Fall Like Rain

all about. We're about training and sending people to our city, to the nation, and the nations of the world. We have over 120 locations worldwide where we are planting churches, investing in communities. There is an opportunity. So if you, anybody, anybody watching online, if you feel called to missions, you can contact us and we will make a way to get you there because God is about healing not just our own hearts but healing the nations of the earth. All right. Well, speaking of healing, the grace of God is that platform or that vehicle that God uses to heal, restore, and strengthen us. We are in week six. Everybody say week six. All right. This is the final. Now, this isn't the final word on the grace of God. This is our little wrap-up today. So today I need your help. This is a participatory service. And what I mean by that is if I say something good, you say, "A man." And if you need, oh, look at that already, see, and if you need something, if you read a Scripture and you say, "I need that," you can say, "I need that." Lord, help me. Whatever evokes, but don't just sit passively. So I'm going to run through a lot of stuff today. I'm going to be Jimmy on steroids. So we're going to be ripping through stuff, and then we're going to slow it down at the end, and we're going to experience the power of God together, but you need to be ready. You need to be leaning in this morning. Okay.

All right. I'm coming. Here we go. So over the last six weeks, there's been incredible testimonies. People getting free from panic attacks. People being physically healed of knee problems, back problems, heart problems. We've seen salvations every week, every week, and that is not an exaggeration. Multiple salvations every week, people giving their lives to Jesus. We've seen marriages restored in these last six weeks. We've seen families making things right, the enough grace to forgive and to restore on our PANDO app, which is our ministry into the prisons around the country. We just realized, Jason just gave me the numbers. We've had over two million views, excuse me, not download views of some content that we have or our PANDO app, and we've had well over a thousand clarified salvations, and those have turned into multiple discipleship opportunities, baptisms, and we have 32,000 subscribers. So those that are with us. So we're with you. Everybody, shout out for our guys in prison right now. We love you guys. We're with you. The grace of God is overflowing, unending. It is abundant. We've been working with this definition. The grace of God is the overwhelming love, pleasure, and favor of God towards undeserving people, and it is the power of God to do the will of God. It is that overwhelming grace that comes at us in forgiveness that we don't deserve, but it is also power not to sin again, to go and to sin no more. It is both the love of God to cover and the power of God to live the life that He created us for, and we talked about over and over again that it's partnered with great compassion. He looks on us like we're distressed and downcast, like sheep without a shepherd.

We often feel so helpless, so small, or struggling so much, and we wonder, does God care? God absolutely cares, not only did Jesus come rise from the dead and make a way for you to access grace, but then He looks on you with compassion, and He's coming at you. He's not literally making you beg your way to grace. He literally is coming at you and will visit that a little bit more, because grace is not just a theological truth. It's attached to a person, the person of God, God Himself, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We lift up our hands and worship to Jesus, Jesus lifted out of His hands and let Himself be crucified so that your sin and my sin would not be a burden that we would carry, but that He alone would carry. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father. You were created by God, made by God, carried in the hand of God. The love of the Father, that prodigal son story, He gets up and runs to the Son. He doesn't wait for the Son to get to Him. He runs to the Son, the Father who is always pursuing and compassionate. We're attached to the person of the Holy Spirit. This is the blow away that I still don't know if we get yet, but I've got to try it "I am sending the Holy Spirit, I am sending the Helper." Everybody say the Helper. So if you need help, the Helper has come in the person of the Holy Spirit. If you are born again, the Spirit of God, put up residence in your heart, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit, you are not begging to get God, you literally have God living inside of you by the Holy Spirit. The question is, are you surrendered to God? Do you allow the Spirit to rule your life or are you ruling your life?

I just wanna say logically, it is so foolish to rule your own life. What a foolish thing. God himself put himself inside of you to give you everything you need and you're trying to rely only on your own resources. That is foolishness. And again, it's understandable because we can't see clearly because of sin and all the brokenness of our world, but let's just get it straight. God came to be our help because he knew we couldn't help ourselves. So he put himself inside of us. And then the word grace is used over in 128 different scriptures. And in those scriptures, there's 156 times, many of them are used two or three times in a scripture. And Paul would start every one of his books, all 13 books of Paul's letters. Start with something like this. May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you. Grace and peace be with you. There's over 18 books that begin with grace and peace. It sets the table for that letter in the Bible. So what he has to say to you has a table set of grace and peace. So whatever truth that you need, you'll get it by the grace of God. And then he ends almost every book and the writers of the New Testament with this.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. So grace begins what you need and grace sends you out with what you need. It's sandwiched between the scriptures so that we're not just doing this thing by works, but we're doing it by revelation knowledge from God himself. And my favorite is the last scripture in the Bible. What is the last scripture in the Bible? Says this, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen. So the first verse is that in the beginning, God, you had nothing to do with it. You didn't create yourself. You didn't save yourself. You didn't make yourself beginning God. And in the end, may the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. So if you miss grace, you miss everything. Because it is the beginning and the end of the heart of God and the intention of God. So what I want to do from here on out is do my top 10 great scriptures. These are my top 10, you can get your own top 10, but you can borrow mine while we're at it, okay? So here we go, I'm gonna give a scripture, make a comment, maybe a story here there. For grace, you've been saved through faith and that is not of yourself. It is the gift of God, the gift of God. So our salvation is a gift, all right? So here we go, I've got some gifts.

All right, Becky, here you go. Becky going, 30 day journal. I'm sure you don't have any decisions to make, but that's a 30 day journal, all right? Alone with God, there we go, gifts from my friend. Brother, right here, 40 days of devotion. You can just take it and run with it. All right, here we go. Now, those are three little books about connecting with God. And I just gave these guys gifts. So I didn't pre-negotiate it with these guys. They didn't say, hey, we gave some money to the church. You know, here's a little exchange or, hey, I know you really like me and I like you. And so could you give me a little book or whatever? There was no pre-negotiations. I just randomly walked down the aisle and not hopefully not randomly by the spirit of the Lord and gave these guys a gift. Now, think about that. God Himself looks on you and He gives you salvation, deliverance from sin in eternal life as simply as I just gave that gift to Becky. That is a blow away. Actually, it's such a blow away that I need to give a little more scripture to go with it. Ephesians two leading into that passage says this, "But God," everybody say, "But God, being rich and mercy "because of His great love with which He loved us,

"even when we were dead in our trespasses "and our transgressions made us alive together with Christ. "By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him "and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." So to the ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of His grace Not of yourself, it is the gift of God. All right, you got it. The gift is here. If you're here today and you're not sure about your salvation, the gift has come. You just receive it here. We'll give you that opportunity at the end. Second one, I've already mentioned it. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, community of the Holy Spirit be with you. We are, once again, attached to a person, not in it, and not a thing, it is a person, the person of God. If you miss your connection to God himself as your access to grace, you miss the sustainability of this truth. You can say, "Golly, now what was that message? "What were those top 10 scriptures? "What was that thing I was supposed to remember about grace?" Ask God himself, the God of all grace, has come to you in the person of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Walk with him, talk with him, and he will help you remember the things that you need to know.

The next one, one we've used a lot, Hebrews 4, 16. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, and there's one who sits on the throne, high and lifted up, the Lord Jesus, so that we may receive mercy and find grace in our time of need. You know, here's the amazing thing about grace. The door is always open. The door is always open. The blood of Jesus has rent the veil between God and man once and for all. And you say, "But I've come to the throne of grace dirty, "or I've come and I knew I was gonna go back and sin. "Should I keep coming?" If you don't keep coming, there is no help for you for whatever your need is. So, as I've said it so many times, you could be the most rebellious person in the room. You could've said, "I've come 10,000 times "for this same thing, and I think I'm gonna walk out "and do the same sin that I'm doing." Listen, if you don't keep coming to the throne of grace, you're right, you will keep sinning, there is no hope, but our hope is anchored in God himself, and so we keep coming, and then we get more honest, and the more we get to know him, the less we sin, because we don't want anything to do with that, which grieves him, he becomes the one that we know, the God of forgiveness, the God of love, and we begin to shape and change even our worldview

if we keep coming. Okay, number four. Number four, it's accessed by humility. This is a good one. How do I get more grace? But he gives a greater grace, therefore it says God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. All right. Yeah, amen, you do, brother, and so does every other brother in here, by the way, and mother, et cetera, so on and so forth. All right, so here's the deal. It's one thing if you resist me. You could walk out of here, you could go online, you can call me a heretic, people do those things. You can do whatever you want. It's one thing if a human resists me. It's another thing if God resists me. And actually, my ability to deal with the humans is dependent on my access to grace from God. So the one thing for sure, I need to make sure that I'm humble before God. One of the reasons that I spend time in word, worship, prayer, listening to God every day, no matter what, is because I need God. And that is my way of humbling myself. That's the way of saying my resources are not enough. I humble myself to your word and to your truth, even when I don't feel like it, I still trust you over myself.

So humility is a posture of our hardest things that we do, but then that's a very real outworking. So this past week, my 36-year-old daughter, Abby, I think she's here. We got in a little discussion, a little discussion where we weren't in full agreement about something. And so this little discussion got a little emotional. It's all my fault, just wanna make sure. And it got a little emotional, but I wasn't fearful of the conversation because our covenant is set. We're good, the relationship wasn't in jeopardy, so we actually could go there. We could go to tears if need be, to work through how we feel and how we're experiencing this particular situation. So we talked and we got to a landing spot, peaceful spot. And then we said, well, hey, let's get together with couples, mom and dad, and you and Kyle, let's get together on Thursday night. And I'm going over there on Thursday night you know, that was so silly what we were, I mean, we're all good. All we want to do is help each other. And so, Colin Abbe is sitting on the couch and Lauren and I are sitting in these individual chairs and I think, okay, what do I do? So I said, hey, before we get started, I got on my chair, I walked over, I got on the couch, I leaned down on the couch, humbled.

I said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me for career giving. It's all my fault, I'm too strong. Please, please, please, grace, grace, grace. And of course, if you know Abbe, she's like, Dad, no, no, it's all my fault, you know. But that's not the point. I needed to do a demonstration of going low so that we could set the table for moving forward. I needed to go low to set the table to move forward. It wasn't an act, it wasn't a game, it wasn't a gimmick, it was sincere. And of course, Abbe, you're responsible, it's sincere. And we had such a great, not only conversation, but a solution together as couples to really help a situation together. And we just walked out there rejoicing and Lauren and I were walking back and I said, "You know, humility always works." So who's gonna be humble first? Right, yeah, humility always works, so come on. Be humble. (laughs) But if you'll lead out in humility, it sets a table of grace to resolve whatever the need is. Amen? All right, what are we on? Number five or so? Five? Okay, five. Grace strengthens the heart.

Here's a great one, I love this passage. Hebrews 1389, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. That alone should just pause and shake the house. Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. Don't be carried away by every affection and every teaching and every whim and every cultural swing. Don't be taken up by that stuff, it sounds impressive, it's stimulating, it's meant to hook you. But don't let it, because let your heart be strengthened, let the affections of your heart be strengthened by grace. And it says, don't be carried away by varied and strange teachings. So here's my question to all of us and everybody online this morning. What voices are you listening to? What voice is predominant in your life? What podcaster, what Instagram deal, what Facebook, whatever you do, who in your office, who in your family? What is the loudest voice? And if that voice is not rooted in the grace of God and in the person of God and in the word of God, it will lead you astray. It'll create an expectation that you're not able to fulfill or neither are they. Let me just say this. Who do I listen to? You ready? Who do I listen to?

Here it is. You want the names. I'm not gonna give you a name, who do I listen to? I listen to people who love Jesus and it's real. They believe the word of God is authoritative, not just a suggestion. They love the church. They're not anti-church. They're not slapping the church. When people go after the church, it, okay, let me just, okay, a little rabbit hole, unplanned. Laura and I have been married for 40 years and we have to live as adults, people at times say negative things and we have to sort through things and there's a measure of just life that we live. But if you come and start griping about my wife in front of me, especially 'cause it'll be false 'cause she's really sweet guy, whatever it is, I will eventually say, hey, you need to stop that. And if you don't stop it, if you reach out your hand, I will grab your hand. I will forget being a pastor. I will be willing to go to whatever throw down is needed to defend her from you. But how flippin' are we when somebody slaps the church and we just say amen, just slap her again. I don't listen to people for long who have an anti-church, anti-Bride of Christ mentality who aren't working from compassion. Yes, we need to critique things.

Yes, we need to call out sin. Yes, there's things to deal with. But you do it in a spirit of wanting to heal the family. I don't listen to people that want to destroy the bride of Christ or destroy the family of God. I listen to people who love Jesus, love the Word of God, love the church, and who have a good spirit. Now, you say, "Well, what does that mean?" Humble, generous, and I don't just mean finances, the compassionate, generous. They're trying to pull people in, and that's an intangible a little bit. Somebody asked me there today about a voice that people are listening to these days, and they've got really good truth, and they were asking me, "Hey, what do you think? I'm thinking about passing this around, so on and so forth." And I said, "Hey, I think the guy has good truth. I don't like his spirit." And again, I'm not controlling what this person does. They asked my opinion, and I said, "So I don't pass his stuff around because I don't like the spirit in which he's doing it. Here's the deal. Ultimately, all good theology ends in grace, or it's not good theology." Let me say that again. All good theology ends in grace, or it's not good theology. And when I say grace, it doesn't mean license. It means power to overcome. So it has a victory side to it, and a merciful side to it. But that is what good theology does. All good theology leads to grace, or it's not good theology. So when somebody is really anointed, and high-powered, and has one truth in the body of Christ, so many times we get swept away because we don't discern the balance of it with other truths, and the power of the person many times leads us instead of the reality of the grace

of God and the Word of God being central. All right, I'm saying a lot there, but I'll just leave that with you. Okay. Number six, number six. It's abundant. The grace of God's abundant, and God is able to make all grace abound to you, that having all sufficiency in everything, every say everything. You may have an abundance for every good deed. The context of the Scripture says, "He who is so Spanish also reap sparingly, each of us must do just to read the purpose of his heart, for God loves a cheerful giver." And then it goes on and say, "And he is able then to make all grace abound to you." So it's this clarity that if I sow grace, I receive grace. If I sow humility, I receive humility. If I sow anger, if I sow pride, if I sow resources just to myself and me, my and I, if it's all about me and I'm not sowing anything to the Spirit, I don't reap anything from the Spirit. So when it says God is able to make all grace abound to you, there really is an if on this one, if you are gracious to others, if you are generous with your resources, if you're generous with your speech, if you're generous with your attitude, it will come back to you. And this is a resolve of my own heart is this, is when I am struggling in whatever area it could be, mentally, emotionally, financially, relationally, whatever. I always go first to God, what in me needs to change, number one, secondly, if I've been generous to sow in the Spirit or if I lock down somewhere, has, has, has, I want to come in the opposite spirit of what I'm experiencing. If people are saying something negative, I want to say something positive. I want to create grace because the ultimate need of my heart, my household, my family, this church, the churches that we serve is to be full of grace, to be abundant in grace and many times I need to sow grace into a graceless world or a graceless person or a graceless situation to unlock fresh grace for our heart or our house or our home. All right.

We good? Anybody need any of these? All right. Okay. You need it. Thank you. All right. Well, if you didn't need the one so far, you need this one. A couple of scriptures, Romans 6 and verse 14, "Therefore do not let sin reign in your immortal body so that you obey its lusts. For sin shall not be mastered over you, for you're not under law, but under grace." Okay. So this deal about grace, grace drives out sin. I mean, it already covers sin, but then it gives you power to not sin, all right? We talked a lot about this, but you've got to decide, is this true? If you don't believe this is true, then you will let little besetting sins alone because everybody else is doing it and it's not as terrible as somebody else, but little besetting I don't know if you know that. Or we can say, hey, I love God, I worship. I just struggle with this thing and it's hurtful to other people and so on and so forth. You either make an excuse, you blame somebody else, or you're unwilling to do the work to attend to it. And some of this is work. And I want to take it back to an example. There was a young man years ago when we were-- Lauren and I were leading the training school. And this was the days that it wasn't OK to say what you're struggling with sexually. And he was struggling with same-sex attraction,

had acted out, et cetera. And he was convinced and convicted that this is sin. This is not how God created me. It is sin in my life, but I am trapped in it. And he said, what should I do? And of course, we prayed over him, prayed through him, went through the Scriptures, found some weapons of warfare to come against these things going on inside of his heart and his life. And then, finally one day, he said, is it possible for me to be free? And I said, well, everything in the Bible says it is. And he said, well, then I'm going to believe that. And he said, well, what do I do? And I said, well, I think you just go in that closet in that room, you lock the door, and you read over the Scriptures, and you cry out to God, and you push out every evil thing, and you cut off everything you know to do. You just do what everything you know to do. And literally, all that afternoon, as I was coming up down the street, and you'd hear him cry out, no! I would announce that I'd break that power! He'd be gone in the name of Jesus. You hear him quoting Scripture, screaming, crying, doing self-deliverance, just getting it all out. And that young man eventually would come out of that room with fresh resolve, fresh grace, fresh power. And then we would begin to help him

to then how do you live differently, and so on and so forth. He eventually married his best friend, a beautiful woman, and they have four children, and he's living for Jesus today, 30 years later, et cetera. Now, I could have shared thousands of stories, but why did I choose that one? Because this guy got serious. It is grace, but you got to decide if you're going to access grace. You can access grace. For any besetting sin. For anything that doesn't mean we don't stumble. Stumbling is different than falling. Stumble is, I'm tempted, I wasn't on my A-game, I missed it, I'm repenting, I'm coming back. This is a part of all of our lives. I'm not talking about perfection, but there is power. If you're serious, one of the little practicals of you're serious, we've got this deal called Freedom Fight. This is the best I have seen so far for getting you off center, on getting over sexual sin, specifically, but it'll work for any sin. Freedom Fight.org, it's another group of folks that have put this together. Powerful, powerful, powerful stuff. It'll get you off center. I just couldn't love this out here without giving you hope. All right, so if you need this, take a picture. If you're embarrassed about taking a picture to tell your friend, you're taking it for a friend.

Take a picture, and you can use it for your friend, et cetera. Okay, number eight. The grace of God is how we stand and where we land. That's a good phrase, let me say it, man, that's good. The grace of God is where we stand and how we land. So, if I said all good theology leads to grace, if I'm noodling over a particular theological truth based on whatever my wounds, my pain in my life, I need to sort it out till I get to grace. If I'm overwhelmed, I need to sort it out till I find grace a place to stand. So, that'd be one way to stand. I have to decide that there's power over sin so that I can stand in grace when temptation seems to overwhelm me. I have to believe that there's a place to stand in grace when we're arguing with my spouse, and we can't work it through, and here we are again. I have to believe that grace is greater than this cyclical, crazy cycle argument. There is grace to stand by His hand, if you will, if you choose to. A little picture we had last week, I wanna show it again, my standing man, right? We made him a little bigger this week because the grace of God and who God has made you in Christ is greater than darkness and chaos times a thousand. Right, just a little encouragement that the devil is not the co-equal evil to God. By the way, the devil was a lead worship angel in heaven.

The devil and his demons, the third of the angels were cast out of heaven. So that means that the devil and his demons are a bunch of angels. We are already on the majority with two thirds of angels. Then we have the Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit. It says, "Jesus triumphed over the enemy. "All of the works of darkness, when he rose from the dead, "he broke the power once and for all, "and the enemy is under the feet of Jesus." So if you'd wonder, do I have any help? Can I just say if it's just angels ministering to us, we're still winning by 2/3. If it was, but on top of that, God Himself, the risen Lord who has victory, who created these demons, who now has full authority over them when we call on his name. You are coming from a place of victory. You're standing from grace, not grasping for grace. All right, number nine. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly. So everybody needs to say, I'm gifted. This is not a self-help talk, this isn't a pumpy up talk. This is reality. God created you by His hand and everyone is gifted. It is not going to be like somebody else. It's not going to be everything you may have thought up, but it's above and beyond what you could think. Actually, if you find grace in it.

So let me say this is my latest statement. I want you to hear this one. Besides the humility thing, this is the second biggie that I want you to get. Get as secure as you can as fast as you can so that you can get on with how God created you to live. Get as secure as you can as fast as you can so that you can live by grace instead of by somebody else's race. You have a race to run in God. It is unique. I don't know everything that it might be or is. That's why we did these 30-day journals. You need to process that. That whole 30-day journal process is clearing out the dust in you so that you can get to the heart of God for you. And here's the point, you guys. Insecurity, comparison, jealousy. It says where there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil thing. Woo! We say, well, there's reason I'm jealous. I don't feel as gifted as someone else. I feel so small, so on and so forth. That's called wounding that needs healing. That's not what God created you for. So when we compare ourselves among ourselves, it says there will be selfish ambition will rise and every evil thing. Man, I don't need chaos in every evil thing in my house.

So I wanna wake up, find the grace of God, get secure in the grace of God, get everybody else out of my head that I'm trying to be like, compare myself to, be better than or worse, whatever. I gotta get all everybody's voice out of my head, get centered up on the grace of God and say, by the grace of God today, I'm here to serve my family, serve in the city, serve in my workplace, serve in my neighborhood. I have something to give today, not because I chose me, but because God chose me. That I should go bear fruit than fruit should remain. He created you in Christ Jesus for good works. So walk in Him. If you're not walking in Him, it's not because God hasn't gifted you. It's because you've let insecurity and the law of this world and its jealousies and its lusts and its desires rule your soul. Instead of God, get as secure as you can, as fast as you can, so you can get on with the purpose that God created you for. Yeah, that one will help a lot of people if we can get there faster. Oh, my picture, I fixed it, not running from grace with acceptance, all right. So here's the deal, when you're insecure, you're running for acceptance or for whatever. You're running for something to make you feel

worthy enough, right. And it hits a wall every time. You could be the most externally successful person in this room. We always say the higher you go in the organization, the more insecurity you find. That's not always true, nobody in this room. But every once in a while, I meet somebody real insecure that has a lot of stuff. And because they've learned how to run the right, their flesh is so good at playing the game, they're winning, but they're dying on the inside. Just because somebody has something external does not mean their insides are good. And we have great people doing the same, all right. So this idea, running with acceptance. When I know I'm accepted by God, then I can be a teacher and not worry about everybody else's money and resources. I can be a business guy and make a million dollars and feel great about that deal. I can be a state, oh, mom, I can work. I can drive the trash truck and feel like I'm in glory because that is what God gave me to do and the thing that He gave me to do. You don't have to be like anyone else, but you do need to be secure. [BLANK_AUDIO] because that's what we're created for. That's what makes the motor run.

Grace is the fuel for the soul. All right, number 10. The power of God to do the will of God. Shared this last week. This would be the summary statement. But I am what I am by the grace of God. This is Paul saying, "Hey, I was made to do this." Paul said, "I'm an apostle called by the will of God." He wasn't being arrogant about his position in the body of Christ. He was called by the will of God. It's just who happens to be an apostle. And if you read his story, not the best vocation for health and wealth and prosperity, tough little vocation, but he was secure because he knew he'd been called by the will of God. Does that make sense? So even as we're fasting and praying here 10 days from now, or excuse me next, starting next, a week from Monday, man, why don't you join us and just say, God, clear out all the garbage in my life and let grace take over so that I can get secure enough to get on the course that you have for me. Fasting and praying moves stuff out of the way. It could be for multiple decisions. But back to my point, I am what I am by the grace of God.

It's grace towards me to not pervain, yet I labored more than all of you, yet not I, but the grace of God within me. Jesus said, "Go make disciples." I'm not good at it. Well, you can be good at it. Because Jesus said, "Go make disciples." He said, "You'll, my power will come on. "You'll be a witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria "and the uttermost part of the earth." These we know are the will of God, being a bow witness for Jesus, in our city, in the nation, in the nations, making disciples of all nations, wherever that God would lead me. I am a disciple maker, I am a witness for Jesus. I am a man set apart for God's grace, by his choosing and by his doing, but I don't do it in my own strength, but by the grace of God. So therefore I can get up and I can run hard. Oh, you're crazy. You need to take care of yourself. You need to do this, out in the other end. There are boundaries and this is not a health talk. This is a grace and power talk. And what I want to say by that is you can do anything that the living God called you to do. It will cost you everything if it's worth anything, but it will cost you not your soul

because you'll do it by the grace of God and not by the arm of man. The arm of the flesh does not work. It can work in the short run, but it will destroy you in the long run and everybody around you. So quit trying to run for acceptance and to prove something to yourself and God and everybody else. The proof has already been done. Jesus has already said you're worth him living, dying, rising from the dead and interceding for you every day. You're worth everything to him. Quit running for acceptance. Run by the power of God and you'll do more than you could have ever imagined. Those are my top 10 and I've got to end with my plus one. Zechariah 4, this is going to be the focal point of our fast as well, says this. Then he said to me, "This is the word of the Lord "to Zerubbabel, saying not by might nor by power, "but by my spirit," says the Lord of hosts. What are you, O great mountain? Anybody got a great mountain in front of you today? Or a molehill? What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you will become a plane and he will bring forth the top stone which shouts of grace, grace to it. Everybody shout, "Grace, grace."

- Grace. - Okay. Now, 18 months ago or so, I would come daily, I do my second Corinthians, 13, 14, is my daily entrance into the throne of grace, just revelation on the grace of God. And I came to this particular day just before the Lord and I just saw like rain coming down, but it wasn't like rain, it was like a star burst and particles come flowing down. And it was so real that every time I would close my eyes, I would see it. And for like 18 months and so powerful because I began to just say, all right, Lord, what does the grace look like? What does grace feel like? What does it mean to experience grace? And the amazing thing was it was grace was coming towards me. I wasn't begging, reaching out, though I would respond, yes, Lord, I need your grace, but it was coming at me, it was coming at me. Two months ago, when we ended our sabbatical, the last couple of days, my son, Caleb, and I had the privilege of joining our friend, Forrest Frank, for a couple of days on the tour, we rode on the bus and prayed together, sought God together, so proud of him and his team. But the first night of the first Corinthians, during the moment where they share the gospel to do some different things in the concert, I saw this. I think we got the picture of it.

I saw the rain. And you guys, I don't know how to explain it. I'm sitting there and, you know, we're kind of inside the rope, so I'm really pretty close there. And I'm looking, and I just start crying, I'm like, that's what I've seen for 18 months. That's the picture. It's like rain, but it's not rain. It's like, that's why grace is so hard to explain. It's like goodness and loving kindness and mercy, but it's even bigger than that, and it's unique. And I'm looking at this, and after the concert that night, we were debriefing a little bit, and I said, man, where did you get that? That's what I've been seeing for 18 months. And he said, you know, we knew this was a holy moment, and I got our team together, and we were trying to figure out what's a graphic. We wanted to be like rain, but not just like rain. We wanted to be a moment where people feel God being close, and this is what we came up with. And I said, man, that's what I've been seeing for 18 months, and the grace of God's here, bro, the grace of God's here for you, for all of us, what your experience in these arenas is God coming to people, not just people crying out for God. And God wants to come to us today. He wants to come to us right now, and I want everybody to stand, and I want our prayer teams to come quickly to the front. And those that have been around a while, you know, you can just start coming for prayer anytime, but everybody else, just hang with me, it's been six weeks journey, and this may be your first day, or you're watching online for the first time, but hopefully you've been brought into the grace of God. There is a holy zone here. And I reached out to forest guys, and they gave us the graphic, and again, it doesn't

look exactly like it is in the big arenas, but this is the literal graphic that they had created. But it's interesting in that Zechariah passage I just read, just hang with me one more moment. It says that the capstone or the headstone or the topstone will shout grace, grace. And I realized for the first time I often would cry grace, grace to the mountain, try to speak to the mountains of my heart, my family, my life, the city, but it's actually the topstone, the capstone, the cornerstone is Jesus. And in this prophetic book in Zechariah, Jesus stands up and speaks grace, grace to the mountain. It's Jesus speaking grace over you, it's Jesus coming down. So whatever your heart's cry and need is, he's already met you because he's coming at you. It's like the Father that God have been ran to the Prodigal Son, he's coming at you. So wherever you are right now, I beg you, get hung, just tell God what you need, close your eyes, open your hands, open your heart. I'm going to pray my heart out here and you're welcome to start responding any way you need. But God, I pray, bring grace, let it be made manifest to every mountain and every heart, every vain imagination, every lofty thing that will acknowledge yourself against God. Come, O grace of God, put a crushing blow, God, to the vain imagination and the lies of our heart. And the besetting sins, these addictions and bondages that we had no hope for, bring hope today, God, by the power of grace. Let your spirit be poured out, these marriages in the room that are thinking, man, I can't make it anymore. Yes, you can, there is grace. God, we speak grace to the mountain of the arguments in the homes and in the hearts, God. We speak grace for the Prodigals to come home. We speak grace for the laws to be saved. We speak grace, God, over the financial mountains, over the lies that we have hidden this is a word of knowledge.

If you've been lying and hiding, it's time to come out. The way you get set free is by allowing the truth to come. Quit lying, come humble yourself, let grace fill the space, come Lord Jesus, come, whatever your need is, cry out to God. We're going to sing, let the reign of God fall. If you came with a friend that has need, come on, wake up to the grace of God. Wake up to the power of God as we sing together. You