A Fresh Revelation | Pastor Luke Barnett

of a testimonial message here today about the goodness of what God has done when He gives a person a God-inspired dream, a God-inspired revelation. I read a story a few years ago about the Los Angeles Times about a girl that was born with only one eye, she had an empty eye socket and as she grew up she became kind of sensitive about this and she was you know just kind of aware of it, aware of it wherever she went and as she grew up her parents spent a lot of money to buy her a prosthetic eye, a fake eyeball and it looked really good, you couldn't tell that it was different unless you got really close but still she was sensitive about this. Well she was 18 years old at the Times reports and she was in the claim jumper restaurant having dinner all by herself and she has a sneezing attack, she begins to sneeze uncontrollably and as she sneezes her eye pops out of the socket, flies over the counter, there's a single guy sneezing there, he reaches out and grabs the eye mid-flight, brings it back over to her, she puts it back in, well they meet and they become friends, they start dating. For a couple years they're going to get married, it's a great story in the Los Angeles Times, you ought to read it and so they're going to see the pastor and the pastor's listening to their story and he says, "You're a beautiful couple, I've got to ask you, how is it that you two met?" and she said, "I don't know a pastor, he just sort of caught my eye, you know." Well I want to talk to you this morning about your vision, about what you are seeing. Whenever a pastor or a leader tries to move people into God's preferred vision for their future, he or she will always quote Proverbs 29-18, famous verse, where there is no vision that people perish, that's in the King James version. How cool is it that a 3,000 year old book of the Bible speaks so clearly to one of the most relevant leadership topics of our day, which is vision. Right now at Ivy League schools, entire courses are being taught about vision, how to get a vision, how to cast a vision, how to share a more inspiring vision and here is Solomon extolling the importance of vision 3,000 years ago. Makes you sort of proud to be a Bible believe in person, doesn't it? Except for one small little detail. What Solomon was talking about 3,000 years ago was a lot different than what the gurus at Ivy League schools are teaching their students today. In fact, when you read this verse in its latest most scholarly translations, the verse is barely recognizable. This is what it says, where there is no revelation, where there is no revelation the people cast

off restraint. So I did some digging to find out what was going on during this time when Solomon wrote this proverb and this was called the prophetic age. Prophets like Eli and Samuel and Nathan were taking their profit rolls very, very seriously. They were living as close to God as they possibly could. And when they got close to God, God would speak to them. I would give them a fresh word, a fresh revelation, a fresh vision for the people. And they were expected to take that fresh word right from God and share it with the people without elaborating on it. Just a straight scoop from God. And if the people received the word from God and heeded the word from God, things went well for the people of God. If they didn't, things didn't go so well. So with that little context of mine, let me read it one more time, where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint. What was Solomon driving at 3000 years ago? He was saying, hey, prophets, if it's your job to live really close to God, so close that you can receive a fresh revelation, a fresh vision from God about the people's future, then do your jobs and do your jobs well. Because if you don't do that, the people are going to cast off restraint, which means they're going to just devolve and do what everybody else in culture does. And usually that devolves into all kinds of bad habits and behaviors. So prophets, make sure you're doing your job and do your job well. Okay, fast forward now to the year 2026. Whose job is it today to live so close to God that they receive a fresh revelation from God about the future? Whose job is it today? Okay, this is not a trick question, right? This is not like this little boy in Sunday school that The teacher asked, "What's brown and furry?" Little boy raises his hand. He sure sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer is Jesus, okay? (congregation laughing) This is not a trick question. That would be your job. And that's my job. Jesus made this clear in John 1027. He said, "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me." Notice all my sheep, not just a certain class of sheep,

not just prophet sheep or pastor sheep, all my sheep. They can now hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit and when they hear it, they ought to heed it. Because that's how I lead my people into their future. So are you hearing the whisper? Are you receiving that fresh revelation from God about your future? Heard a story about a man who became very concerned about his wife's hearing. He felt like she was losing her hearing. So he thought he would just preemptively go to the hearing doctor and talk about this challenge with his wife and her hearing. And so the doctor said, "I want you to go home "and do a little test for me." I want you to stand about 20 feet away from your wife and ask her a question. If she doesn't respond, then move five feet closer. If she doesn't respond, go five feet closer. I want to see how far this loss of hearing has progressed. So the man goes home. He sees his wife in the kitchen, she's cooking. And he says, "Hey, dear, what's for dinner?" And there's no response. So he goes five feet closer, "Honey, what's for dinner?" There's no response. He goes, "Yeah, a few feet closer. "Honey, what's for dinner?" There's no response.

He gets right up in her ear and says, "Honey, what's for dinner?" And she says, "For the fourth time, beef stew." (audience laughing) Sometimes we're the problem, you know? (audience laughing) Let me ask you a question. How are you viewing the next 10 years of your life right now? Are you excited about it? Are you moving into a sense of great expectation and anticipation? Or maybe you feel indifferent about it? Maybe even thought too much about your future, God's future for your life at this point. If Solomon were hearing the flesh and blood on this stage, challenging you, I think you say it like this, do you have a fresh revelation right now about the next 10 years of your life? Because if you do have a fresh revelation from God about your future and you're living it out right now, then you're probably pretty pumped up right now. You probably have all your resources pointing in that direction, all your anticipations in that direction, and it just feels really, really good right now to be led by a fresh revelation from God. However, if you don't have a fresh revelation from God right now about your future that might explain why it feels like something

is sort of perishing every day. Because the Bible says without a vision, the people perish. That doesn't mean you just keel over and die one day, but it means that over time, your shoulders start to slump, and your eyes get a little duller. You don't have the energy you once had, the days feel so long and the nights feel so restless and you just want to sleep in in the morning. It just feels like something is perishing on the inside. Even though the outward circumstances of your life may seem fine to all those who are around you, you know that something is slowly dying on the inside. I know all about this condition because this is the condition I found myself in back in 2013. My dad had an open heart surgery, a heart valve repair, and he was out for about six months, and I became the interim pastor of the church. Things were going very well, and the church was growing even during that time, and when dad came back, he said this church has already been transitioned. The people will put you on their shoulders and you are the leader. He said, "I'm gonna move to Los Angeles to be with Matthew of my brother and help him, but you're the man." The first time in my life,

I became very fearful. I've been my dad's executive pastor for four or five years, and I didn't have the mantle on me at the time. He had the mantle, but now I feel like it was on me. I didn't know what to do. I felt that slow dose of dying beginning on the inside because I didn't have a fresh revelation from God about the future. And I want to show you what happened in my case. There's a picture, you can bring it up on the wall of our church, and our church has a mountain behind it. It's about 1,500 feet high, and it's called Prayer Mountain. Halfway at the mountain, when I was a kid, 19 years old, And I drove a little bobcat up the side of that mountain, clear the space on the mountain there, put a safe in the wall because every day I'd watch my dad climb the mountain with three things, his Bible, his newspaper, and a cup of Starbucks coffee. Because he said, "Until the anointing kicks in, you got to have Starbucks in the morning." And I'd watch him every day as a 20-year-old kid walk up that mountain and just look over the city of Phoenix and dream and be filled with God's fresh revelation for the future. It worked so well for my dad. I thought, "Man, I want to do that. I can't lead this church." All my friends were calling me across the nation. "Congratulations. You're the pastor of what was in Phoenix first assembly of God's church. They thought I was on top of the road.

I didn't feel that way at all because I knew I needed a fresh revelation from the Lord." So I found out during that time, what I did was I went on a 40-day Daniel fast. I ate nothing but bird seeds and twigs and leaves for 40 days. I was still hungry to get a fresh revelation from the Lord. And during that time, I learned that our church was going to be 100 years old in the year 2023. This is back in 2013 now. In 10 years, our church wasn't going to be 100 years old. So I began to ask the Lord, "Lord, what do you see for our church? What do you see for our church in the next 10 years?" I dreamed 10 years out. You have a pastor who's dreaming 20 years out. Come on, somebody. That's awesome. That's bold. That's audacious. God began to download in my spirit what our church was going to be like in 2023. This is what God showed me. Four things. We're going to reach 50,000 people with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the next 10 years. 50,000 people. Number two, we're going to build a new lobby for our church. Our church had never had a lobby. Our church was built back in 1980, or, you know, lobbies weren't the thing back then. And we needed a place to welcome the people of our community into the house of the Lord. Number three, we were going to be debt free by the year of 2023. Since I've been a kid, we had never been debt free as a church. And we had about a $20 million debt at the time. We were going to be debt free by 2023. And then we want to become a multi-site church, God gave me the vision that we could cast

our web of love across the whole state of Arizona and raise up church communities in the Native American communities and every community all across Arizona. That's what God showed me. So here I am on the mountain, 40 days passes. I got to go back down to the mountain now and stand before the people and present this vision. I didn't want to do it. I thought, look, I don't think I'm nuts for sharing this vision. Someone said, wouldn't it be amazing if one day we became known as a Christian state? Wouldn't it be amazing if Arizona was known out of all the states as that Christian state? And I thought, why not? States are known for things. Utah is known for what? Mormonism. California is known for movie stars. Texas is known for oil and terrible football teams and stuff like that. You know what I'm talking about? Come on, bangles fans. Why can't there be one state that's known for people who love Jesus Christ with all their heart? I told our board, I want you to write on my tombstone. I want you to write on my tombstone. At least he tried. Come on, somebody. We're going for it in Arizona. During those 40 days, the Holy Spirit supernaturally poured a vision into my life and the rest is history. Just testify about what God has done from the year, not 2020, 2013, 2023, look at this. First of all, we built that lobby in Arizona, take a look at this picture. And that lobby expanded all the way out to the shade structure over as a size of a football

field. And we built that lobby debt free for the glory of God. Number two, we saw during that time, just over 100,000 salvation people coming to know Jesus Christ populate in churches all across Arizona. One of the locations that we bought during that time had a piece of land that we would never use. We didn't even know about this piece of land. And we sold that piece of land for 19 million dollars making us debt free in the year 2023. Here's the most exciting part of the whole thing. We became a multi-site church. And let me tell you what happened. I was a Starbucks location. This is shortly after I cast a vision. I didn't know how this was going to come to pass. But a pastor approached me in a Starbucks and said, And I'm ill, and do you know anyone who would want to take this church? She was brand new. And I shared the vision, God put it in my heart. And he handed over this beautiful location, look at this, this Scottsdale location, a thousand seats, about 40,000 square feet of space, 27 acres in one of the great areas of our city. That's the first thing that happened. Shortly after that, a month after that, there was a Lutheran church in Glendale, Pastor Walt Kolostat. He heard a message I did about making Arizona a Christian state, and he said, "I'm retiring. "I would love you part of this."

At one time, he passed through the third largest Lutheran church in all of America. And he said, "Can we just give you our property? "Look at this." And they gave us over their 2,000-seat auditorium, their gymnasium, their youth center, a school of 700 people. This all happened immediately. I got to go quickly here. And then we began a church in Omaha, Nebraska, a young man who got fired up and said, "I want to start a dream city church." From there, it went to our dream center where we bought the Embassy Suites Hotel, downtown Phoenix. 300 people lived there, free of charge. People who were off the streets in their life back, being discipled. Right now that's happening in Phoenix, Arizona. (audience applauding) Then we heard about the horrors happening in Colorado City. Some of you see the Netflix series, about the infamous prophet, Warren Jeffs. This man who built the whole city, a whole town, built on polygamy. His 65th wife, he had 87 wives. Her name was Brielle Decker. She made her way from that, she escaped that community, came down and saw our Phoenix Dream Center. And by that time, Warren Jeffs have been put in federal prison for assaulting young ladies, his young wives, wives as old as nine, nine, 10, 12 years old.

He was put in federal prison. And she said, "I was awarded his compound." Just, "Can I give it to you? Would you do this in Colorado City?" We took that compound, Joyce Meyer, she heard about it. She put a million dollars into renovating it. And today, that very place it was used for human trafficking is used to rescue girls from polygamy in that city. Only God can write this story. Shortly after that, a great church in our Valley, Christ Church of the Valley, CCV, a big mega church. See, we're trying to rescue girls from human trafficking. And they said, "We just can't find a way to get the girls because it takes blue collar workers to get in there and really find the girls and rescue them." And they said, "Can we give you all of our homes and all the whole colostack full of homes that we have raised up for these young ladies?" It's all prepared. They gave us 10 acres in about five homes. Look at this picture, the street-like campus. They gave that over to us to rescue young ladies. And today, Dream City Church is the largest rescue operation for traffic women in the United States of America. Over 400 different rooms for these girls. I could go on and on. This all happened during the 10-year period. We had a man in our church who got saved, opening week of the Scottsdale campus.

And he went out and moved to Shola, which is a big community, a mountain community in Arizona, where all the people go in Arizona in Phoenix for the wintertime, the summertime when it's hot. And he said, "There's no great church up here." I said, "We don't have any location up there." He said, "If I buy you a church, will you come up here and start a church?" And he bought us a $1.5 million property. We began the White Mountain Church. And today, there's 700 people attending that location. Only in operation, just a few years. From there, we started a Long Beach campus. Long Beach, California. How many know California needs a Lord, amen. And Long Beach now is running near 1,000 people. A young man in McAllister, Oklahoma. Not too far from here, you know? He got fired up and he said, "I was given this location. Can I become part of Dream City Church?" And they joined our family during that 10-year period. Just this last year, we began two brand new campuses. One in San Carlos, which is the Apache Reservation. And today, we have a campus on the Apache Reservation and the Navajo Reservation. If we're gonna reach all of Arizona, we gotta include the Native Americans in that as well. And there's a revival taking place. Now, I gotta wrap this up.

But when I look at all that God has done, or did during that 10-year period, I gotta just, I gotta pinch myself. I don't carry a single regret for climbing that mountain and seeking God for a fresh revelation for our future. Because when you finally do receive a fresh revelation from God about your future, All of a sudden you begin to feel the power of God and the vision of God pulsating through your veins. You just go to bed at night and you say, "Man, can we just keep doing this day after day after day?" You raise your hand and say, "God, this is amazing. "Only you could do what you're doing right now." Some of you are thinking, "Man, I've never had a revelation "like that in my life." You mean there's a difference between living a life with a fresh revelation from God and just the average normal Christian life kind of stuff? And the answer is yes. Listen, you can do all the normal Christian stuff and there's nothing wrong with that. It's necessary. Coming to church and reading your Bible and saying these little nice prayers. But there's a big difference by a man or woman who's being driven and led by a fresh revelation from God. And some of you right now are feeling that. You're saying this tidy little Christian life isn't working for me.

I'm perishing on the inside as something needs to change. You need a fresh revelation from God. Anybody here this morning interested in receiving a fresh revelation from God? How badly do you want it this morning? (congregation applauding) Bad enough to go sit by a tree somewhere. You don't have mountains here, I guess. And go in a fast for 40 days and say, I'm not leaving this place until I get a fresh revelation from God about my future. Now when you do this, sometimes God will radically change someone's life direction. Sometimes God conscripts people and just thrust them into ministry full time. But other times and most times, I think he will affirm what you're currently doing, but he'll give you a fresh revelation for doing it a little bit differently with a little nuance, a higher purpose. But I wanna tell you will feel the difference. You'll notice the difference. We had a professional golfer in our church for many years. And he was number one rated putter on the entire tour in Australian golfer. And he was top five in the world during this time. But he would say, pastor Luke, I wanna quit the PGA tour and I wanna preach. I wanna be a pastor.

I wanna preach the gospel. I kept telling him, don't quit the tour. You're doing great on the tour, you know? And I wanna preach, I wanna preach, I wanna preach. And so finally, we said, okay, why don't you preach to our youth group? And he did. And when he was finished, I was even more certain he should stay on the PGA tour. It was just, I think he felt it too, you know? It just wasn't his gifting. So this golfer goes into a season of prayer and fasting about his future. He sought God for a fresh revelation for his future. And he came back and said, pastor Luke, God has not called me to leave the PGA tour. God has called me, he's giving me a fresh vision to picture the 300 guys on the tour as my church. I'm supposed to love those guys and disciple those guys and point those guys to a relationship with Jesus Christ. And he said, he said, that was a huge revelation to me because now I go into work every single day with a fresh vision for the next few years of my life. And every person I've ever known who finally got fed up with perishing and they got excited and fired up to seek God's direction for fresh revelation that would stand on the stage today and they'd tell you the same thing. It's worth it.

It's worth it. All the prayer, all the fasting, all the solitude. It's worth it a hundred times over again because nothing compares in this life with getting hold of a fresh revelation from God for your future. I love how the apostle Paul describes his old life before his Damascus road experience where he had no fresh revelation. This is what he said, Philippians 3.8. Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus by Lord. For his sake, I have discarded everything else counting it all as garbage. The King James version used the word done. Paul says, look, when I look back at my old life before I had fresh vision for my future, it just feels like garbage, it's kind of useless, like done in comparison to the life I'm now living. And then in 2 Corinthians 3 and 10, he says, what was glorious has no glory now in comparison to the surpassing glory. In other passages, Paul says it like this, it's joy, unspeakable and full of glory. And it goes on and on and on and on and on and sometimes. I think about all the new territory, all the victories that can only be attributed to God. And I lay there, and I throw my hands up and say, "God, you know me, I'm the one talent guy. You know my insufficiencies, you know my failures, you know my insecurities, and yet you have chosen to use me as a tool in your hand to accomplish these things that are happening

in the state of Arizona. This is the joy of my life to feel the presence of God and the vision of God pulsating through my veins every single day." People ask me all the time, pastors, "What keeps you pumped up year after year after year?" I have never found a feeling in this life that compares with the feeling of being an instrument in the hand of God. Have you? You show me a feeling better than that, and I'll buy it. When Almighty God is guiding your life, when He has you on a custom-assigned mission that fits who you are and it calls the best out of you every single day, and you see God doing things through your life that you know you can never accomplish on your own. I have never found a feeling that compares to that, a close with this final story. There is a married couple from Hollywood, and they had great success. You'll all recognize their names when I share it in just a moment. They had great success in Hollywood. They were respected, but they begin to feel the slow dose of dying happening on the inside. So despite all their great success, they got down on their knees like little school kids, and they cried out to God, "God, fill our lives with a fresh revelation for our future." And God gave them a vision of something that was so exciting. It was so thrilling to them, but it would require all the resources. It required the very best efforts they ever had in the history of their professional life, and so they were scared. We heard about this project they were doing. It was so big. It was going to just impact the whole world. So I asked them to come speak at our dream conference back in 2013. I'd just become the pastor. So they're sitting in the green room with my dad and I, and they're sharing this vision. And they look at my dad, and they say, "Have we lost our minds? Have we drank like the wrong Kool-Aid or something?"

Because this is so much bigger than us. And my dad looked at him and said, "Look at yourselves." You got all your resources wrapped up in this, so you're a little bit scared. It's bigger than us. You don't know if you can pull it off, but then he said, "But what I see are two people whose hearts are pumping really fast about what God might do. What I see in you right now are two people of vision. You're being driven. Your adrenaline is pumping through your veins because you have vision, it's striving you forward." That's my dad's side of them. You see, vision is a picture of your future that produces passion in you. Let me say it again. Vision is a picture of your future that produces passion in you. And what my dad saw were two people who had a vision of what God might do, and it was producing boatloads of adrenaline in them. So my dad, and the only way my dad can do it, he looked at him and said, "I pronounced you today to be sane and healthy in the name of Jesus." You two are living the very kind of life that Jesus promised to those who would follow him fully. Life in all of its fullness, not life in all of its easiness, the other kind of life, just that passion-filled, heart-thumping, God-centered, expectation-oriented life. Is that the kind of life you're living today? Are you living right now with a fresh revelation from God? Or do you have to admit that you're slowly slumping into a kind of casual Christian life where you're just punching the list, going through the motions, going to church, reading the Bible, saying these tidy, little, safe prayers, but you know there's some dying going on on the inside. It's been way too long since you felt your heart beat really fast because you know that God is fueling your heart and fueling your mind with a God-sized dream.

Some of us can remember an era of our life and our heart beat really fast like that. You have this God-inspired vision, but maybe you don't have that right now, and that's That's where you got to get back. Others of you already know where God wants you to go or what God wants you to do, but you're a little bit scared. I mean, giving up this or sacrificing that. I just want to tell you, friends, it's a one or the other kind of deal. Either you're going to continue the slow dying in your life, or you're going to get on with the new. And when you get on with the new, I want to tell you, it's joy, unspeakable, it's full of glory. It's for God wants us to live. That Hollywood couple's name was Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey, creators of The Apprentice and The Voice and Survivor. God called them all out on the Luma faith to produce that mini-series and then movie, The Son of God, that went all around the world and millions of people were affected and brought to the kingdom. See, that's where all the fruit is. The fruit doesn't lie by the trunk of the tree. All the fruit is out on the limb where things are a little bit shaky, where your footing is not so secure. God called them on the limb of faith. He's calling people here today out on the limb of faith. Are you ready for the greatest adventure of your life? Amen. Would you all stand for a closing prayer here today? My time is up. I want to pray for people here this morning before I turn the service over who feel that slow ghost of dying going on on the inside. And you want to receive a fresh revelation from God for your future that will compel you, drive you, encourage you, where you can feel the power of God working through your life. There are people here this morning who feel that dying and that's what you need today, a fresh revelation. There are others here today who you can't receive that revelation because your spirit is not yet connected to God's spirit. You don't know him personally. You are body, soul, and spirit. You have a body. You have a soul, your personality, but your spirit is the one thing that God needs is to connect himself to you. And when he connects himself to your spirit, which is inside your soul, it changes your soul, your personality, it changes your body, your behavior. Everything changes when you connect your spirit with God's spirit. So would you close your eyes and buy your heads all across this place? If that's you this morning, would you say these words to God? Just say, Heavenly Father, I need you in my life. I ask you today to be my Heavenly Father and I want to be your child. I want my spirit to be connected to your spirit.

Would you make me new? Give me a fresh start and I thank you today for hearing my prayer, for saving me in Jesus' name. Amen. For those who are here this morning who you know the Lord, but you want a fresh revelation from the Lord, if that's you just raise your hand all across this place, you need a fresh revelation from the Holy Spirit. Let me pray for you. Father, you see the hands of these wonderful people who are doing so much for the kingdom, Lord, they're on board with the future of this church, but for this church to really achieve all its goals, it's going to take every person in this place, dream a new dream, thinking bigger, believing for bigger and greater things from you, God, because you are bigger and you have greater things. So right now I pray for that fresh revelation to be poured out into their lives. Just receive it by faith right now. Don't argue with God. It's bigger than you can imagine. But Lord, we receive it by faith and we thank you for what you're going to do. We thank you for the future of Seven Hills Church in Jesus' name. Amen.