.
- 4:01Speaker0: He said, Judah, there's a harvest appointed for you.
- 4:05Speaker0: There's a harvest appointed for you and and then he says
- 4:08Speaker0: further in that same book so with a
- 4:12Speaker0: view to righteousness reap in accord with kindness
- 4:16Speaker0: in other words how you do this and the way you do this and your part in this
- 4:21Speaker0: is important that's right break up the fall of ground for it's time to seek
- 4:25Speaker0: the lord until he comes to reign righteousness and jesus himself looked up one
- 4:30Speaker0: day, and he said to his disciples,
- 4:33Speaker0: guys, lift your heads up. The harvest is plentiful.
- 4:38Speaker0: The fields are white for harvest. And I think we can truly say, Kyle, right now,
- 4:44Speaker0: across our nation, we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people that are interested
- 4:51Speaker0: in the gospel in a whole new way.
- 4:56Speaker0: So we wanted to take this podcast and Kyle and I just have a,
- 5:03Speaker0: A little conversation about this, about what do you do in times of spiritual
- 5:09Speaker0: harvest, in times of spiritual awakening?
- 5:12Speaker0: And I think one of them, I thought of some things and Kyle, you've got some things.
- 5:18Speaker0: I think number one is you start praying bigger prayers.
- 5:24Speaker0: In other words, what, you know, what got you there keeps you there.
- 5:30Speaker0: And God always precedes times of spiritual awakening with united prayer.
- 5:37Speaker1: That's right.
- 5:38Speaker0: A.T. Pearson, who is Mueller's son-in-law and biographer, said there's never
- 5:44Speaker0: been a nationwide revival without united prayer.
- 5:48Speaker0: Never in history. And this is true. So we've seen this, and we've seen this rising tide of prayer.
- 5:55Speaker0: But you know what's happening to me, Kyle? Well, I'm praying bigger prayers.
- 6:00Speaker1: That's right.
- 6:01Speaker0: I just see that there's a spiritual receptivity.
- 6:05Speaker0: I'm hearing these reports about what's happening among college students,
- 6:10Speaker0: particularly in Jet Z and the remarkable rise of spirituality.
- 6:15Speaker0: Even the even the Charlie Kirk assassination and the openness to the gospel
- 6:23Speaker0: that that has accelerated just makes me realize God's up to something here.
- 6:32Speaker0: And and I can pray bigger prayers with greater faith. Yeah.
- 6:37Speaker1: Well, I think people we have to recognize the moment we're in.
- 6:41Speaker1: That I believe that the painting in our nation for hope
- 6:48Speaker1: For a purpose, I think that in the unbeliever right now, we've tried so many
- 6:56Speaker1: things for decades now to find life from sexual sexuality, the pursuit of different things,
- 7:03Speaker1: drugs and different variations thereof, you know, that all the technological
- 7:08Speaker1: advancements and all it's done is left us void. It's left us empty.
- 7:14Speaker1: And so I think you're seeing people embrace the fact there has to be more. And maybe it's him.
- 7:22Speaker1: Maybe it's him. And so because of that, what you said, it should lend itself
- 7:27Speaker1: to praying like we've never prayed before.
- 7:31Speaker1: I got a thought, Bill. You can theologically correct me here on this.
- 7:36Speaker1: I know the Lord can save anyone at any point. Right. The sovereign work of God.
- 7:42Speaker1: Understand that. I just I wonder.
- 7:45Speaker1: I wonder how many people are actually saved that were not first prayed for.
- 7:50Speaker1: You know, it just sure seems to me the only other side of somebody's salvation
- 7:56Speaker1: was a people, a person, a church that was stretching their hands out and believing for that neighbor,
- 8:04Speaker1: co-worker, you know, for their city.
- 8:07Speaker1: Like, I'm that. I'm the answer to that. You're that.
- 8:10Speaker1: I mean, you had parents, you had great grandparents, you had coaches and family members.
- 8:16Speaker1: And so what I would say to us to agree in an advanced way, expedited way to
- 8:22Speaker1: have that Romans 10 one, it's my heart's desire and prayer that for that everyone would be saved.
- 8:28Speaker1: And so pray big.
- 8:32Speaker0: Yeah, I was just looking here in my notes for a quote, and I can't pull it up real quickly, but E.M.
- 8:41Speaker0: Bounds said that God has bound himself to the law of prayer.
- 8:49Speaker0: Wow. And there's some things he simply will not do unless we pray.
- 8:53Speaker0: And so if we are a prayerless people, then we are going to receive less than what God intended.
- 9:04Speaker0: And when you think about this in the big picture, you realize that God has an agenda.
- 9:11Speaker0: And it's not only to get his work
- 9:13Speaker0: done, it's also to raise up a kingdom people. And so he's training us.
- 9:21Speaker0: And if we don't get it, in other words, we don't realize you can't do this without
- 9:27Speaker0: talking to me and without abiding in me.
- 9:32Speaker0: If you abide in me, you'll bear much fruit. If you don't abide in me,
- 9:37Speaker0: you can accomplish nothing.
- 9:39Speaker0: This is just a fact. So, and he says, if you abide in me and my word,
- 9:45Speaker0: what I'm saying abides in you, then ask whatever you will and it will be done.
- 9:51Speaker1: Yeah.
- 9:51Speaker0: So anyway, as we're coming into this season, we think of revival and spiritual awakening.
- 9:59Speaker0: We should pray bigger prayers. Now, here's another one, number two,
- 10:03Speaker0: that I think we ought to do during a time of harvest. And that is,
- 10:08Speaker0: we should have a bolder witness, just a bolder witness.
- 10:15Speaker0: There's something about the fact that if I don't think,
- 10:19Speaker0: People are interested in the gospel.
- 10:21Speaker0: If I don't think they're going to be saved, it just shuts you down.
- 10:27Speaker0: But if you walked into a place where the
- 10:33Speaker0: season was telling you and the evidence was telling you the people all around
- 10:41Speaker0: you are dramatically and unusually interested in what you have to say.
- 10:49Speaker1: Mm hmm.
- 10:50Speaker0: Then it creates greater boldness. Yeah. And, you know, Paul always prayed for
- 10:56Speaker0: this. It's interesting.
- 10:57Speaker0: I look through study one time, all of his prayers. He'd say, pray for me.
- 11:02Speaker0: He never he never said, pray for me that I'd get out of this problem or pray
- 11:07Speaker0: for me that I'd have more money or pray for me.
- 11:10Speaker0: Even that I get well, you know, what he always asked was pray for boldness and
- 11:17Speaker0: pray that God would open my mouth and give me utterance.
- 11:23Speaker0: Yeah. So I told in another podcast
- 11:27Speaker0: that my brother Jim's experience that in a 30 day trip out west in.
- 11:34Speaker0: Every day and sometimes three and four times a day, he would have opportunity to share the gospel.
- 11:41Speaker0: And he said the receptivity was so evident.
- 11:45Speaker0: And this is what Jim, Jim and I were both in the Jesus movement in the late 60s, early 70s.
- 11:52Speaker0: Jim said to me, Bill, what makes me think we're in a time of spiritual awakening
- 11:57Speaker0: is what I'm experiencing in
- 11:59Speaker0: personal witnessing. And it's just like it was during the Jesus movement.
- 12:05Speaker0: That same type of receptivity.
- 12:08Speaker1: Amen.
- 12:09Speaker0: Doesn't that just give you hope? I just, and it makes me want to go out and
- 12:14Speaker0: talk to everybody about Christ.
- 12:16Speaker1: That's what you just said, Acts 4, 29. And now, Lord, look upon their threats
- 12:22Speaker1: and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.
- 12:27Speaker1: You know, Bill, I've noticed even personally convictional that the Lord keeps
- 12:31Speaker1: calling me to places of rightly believing His saving work in the lives of people,
- 12:37Speaker1: that I just get to be a part of it.
- 12:39Speaker1: And I think a lot of times the way in which I cowardly engage,
- 12:43Speaker1: even in preaching and offering an opportunity for people to receive the free
- 12:48Speaker1: gift of salvation, has more to do with my wrong belief in who God is and what
- 12:53Speaker1: He's desiring to do in life a person.
- 12:55Speaker1: So I just found the Lord saying, Kyle, just be courageous, be courageous and
- 13:00Speaker1: trust me to do. And I'm telling you, we've watched this here.
- 13:04Speaker1: And I have in the Lord's done this in me. I know this is true in you that I
- 13:09Speaker1: walk into the room just with faith, believing somebody's here that Jesus wants to save today.
- 13:15Speaker1: And because of that, I'm going to invite them to him.
- 13:20Speaker1: I'm not inviting them to me.
- 13:23Speaker1: I'm going to engage in what God is doing in this moment.
- 13:27Speaker1: I do mean in a harvest time. I think people just start anticipating this saving
- 13:33Speaker1: work of Christ in the lives of people.
- 13:35Speaker0: You know, I've said this before, this story, but Samuel Davies,
- 13:42Speaker0: who was the president of Princeton during the First Great Awakening,
- 13:46Speaker0: and they called him the Apostle of Virginia.
- 13:48Speaker0: And Davey said that before the revival, he said humble pastors would preach
- 13:56Speaker0: faithfully the word of God and see very little, just minimal results.
- 14:02Speaker0: And then he said, and then the revival came and the same pastors preached the same message.
- 14:09Speaker0: And on one day, 200 people would be saved.
- 14:14Speaker0: And I'll never forget the statement that was in the book on revival.
- 14:21Speaker0: He said, the gospel became almighty and carried everything before it.
- 14:27Speaker0: A great statement. And I think that's what we're seeing right now.
- 14:32Speaker0: I mean, you're seeing, particularly on college campuses, you're seeing hundreds of students.
- 14:39Speaker0: Who boldly are sharing their faith.
- 14:42Speaker0: I have friends down at Waco at Baylor, and they've got a whole group of students
- 14:48Speaker0: that just their whole agenda is to go out in the afternoons and walk around
- 14:53Speaker0: the common areas and just tell people about Christ.
- 14:57Speaker0: And I was birthed in that kind of environment in the Jesus movement.
- 15:02Speaker0: I mean, we would go to malls and just walk through the mall and talk to people
- 15:06Speaker0: about Christ. And what was crazy is people were unbelievably receptive.
- 15:13Speaker0: And so I think it's the bold witness and the bold faith of people,
- 15:19Speaker0: but it's also God working on the other end, preparing hearts that are ready to receive.
- 15:27Speaker0: And so in a time of harvest, there needs to be bigger prayers.
- 15:31Speaker0: There needs to be bolder witness.
- 15:33Speaker0: Let me mention another thing. I think in a time of harvest, of spiritual awakening,
- 15:40Speaker0: there needs to be a ruthless focus on what we're doing, on harvest time, right?
- 15:47Speaker0: So, you know, there are a lot of things that we can do that are fine to do and
- 15:53Speaker0: important to do that we can spend our time doing,
- 15:57Speaker0: and the Lord will be pleased and the Lord will be blessed, but not during harvest time.
- 16:03Speaker0: You know, during harvest time, you stay in the field, you get up,
- 16:08Speaker0: you get in there early, you stay till late.
- 16:11Speaker0: I remember, Kyle, you remember that in 2011, when God just sat down in our church
- 16:19Speaker0: and in a normal service, and it went till three o'clock that afternoon.
- 16:25Speaker0: And then we came back the next night, it was packed. And that went for five
- 16:28Speaker0: weeks every night, three and four hours a night. and one of the most um.
- 16:38Speaker0: Spontaneous, unplanned movements of God I've ever been a part of.
- 16:44Speaker0: And one of our staff members came to me the second week. He was a young guy,
- 16:49Speaker0: and he worked with our students.
- 16:52Speaker0: And he just said, hey, don't you think we need to kind of stop these nightly
- 16:56Speaker0: meetings and have our regular youth meeting?
- 17:01Speaker0: And I understood what he was saying, but I just said to him,
- 17:05Speaker0: look, you may never see this kind of harvest again in your life.
- 17:10Speaker0: And we're going to go with the flow. We're just going to put our hands to the harvest.
- 17:15Speaker0: And we were seeing many, many people come to Christ every night.
- 17:19Speaker0: And most of them just walk up and be baptized in their street clothes.
- 17:24Speaker0: And they were coming off the streets to be baptized.
- 17:28Speaker0: I mean, it was an amazing moment. I think God just giving me personally in our
- 17:34Speaker0: church a little picture of what was coming in the days ahead so that we could
- 17:41Speaker0: we could maybe give voice to that a little bit in the ministry the Lord was giving us.
- 17:47Speaker0: So I think I think you need to focus.
- 17:52Speaker1: No, focus. Yeah.
- 17:54Speaker0: Yeah. Turn away. Yeah.
- 17:57Speaker1: Yeah. Well, I think for us, you know, you've been...
- 18:01Speaker1: With us and here, you've heard what God's been doing here.
- 18:04Speaker1: I tell our staff now is the time, which is always true.
- 18:08Speaker1: But I think when the movement of God and when the wind of God is blowing,
- 18:11Speaker1: it's for sure the time to stay on the edge of mission.
- 18:16Speaker1: Just stay on the edge of mission. Just always thinking about the next person
- 18:21Speaker1: that might be ready to receive Christ.
- 18:23Speaker1: I think that's, you know, when you're in that season where the harvest has come,
- 18:28Speaker1: it's not the time to just get busy doing other stuff, you know,
- 18:32Speaker1: like make the decision to stop some things or just pause some things to lean
- 18:39Speaker1: into the moment of harvest in which like, hey, let's,
- 18:41Speaker1: while God is moving in these ways, you know, and you know this,
- 18:45Speaker1: Bill, I mean, like churches can become busy just over time.
- 18:51Speaker1: And the life of the pastor can become. And I know there's a good busy,
- 18:55Speaker1: but then there's just a busy.
- 18:58Speaker1: And at some point you got to say, no, I think personally, I'm going to give
- 19:03Speaker1: time in light of evangelism.
- 19:05Speaker1: As a church, we're going to give time in light of being evangelistic.
- 19:09Speaker1: We're going to make our efforts, and I think we're in that, what your brother shared.
- 19:14Speaker1: There's just interest is there.
- 19:16Speaker1: So lean in and believe big, pray like crazy, be bold, and stay at it.
- 19:24Speaker0: Yeah. You know, I told one of our pastors here of one of our churches, uh,
- 19:31Speaker0: We were talking about this, and I said to him, Jonathan Bergen, I said, Jonathan,
- 19:38Speaker0: things that we have tried in the past in evangelism, maybe, with minimal results,
- 19:45Speaker0: if you feel impressed, I'd try them again now.
- 19:49Speaker0: Now, for instance, all my ministry, I've tried to raise up our people in personal witnessing.
- 19:56Speaker0: So I'd take them through EE, evangelism explosion, or some other training,
- 20:03Speaker0: or the three circles, or whatever it was.
- 20:04Speaker0: Because I wanted our people to be ready to give an account of the hope that was in them.
- 20:09Speaker0: And we do this with great hope that, well, they just go out and start sharing
- 20:13Speaker0: the gospel, and all these people
- 20:15Speaker0: would be saved. But we always saw some results, but minimal results.
- 20:21Speaker0: I'd try that again right now. You know what I'm saying?
- 20:26Speaker0: I just thought to myself the other day, you know, we ought to refresh our people
- 20:32Speaker0: and how to lead people to Christ.
- 20:34Speaker0: And it's not hard. And again, as my brother Jim mentioned, just begin with a
- 20:42Speaker0: sincere statement. You don't have to be fancy.
- 20:45Speaker0: You know, just tell people your own story. God has just changed my life.
- 20:50Speaker0: Has he ever done that for you?
- 20:52Speaker0: No, he hasn't. Can I talk to you about that? And just tell them that they can come to Christ, too.
- 20:58Speaker0: So, you know, we've got some more to talk to about this.
- 21:06Speaker0: But I just feel like maybe we need to stop right here and pray for bigger prayers,
- 21:15Speaker0: bolder witness, and a ruthless focus.
- 21:19Speaker1: Yeah, that's good.
- 21:21Speaker0: Yeah, and just ask him to do something among us and that we would cooperate with him.
- 21:27Speaker0: And Kyle, why don't you lead us into that and lead us all to pray for those things right now.
- 21:37Speaker0: And then we'll come back on another program and finish this up.
- 21:40Speaker1: That'd be great. Well, as we often do, why don't we just, no matter what you're
- 21:44Speaker1: doing, if you're riding in a car or on a run,
- 21:49Speaker1: maybe you're sitting in an office space listening to this let's enter into the
- 21:53Speaker1: presence of God the Father right now through the veil that's been torn blood
- 21:59Speaker1: that's been spilled to the throne room of grace and mercy
- 22:04Speaker1: take a moment recognize that we're there
- 22:09Speaker1: And what I want to ask personally, maybe you want to ask, say,
- 22:14Speaker1: Lord, would you give me your heart for the lost?
- 22:19Speaker1: Why don't you just take a moment and ask the Lord to give you his passion for
- 22:26Speaker1: those that are far from him?
- 22:29Speaker1: Why don't we ask, just in whatever way you want to, that God would give us the
- 22:36Speaker1: courage to pray big prayers.
- 22:40Speaker1: The faith to believe as big as our God on behalf of people that are going to
- 22:48Speaker1: spend eternity somewhere.
- 22:54Speaker1: Maybe take a moment and ask the Lord what things do we need to say no to so
- 23:02Speaker1: that we might be ruthless men in our pursuit of seeing people come home.
- 23:14Speaker1: Let's let's ask the holy spirit to give us boldness
- 23:23Speaker1: so lord i thank you for these things uh that are true in your word that you
- 23:28Speaker1: want to be true right now one you're in pursuit of people right now today you're
- 23:33Speaker1: in pursuit of someone that is lost sheep around every listener today.
- 23:39Speaker1: I pray what you would help us to do is see them like you see them.
- 23:44Speaker1: God, I pray you'd help us to see our cities, our regions, our streets.
- 23:49Speaker1: God, to see the work that you want to unleash, Lord, to see the harvest come.
- 23:55Speaker1: So I pray you'd give us faith, God. We're asking, Lord, while you're doing that,
- 23:58Speaker1: and it seems like interest is piqued in the hearts and minds of far from God
- 24:04Speaker1: people, would you help us to be bold as a lion, Lord?
- 24:08Speaker0: Amen.
- 24:09Speaker1: To be able to look into the eyes of people that you love and have love for them and call them to you.
- 24:16Speaker1: So, God, I pray that boldness would fall on your church and that we would stay
- 24:21Speaker1: focused. God, I pray that this season would rightly reorient your church,
- 24:26Speaker1: every follower of Christ, to the mission of God.
- 24:30Speaker1: And Lord, would you draw in that which would change family lines,
- 24:35Speaker1: generations and nation, our nation and the nations.
- 24:39Speaker1: God, so we pray that, Lord, we're asking more. Do it. Do it in us. Do it today.
- 24:43Speaker1: And God, let the ripple effects change the future. So we ask all these things
- 24:47Speaker1: in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.
- 24:51Speaker0: Amen. Well, Kyle, what an exciting time to talk about and what an exciting time to be in.
- 24:58Speaker0: And there's more we want to discuss about this.
- 25:01Speaker0: So thank you all for joining with us.
- 25:05Speaker0: And I really want to encourage you to dial back in next week and hear the next
- 25:10Speaker0: episode where we'll just continue this discussion.
- 25:14Speaker0: And who knows, man, the most important thing you need to hear in this discussion
- 25:18Speaker0: may be next week. So that's called a teaser right there.
- 25:24Speaker0: And I hope you join us. Hope you tell other people about the One Cry podcast.
- 25:30Speaker0: Get them to listen to this one and then tune in next week too.