Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #210 Exploring the Connection Between the Word of God and Revival with Sammy Tippit

Transcript

#210 Exploring the Connection Between the Word of God and Revival with Sammy Tippit · The OneCry Podcast

• 0:01
  We just started quoting the Scripture, and it was like a machine gun.
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  And I want to tell you, the Spirit of God just fell on that place.
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  And people just began to weep under the Word of God.
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  Broken, contrived, repenting. People inside and outside.
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  And when I gave the invitation, scores of people came to know Jesus Christ.
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  And God just showed me the power of His Word.
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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, hello and welcome back to the One Cry Podcast. This week,
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  we are so glad to be able to share with you another episode from our archives of our staff chapels.
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  This week, we're going to share from a dear friend named Sammy Tippett.
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  Sammy has been on our podcast a few times before, and he has shared many of
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  his stories of how God has moved in and through his life.
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  And today, he's going to share with us about the necessity and the centrality
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  of the Word of God in revival movements.
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  He will also share from his personal experience, even dating back to the 70s in the Jesus movement,
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  when God used him mightily in a walk across America sharing the gospel and how
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  the word of God was central to that move.
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  So don't miss a moment.
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  Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and share this with a friend because
• 1:44
  you're not going to want to miss this great story. We'll see you in a few minutes.
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  Let me begin by saying, last year, around this time, I had a group to approach
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  me and ask me to do something, and my first reaction was no.
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  They wanted me to write a Bible commentary, and they wanted it to be done in
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  chronological order, and they were going to—they were an animation group.
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  They were going to create an animation of all I would do is write the scripts.
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  They would create an avatar and then my voice and all of that.
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  So my part would be to write this Bible commentary.
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  And my first response was no, simply because I don't have the time.
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  You know, I've got a lot on my plate right now.
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  And I said, you know, I just don't think that I can do that.
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  You know, I appreciate you asking me. and they said, well, would you pray about
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  it? Well, that's always a dangerous thing.
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  So I prayed about it and asked the Lord if that's what he wanted.
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  And I sensed that maybe something is there, but I still was negative on it.
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  I went to church that Sunday and my pastor stood up and said, you know, I want you,
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  everyone in the church, we've never gone through like the Bible just as a church,
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  straight through for a year. And I want us to do that.
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  And when he said that, it was like the Lord just grabbed me and said,
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  son, you need to be open to this.
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  And so I began to pray about it. And I came back and I said,
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  I was open and I won't go into all the discussions. We had a lot of discussions and.
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  And I went to my board and shared with my board, and they were pretty hesitant.
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  And one of the guys said, Sammy, you're going to have a lot of great opportunities,
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  but you need to do not step into
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  opportunities, but you need to know it's what God has called you to do.
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  And I said, well, that's a good, fair comment, observation.
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  So I went back and I said, God, is this an opportunity or is this a call?
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  Which is a great difference.
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  And the Lord said, this is a call. And it was almost as though I had to do it.
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  It wasn't a matter of an option. Oh, this would be a nice thing to do.
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  It was a matter of you must do this.
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  And so I felt so inadequate. First of all, I'm not a Bible scholar.
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  You know, someone like Richard Owen Roberts would be much better at this than me.
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  And so I said, you know, Lord, I just whatever.
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  And so I surrendered to do that. And the board, once I shared with them that
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  I felt it was a call, then they said, all right, we're on board with this.
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  And so I've been, for the past year, actually just giving myself to writing,
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  praying, studying, and creating videos.
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  Up to this point, I've written 234 scripts, 181 videos that we've made.
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  We've had 91 of those edited, and we've just started.
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  We're going to release this next year in 10 different languages,
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  and we've had our translation teams begin to work on it.
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  But having said all of that, what has gripped me is the Word of God in revival.
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  And the place of the Word of God in revival.
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  And I think back to whenever the Jesus Movement days, when God first,
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  you know, gave me a vision for revival in the nation, was at a revival meeting in Monroe, Louisiana,
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  when God, this little Baptist church where I preached at, you know,
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  25 people and God just moved and we ended up in the Civic Center and the Lord Center revival.
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  And the Lord spoke to my heart and Texas heart and told us to walk across America
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  and call the nation back to the word of God.
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  And we carried, we pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with Bibles, and we carried a
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  big Bible over our heads as we walked.
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  And we would just distribute Bibles, these little New Testaments.
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  And when they'd run out, churches would come and just fill up our wheelbarrow
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  with more Bibles. And we never ran out of Bibles.
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  And we just called the nation back to the Word of God.
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  I remember we walked into a town in Alabama, and as we walked into that town
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  in Alabama, George Wallace, who was running for, I don't know,
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  as governor or president, was holding a rally,
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  and the Lord, they saw us walking through town with this thing, the leaders in.
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  They said, hey, would you come and present Governor Wallace for the Bible?
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  And so the Lord spoke to my heart to do it. But he said, you know, don't stay.
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  And I need to be very careful what I say that this is not a political thing.
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  So they brought me up on the platform. All these people were in town.
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  And I took one of our Bibles and I presented to Governor Wallace.
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  And I said, sir, the answer and the hope for our nation is not in any political
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  leader, any political party. it's in the word of God.
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  And so I want to give you the Bible because this is the hope for America.
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  And I was able to share the word of God with the whole group there.
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  And we had just all along the way, we had those kinds of things happen.
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  And then, you know, I started thinking about this as I started going through
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  the scripture that here in my kind of last season, the Lord has brought me back
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  to where I was in the first season,
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  and that is the Word of God and the place of the Word of God in revival.
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  And when I think of the great revivals that I have experienced over my lifetime, I'm,
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  And in Christian life, the Word of God has been important.
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  When I went to Romania, the Romanian revival, of course, has just been absolutely,
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  you know, the highlight of my life, I think.
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  You know, what I saw and experienced during that revival and being arrested
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  and put out of the country and coming back in and preaching in stadiums all across that nation.
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  But the first time we went in to Romania and I went into the country at the
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  border crossing, the first thing they did was go through our suitcases and our team.
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  We had personal Bibles. We weren't smuggling Bibles in, but we had personal
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  Bibles. And they took our Bibles away from us.
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  So when we went in to preach the word of God, we didn't have any Bibles.
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  And boy, the Lord just convicted my heart. He said, Sammy,
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  this is why all these years back in your early days that I, you know,
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  had you to memorize scripture and that, you know, the word is in your heart.
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  And so we would go in whenever I would go in. I would never have a Bible.
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  I would only preach from the word that was in my heart.
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  And we saw God move mightily. And I'll just give you one example,
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  and then I want to go to the Scripture.
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  Here. But I was in Timmy Schwadah. Timmy Schwadah is where the revolution took place.
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  And it was actually just a couple of years before the revolution took place there.
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  I was preaching at First Baptist Church of Timmy Schwadah on Sunday morning.
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  And that church and I have, we've had this relationship for so many years and
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  a very close knit relationship with my family and the church.
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  And I was preaching that morning and it was dead, which is really unusual.
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  I mean, but it was dead. And I could tell nobody was really interested.
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  I mean, the church was packed, people were outside, but no one was really listening.
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  And I could tell they were daydreaming.
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  And the Lord just spoke to my heart and said, quit preaching your sermon and
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  just quote the Scripture.
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  And of course, my translator, he had memorized many books of the Bible.
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  He knew more than I did. And so we just started quoting the Scripture,
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  and it was like a machine gun.
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  And I want to tell you, the Spirit of God just fell on that place.
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  And people just began to weep under the word of God, broken,
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  contrite, repenting, people inside and outside.
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  And when I gave the invitation, scores of people came to know Jesus Christ.
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  And God just showed me the power of his word, the power of his word.
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  And of course, I'm saying all of this, and we must remember all of this is bathed in prayer.
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  It's all emerging from a prayer movement.
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  And, you know, this is one of the things that I think about prayer that we need
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  to really emphasize, and that is
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  that prayer and the Word of God are not necessarily two different things.
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  The Word of God is God speaking to us, and prayers, you know,
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  we talk to God, and it should be both that communion of two hearts,
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  us talking with God and God speaking to us.
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  And that's when real revival takes place.
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  But so anyway, that's sort of my background and where I'm coming from.
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  But I wanted to just read a passage.
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  I tell you this, as I've just gone through the scripture, you know.
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  God has just been reviving my heart, reviving my soul.
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  It's been bread. It's been life. It's been so good.
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  It's been so wonderful. just to go through the scripture and say,
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  God, what do you want to say? And I have to be honest with you.
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  There's some passages that I look and I say, Lord, what in the world are you saying here?
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  I mean, this doesn't make any sense to me.
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  And I've had to go to him, but it's been so good. It's been so good.
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  The Lord has just refreshed my soul, refreshed my heart.
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  And I want to just read something, a passage about one of the great revivals
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  in the Old Testament. And by the way, I'm still in the Old Testament.
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  I'm getting close to the New Testament, but man, I am so looking forward to
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  getting to the New Testament and to getting to the good news.
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  But I want to read to you from 2 Kings chapter 22.
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  And I'm not going to read all this because the names, and it's terrible what's
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  going to come out on the video with me pronouncing some of these names.
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  But I just want to read to you from 2 Kings 22, beginning with verse 1.
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  Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem.
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  And his mother's name was Jadida, and daughter Adaiya, and Bozak, Bozkath.
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  He did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of
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  his father, David, nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left.
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  Now, basically, here's a kid who becomes king.
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  And as he's growing up, he's trying to do right.
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  He's trying to follow the way of David, you know, his forefather.
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  And so he's trying to do right.
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  But he does something. He sends his secretary over to the temple to actually
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  collect the funds to pay the workers.
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  And so he goes over there to the temple to collect the funds and pay the workers.
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  And while he's there talking to the high priest, he discovers that the law of the Lord,
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  the book of the law, has been lost and is found there, there in the tabernacle. So there it is.
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  And so here he is, he brings back, the secretary brings back to Josiah the book of the law.
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  Now, if you read kind of at the beginning here, you know, it sounds like,
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  okay, everything's fine.
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  You've got a king. He's a good man. He's trying to do what's right.
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  He's trying to follow the ways of David and the way he did things.
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  But when you dig deeper and you look into the scripture, you find there was a lot of junk,
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  a lot of garbage, a lot of idol worship, a lot of.
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  Just perversion that's underneath in the lives of the people and the lives of
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  the community and the whole community, there's just a lot of junk.
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  You've got a place of worship.
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  People are giving. Actually, even the workers were so filled with integrity
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  that they didn't say, you know, no need for an account.
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  We know these guys. I mean, these guys are honest.
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  So there were a lot of good things there, but underneath it was a lot of darkness.
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  And I really think that's a good description of the church today.
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  And what happened was that the book of the law had been lost.
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  And as they're in the temple, they discover this document, and they bring it out.
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  And so the secretary comes and reads it to Josiah.
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  And when he reads it to Josiah, Josiah is just totally broken,
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  just broken. He tears his robes. He weeps.
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  He's in repentance because he realizes as he looks at the law and he looks at
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  the law of God, he sees, wow, we have strayed so far.
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  We are so far away from this.
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  And he's broken and repentant. And so what he does is he goes and he let me just read in chapter 23.
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  He makes a covenant. In chapter 23, it says, Then the king sent,
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  and they gathered to him all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
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  And the king went up to the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah and all
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  the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests and the prophets and
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  all the people, both small and great.
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  And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant,
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  which was found in the house of the Lord.
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  And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after him
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  And to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his
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  heart and all his soul to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book,
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  and all the people entered into the covenant.
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  So what happens is he enters into this covenant, and he calls the people to
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  enter into this covenant to walk in obedience to this book. I'll see you next time.
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  Found the book, read the book. He was broken.
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  God changed his heart with all of his heart, all of his soul, with everything.
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  He surrendered to say, Lord, I want to follow you. I want to obey you.
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  I want to keep this covenant.
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  And then he puts it into practice.
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  You keep reading, and they tear down all of the places that were idol worship.
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  They go and they remove all of these things and they begin to walk with God.
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  And it concludes kind of with a Passover. He has a Passover and the scripture
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  says that with all the kings,
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  there was none with such a great celebration of the Passover as what happened under Josiah.
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  So what ended up happening was the worship of God.
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  And it resulted in great worship, worshiping the Lord.
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  And so what I think I want to share with you and what was on my heart is basically this.
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  You know, I remember Richard Owen Roberts talking about, you know,
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  word-centered revival so much, and there have been word-centered revivals,
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  and we talk about experience-oriented revivals, and like Wells was perhaps more
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  of an experience-oriented revival.
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  But one thing, in that Welsh revival, underneath, there was an underpinning of the Word of God.
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  The people knew the Word of God. Their experience was rooted in the Word of God.
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  The Romanian revival, God moved mightily, but it was rooted in the word of God.
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  Incredible changes took place. And so what I'm saying is I really believe as I walk this journey,
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  as I'm going through what I'm going through right now, the necessity of the word of God in revival.
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  And the power of the Word of God in revival.
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  It's the Word of God that's going to cut into the hearts of people, like it did King Josiah.
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  It's the Word of God that's going to open people's hearts to the truth,
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  not just a great, funny-feeling experience, but it's the Word of God that's going to penetrate.
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  And I think that it begins with the Word of God in prayer, because one of the
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  things that, you know, for me personally at this particular moment has been,
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  you know, I've been approaching this not as a ministry.
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  I've been approaching this. And as a matter of fact, this is what I told the board.
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  I told the board, I said, if I don't do this for anyone else,
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  I feel like God's telling me to do it for me. I need this.
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  And I said, you know, I just feel like God's calling me to go through this,
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  dig into the word, apply it to my life.
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  And if nobody else, if I write this up, I do this, and I do it only for one
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  person, that one person is me,
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  then I want to do this because I want the Word of God to, this season of my
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  life, I want God to do this deep work in my life.
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  And so I think it begins with us praying the Word.
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  Praying the Word back to God, going through the Word, and then allowing God
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  to take the Word and make it a reality.
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  I think that this is the difference in Josiah and so many others,
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  is that when he heard the Word, he didn't just embrace it, he let it change
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  him, and he acted upon it.
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  And so what we need is we need a revival of where the Word of God penetrates our heart,
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  breaks us, brings us to brokenness and repentance, not repenting because,
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  oh boy, we've messed up bad and, you know, but because we've seen his holiness.
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  We've seen his holiness. And because we've seen him in his holiness,
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  we are broken. And we say, oh God, I am so, so far away.
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  Make me more like Jesus.
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  Lord, create in me a new heart, a fresh heart, a clean heart.
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  Do that work in me. Keep digging. Keep digging. As I go through it, dig more, dig more.
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  And Lord, just do whatever you want to do within my life.
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  So I just wanted to encourage you with that word, the word of the Lord.
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  It was like a treasure chest that King Josiah found.
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  And he opened it. It was a document, and the document changed his life.
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  And God's given us a treasure chest, treasure of the word of God.
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  And let's open it, not just to preach to others, but to say,
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  God, do a work in me, do a work in me.
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  Lord, let me, I want to look at your word and I want to,
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  I want you to just expose in my heart anything that's not like you and then
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  make me more like you. And oh, the grace of God.
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  Oh, the wonderful grace of God that will be applied to our hearts.
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  And that's what revival is, is when God's grace just transforms us and makes
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  us all that He wants to be.
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  So thank you so much for allowing me to share with you.
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  Well, isn't it exciting to hear about how God has used His Word in the lives
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  of so many people and to bring people into a relationship with Himself?
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  When Sammy shared about his walk across America and how God used him carrying
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  a wheelbarrow full of Bibles, handing those out, and even having an opportunity
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  to hand one to the governor, it was pretty amazing.
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  But then hiding God's word in his heart and having to preach from memory because
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  his Bibles were taken when he went across the border in Romania.
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  How God used that word that was planted in his heart to lead many to salvation
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  and to break them and bring them to repentance.
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  It's a powerful, powerful story. So the question is, have you been hiding God's word in your heart?
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  Have you heard from him lately? And do you feel like your prayers are bouncing off of the rooftop?
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  That may be because you have allowed things in your heart and life which have
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  hindered the process of you understanding and hearing Him.
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  Or maybe you have allowed the time and the Word to slip away because it so easily
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  gets deprioritized in our schedule because of so many other things in our busy lives.
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  Why not today surrender afresh to the Lord and invite Him to come and speak to you through His Word?
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  Open His Word, spend some extended time in the Bible and seek God's face.
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  Allow Him to speak to you, to marry prayer and His Word together,
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  and to do amazing things in and through your heart and life as you surrender to Him.
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  We're so thankful for Sammy, so thankful for him sharing, and we're thankful
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  for you listening. Would you do us a favor?
• 25:22
  Could you forward this podcast to a friend, share it with others,
• 25:26
  and subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode?
• 25:30
  Also, you can share with us if this impacted your heart and life.
• 25:34
  If any episode of the One Cry podcast has, tell us your story.
• 25:39
  We would love to hear that. That encourages all of those who are involved with
• 25:43
  producing this podcast, our hosts, and the One Cry movement.
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  So we are praying that God does a great work in your life through this tool.
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  Would you pray that God uses this ministry and this movement to make himself known around the world?
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  God is good, and he loves you. Thanks for joining us.
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  Music.