Revival Starts With the Church | I Love America Sunday | Marcus Mecum | 7 Hills Church

Luke chapter seven and verse four, a Roman centurion servant had come to Jesus and he's asking God to help him with his servant who is deathly ill. And because he's a Roman, a Gentile, the Jewish people speak up, Israel speaks up on behalf of this centurion servant, basically testifying of the character, the qualities of this Roman centurion. And this is what they have to say. And when they came to Jesus, they begged him earnestly saying the one for whom you should do this is deserving. And these were the qualities of this Roman centurion for he loves our nation and he built us a synagogue. I know that that scripture is speaking of the nation of Israel, but I think that it's important to note that in no way was a love for the nation that they lived in villainized or demonized or marginalized. It was considered a great quality to have. It was considered something that would be so noteworthy. They believed that it would move Jesus to do a miracle that he loved his nation. And he built God a house. I want to talk to you about, I love America. And I think it's important to love where God has placed you where he's put you. Because when you speak of a country, you're speaking of the people you're speaking of the opportunity that you have. We love the world. God loves the whole world, but God can give you a love. I love all the churches. I love you just name a church around here. I love that church and I love God's people, but I especially love this church. You're like, well, what are you talking about? I love your children, but I especially love mine. I love your grandchildren, but I really love my grant. And the point is, is proximity is important to consider the closeness, the connection, the relationships that you're in covenant with are important. And so I want to talk to you about, I love America. I love the American flag. I really do. I love it's 13 stripes that represent the original 13 colonies. I love the 50 stars that represent the 50 States. I love the statue of Liberty that welcomes immigrants. I love the star Spangle banner. I love the song. God bless America. I love America. The beautiful, I love the beautiful country and its landscape. I love the orange groves of Florida, the Adirondack mountains of New York, the tulip fields of Michigan, the dogwoods of Georgia, the lakes of Minnesota, the oil fields of Texas, the dairy lands of Wisconsin, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the wheat fields of Kansas, the Rocky mountains of Colorado, the smoky mountains, the hills of Nebraska and the beaches of Florida. Praise God.

The redwoods of California, the deserts of Arizona. Of course, we can't forget the river valleys of Ohio or the rolling Hills of Kentucky, the sand dunes of Indiana. I love America's landscape. I love her landmarks. Independence hall, the Liberty bell, the Alamo, the golden gate bridge, Pike's peak, the grand Canyon, Yosemite national park, Wall street. And most important of all, Florence is y'all's water tower. Look out mountain, Carl's bad caverns, the Washington monument, the empire state building and Yellowstone national park. I love America's rivers and lakes. The Potomac river, the Mississippi river, the Rio Grande, the Colorado river. And of course the crystal-clean Ohio River. However, it's better than the Salt River of Arizona. Is that it? I think they got the wrong one. It's not a river, it's just desert. Anyway, the Great Lakes. I love American sports. Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl. I love American baseball. I love American football. I love American basketball. Georgia State athletics, American hockey, on and on we could go. I love America's compassion, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army. Convoy of Hope, the Los Angeles Dream Center. And I love Heart the City. I love America's military, her Army, her Navy, her Air Force, her Marines, the Coast Guard. I love the peace that we enjoy because of those men and women's willingness

to fight when necessary. And I believe our soldiers that are serving today deserve our honor and our blessing. I love American history, Betsy Ross's needle, the Wright Brothers' airplane, Babe Ruth's bat, George Washington, Sergeant York, Paul Revere, Will Rogers, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and the Pilgrim's Ship. I love American cities, from Seattle to Miami, from the East Coast where we have New York to the West Coast where we have LA. I love America's cities. I love the food of America. I love McDonald's. I'm gonna get a Big Mac today just to salute 250 years and eight trillion hamburgers or whatever they're at. Burger King, Taco Bell, can I get it? Thank you, Jesus, for some late night Taco Bell when you really need it. How about Skyline Chili? And Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse, uh-oh. Oreos, Krispy Kreme donuts. I still like a good Starbucks, some Hershey's chocolate, or when you really get the opportunity to splurge, you go to Buc-ee's. I love the history of America. Did you know the very first public building in America was a church? That the very first gathering of Congress included worship? Benjamin Franklin's initial quote of our nation

was about the providence of God, and that George Washington prayed during his inauguration, Psalms 136. And of course, the motto that's defined our nation is in God we trust, and that was not an obscure God. It was a very clear, one true God that the scripture proclaims. America's greatness is tied to our dependence on God. If you've ever wondered what makes a nation, special, or what makes America especially great, 100 years ago, a French philosopher came to the United States, and his goal was to identify what makes America great, what makes America so special. He went from town to town, talking to person after person, interviewing them, questioning them. He examined every facet of our society. And when he returned to France, he wrote these amazing words, that I sought for the greatness of America, and I found it not in her institutions. I did not find it in the minds of the people. I didn't find it in its industry or its factories. I didn't find it in her Congress or her tribunals. It was only when I entered her churches and I heard the pastors thundering out against sin and preaching righteousness that I discovered the secret of her greatness. And he said, America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. The soul of America is God himself. This is not a perfect nation, but we must not lose sight of the soul that made our nation

so special. Nehemiah lived in a time much like ours, one of the great Old Testament prophets. Their people had been taken into captivity. They had been in captivity for such a long period of time that in general, the people begin to forget about their heritage. They begin to forget about where they were from, their roots. But Nehemiah had never forgotten where he came from. He had never lost sight of his roots. Again, almost 70 years had gone by and most had forgotten the roots that they came from. Nehemiah was a cut bear for the king, so he was very successful. He was doing extremely well. He had no reason to continue to think about his nation's greatness. But one day his brother returned from visiting Jerusalem. And when he came back, Nehemiah being curious, asked his brother, tell me about Israel. Tell me about Jerusalem of Judea. What's it like? How are the people doing? What's the condition of our nation? It's capital city, Jerusalem. Can you tell me anything about it? And there his brother begins to respond to him and paint the grim picture of the city of Jerusalem and the nation. What was going on in the temple? What was going on around the unfortified cities? And what if we were Nehemiah? What if we were to ask that question today of our country? What if we were to say, what's happening in America? What's happening in her cities? What kind of report would we have to give? What kind of, what kind of conversation would we have about the state of, of our country?

Would we talk about our babies having babies at the ages of 12 or 13? Would we talk about our broken educational system where you can go to school for 12 years and not be able to read? When we say to, again, just thinking about our history, what's got us to where we are. But if we were to talk about what its current condition in, and we wanted to know a little bit more, maybe we would ask about the state of her churches. Well, they're not like they used to be. There's a spiritual drought almost everywhere. They're not preaching the gospel. Church buildings are closing, constantly being turned into mosque and clubs. People are attending church. Even your most committed person right now, your most committed person attends church about 1.3 times a month. Church attendance has dropped significantly. So what if we were to ask about the political structure? What's it look like? Considering our foundation, considering our beginning, tell us about the government, tell us about the intentions, what the initial purpose was. Oh brother, it's bad too. The government is corrupt. There's fraud everywhere. Investigations day and night is all we hear about the court systems, the justice system. And our judges are corrupt. They can't build prisons fast enough to keep up with the crime in our cities. We would say it's bad back home. Our report would be grim, much like Nehemiah's brother. If we wanted to know about the philosophy of the country, what about the moral and the spiritual direction? What about all of those things that are in the fabric of who we are that got us to where we are?

Well, that's difficult too. The walls are down. The gates have been burned. The walls represent the defined boundaries of a country. That's what establishes the protection of the citizens of that nation. When those walls are down, the people are at risk. They're vulnerable to invaders that come in, peddling all kinds of different ideologies to rip apart that nation and that culture. We could talk about materialism, atheism, hedonism. We could talk about that. If it feels good culture, if it feels good to you, then do it. If you think it and you want to do it, then it's all good. There is no truth except your truth. And that's it. Dangerous invaders have come into our land because the walls are down the spiritual and biblical protection that this nation was built on. Those walls are down and not just are the walls down. Did Nehemiah's brother report, but the watchtowers, the watchtowers is where the watchmen were. They could look out and see from the distance, the, the invaders that were coming, the enemies that were finding their way in. Well, those watchtowers are down and watchmen in the Bible represent prayer warriors and intercessors. And what Nehemiah's brother was saying is, is all of the watchmen, they're gone there in a more convenient, comfortable place. They're in hiding somewhere, but they're no longer warning. And in the same way in America, our intercessors, our prayer warriors, those people that are to warn and to pray and to tell us about what's happening in the earth, spiritually speaking, what's going on. It's not like it once was. The Bible says when Nehemiah heard what his brother had said about Jerusalem and about the nation, he begins to weep bitterly. I wonder when we hear about our cities, when we hear about our nation, when we hear about the spiritual condition, if we have that same type of response, is there anything in you that's burdened? Is there anything in you that says this cannot be who we're going to be? Ultimately this cannot be what we hand to our children or our grandchildren. We have got to, we've been handed something not perfect, but what we've been handed in its, in its soul, in its, in

its intentions must be preserved and handed on to the next generation better than we received it. You see the restoration of Israel was tied directly to the restoration of Jerusalem because as the cities go, the nation goes. And so Nehemiah understood if we don't get the cities back, then we won't get our nation back. And the devil knows the same thing. If he gets the city, he gets the state. If he can get the state, then he'll get the region. If he can get that region, then he can get the nation. And our cities are in grave danger, which means our nation is in danger. In our cities, we've lost hope. We've lost purpose. We're fleeing no spirit to say, no, we will not let anything have this nation outside of what we believe God has intended. A few years ago, I was preaching at a pastor's conference in Seattle, and I want to go quick with this because I went a little too long last service. But the bottom line is I had a lot of plans. We were debt free. We had been in this building, things were going good. We had our locations, all of that was going good. And I had my plans, but to be honest with you, thinking that I was being wise, thinking I, you know, Dave Ramsey would have approved of my plans. Let me say that. But I was at this pastor's conference and this pastor said something that's pastor from South Africa said something. And it was just, I won't get into the details, but I sit there in that seat. The session was over. Everybody else gets up there leaving. And it wasn't like I got taken up into the third heaven. But in that moment, God began to really challenge me about my plans and about the dream that I believe God was given us in a church. And the bottom line was, I begin to sense God speaking to me that the faith that got us to where we are, the faith that we had in the beginning years, I was all of a sudden begin to play it safe, thinking to myself that as you get older, you shouldn't be risking as much as you get older, you should be trying to find a way to play it safe. I mean, I'm not, you can kind of tell by my beard. I'm not, I'm not like I once was, right? I got some gray going on and I'm just arguing with God about it. And I just begin to sense God saying you've got a good plan, but that's not my plan. And my plan is better. And my plan is bigger. I had no idea at that moment that several months later we would get the call for the land in Cincinnati and I, and we love that land and we appreciate it, but

my plan still had not changed. And once we got that land, I was, we're, I was having people ask me a bunch of questions about exactly what we were going to do. And God took me back to that conference in Seattle. And I begin to really go through. conversation I had with the Lord. And that same timeframe, I read an old sermon, that last sermon I preached in the old building before we ever had one service in this auditorium here in Florence. That's before any locations were even thought of. And I preached on godly momentum and how David, he didn't just start with Goliath, but he killed the lion. And then the momentum of the lion gave him what he needed to face the bear. And then the momentum of the lion and the bear, the wind stacked on another, one another, and it gave him the momentum he needed to face Goliath. And in my notes, I wrote this in those notes and I'd completely forgot about it. But I said to the church, our last, we were, we had not even, we didn't even think we could ever fill this room up. Or at least I didn't. This is what we said. This is why I said, this is not our Goliath. This is our lion. This is the beginning of what God wants us to do. Now you have to understand how bold that was at the time. Cause we were tired. We were stretched. We talked about this thing for years and years and years. Is it ever going to happen? It took us. And all of a sudden God began to say to me, I want you to do across the river. What you've done on this side of the river. I want you to have the same faith for there that you did here. And I begin to do the numbers and I begin to calculate and I begin to say, I know what inflation is and I know what buildings cost. And I have friends that have recently built commercial buildings. And, and I know what the price per square foot is. And I begin to put the math to paper. And I was like, there is no way that is an impossibility that, that, that is beyond me, but I've always believed that you should never outlive your dreams. I've always believed that if you reach your dream, you should immediately say, okay, I'm going to reach for something higher. And I sensed that on that day. And I'm simply saying that all of that came from a sense in my own heart, that God loves this city. God loves this nation. And when I look at the condition of it, my job is to look at it and not just weep and not just cry and not just complain. My job is to say, okay, God, if you'll enable me, if you'll help me, if you'll give us favor, we'll step up and we'll do something about it. We're not going to just sit back and watch things happen. We're going to get on the offense, which is by the way, what the church is supposed to be. The Bible says that gates of hell gates

are defensive. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. We're supposed to be having vision about taking hell's territory, not protecting our own. That's what Nehemiah said. The spiritual condition of the city was, was so devastating. He asked God to open the door for him to go make a difference. God can give us a love for our country. God can give us a love for our city. Not, not just a general, oh yeah, I love my, no, but God can give you a genuine love. His heart is what I believe God can give us. If you look at the amazing things that God's done through the centuries, I'll give you some history lesson here. The church for many years has been indifferent and that's not a new thing. It's gone through these ups and downs in our past. There was a time that the church went through a phase where they didn't believe in what the scripture teaches about being born again. And the pastors came up with what they called the halfway covenant and halfway covenant, more or less as you don't really have to believe the gospel, you don't have to really live it and believe it, you know, just kind of picking shoes as you will. And if you like it, you know, then just kind of take it. If you don't, then you can leave it out. Does that sound familiar? Well, there was this young pastor, young man who just graduated from Yale college, which believe it or not, Yale was initially founded to raise up ministers and preachers of the gospel. This young preacher's name was Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Edwards took over a church his very first Sunday. He stood up and he said to his church, there is no such thing as a halfway covenant. You're either fully committed to God or you're not. There's no half in half out. You're either all about it or you're not. And that morning that church stood up to their feet and they walked out in the middle of his sermon. The next Sunday, they came back mostly in defiance, mostly. to say, we're not going to let you move us out. We're going to show you, we're going to move you out. And that day he stood up and he preached a sermon. He did not preach it very good. He read word for word. He had, uh, spectacles that were about an inch thick as he read. And he begins to preach a sermon called sinners in the hand of an angry God. And as he begins to preach this sermon, the anointing and the presence of God fell so heavily on that church. The sophisticates of Boston were grabbing the pew so hard that their fingernails were gripping into the wood. Just imagining being in the hands of a God

that would deal with their sin justly as a result of that sermon. And that morning, as people begin to repent and cry out to God, revival broke out and it spread across America. It's what we call the great awakening. Shortly after the great awakening, another man by the name of George, George Whitfield showed up from England and he came to America. He had one eye that squinted all the time. And when he would preach, he would jump around on stage. He'd like, he'd get so, he was so excitable. He just bounced around everywhere on stage. He screamed. He was so boisterous in the way that he spoke. You could have a 30,000 people crowd and they could hear him with no amplification, no speaker systems whatsoever. And Benjamin Franklin wrote in his diary about George Whitfield. This is what he said. He said, I did not agree with everything he said, but his passion and his persuasion were convincing. I enjoyed hearing him and revival broke out in colonial America. 50,000 people were saved in that revival in a population of only 340,000 fast forward to the gold rush on the West coast, where America begins to deal with another demon, the demon of materialism, where it's just get what you can get and spend it. God would raise up a man in New York city. During that time, he quit his job and begin to pray from house to house. He began to invite people to his prayer meeting at a church in New York city on Fulton street. His first prayer meeting six showed up. His second 20 showed up. His third happened to be on the Wednesday during the biggest financial crash in the history of America that Wednesday, the prayer meeting jumped to a hundred people. And before the prayer meeting was over, over 8,000 men showed up. And that began what's known as the Fulton street revival. And that spread from New York city down to Appalachia through the middle part of America and every city in America was touched by that revival of prayer. Another man named Charles Finney, Charles Finney would walk through factories on his way to speak, not preaching, not saying a word. And just as he would walk through the factory, men would fall on their knees and begin to repent and cry out to God. He openly admitted that the revival stirred in people's heart, a desire to pray that they would prefer to pray over hearing preaching. You see, God has always had a strategy, whatever the devil has, whatever his strategy, whatever his tactics, however, the enemy thinks he's going to finally rip a nation apart. God has always had a strategy and he's always had a people in Babylon. He had a Daniel and

Egypt. He had a Joseph for Exodus. He had a Moses for the Jezebels. He has Elijah's for every Herod. He has John the Baptist. And I just showed up on. I love America Sunday, our 250th anniversary to say, I don't care how broken down the walls are. I don't care what the spiritual condition looks like. It is our turn to say, God is still in control. He still has a strategy. And we know that the sermon on the Mount is still as real today as it was when Jesus spoke it. And that is that the gospel will be preached in all the world. And after they've all heard, then the end will come. And I want you to know that right now, all over the world, the gospel is being preached and we've got to keep on going. The gospel is being preached in the slums of Calcutta. It's being preached in the gleaming streets of Singapore and Lee liberal Europe. It's being preached in the islands at sea, statisticians in dark Africa. that right now Africa is the most spiritually intense Christian place on planet earth churches popping up everywhere. They can't build them fast enough in fields underneath trees. One church building alone seats a hundred thousand people in Africa. That's bigger than the Cowboys stadium in Lagos. They just built a church building there that takes care of 2 million people in Korea. They're crying out to God. What was just a few years ago, a pagan society now has one of the greatest churches in all of the world with over 700,000 people. Church leaders tell us in a few years that Pentecostalism will repeat, replace Catholicism. And in many countries today, Pentecostalism is the number one move of God in the country. When you think about a place like China, communists, China, trying to get rid of anything godly, get rid of Jesus Christ, get rid of the church. Thousands are being prosecuted and killed, thrown in prison, you name it. And that underground church of China is believed right now to be over 100 million Christians. And by 2030, they estimate that number to be 248 million people will be part of the underground church. India is experiencing revival. South America is experiencing revival. Iran, the young people of Iran, believe it or not, is experiencing revival Brazil. And the question is, yeah, we have some pop-ups like Asbury and, and on college, we have some little pop-up big like tremors of revival, but why is our country not experiencing it? Well, one of the reasons is we don't know what brings the blessing of God, what brings the favor of God in our president's inaugural speech. He talked about how the next four

years are going to be the greatest four years in the history of America. He called them the golden years or the golden age of America. And whether you like our president or not, that's between you and God, but you can't help, but hear that and say, could this be, could this be our best years are in front of us? Could this be that, that our nation could have its greatest blessing ever in its history? And I don't know about you, but I want America to be greater than it's ever been before. I want, I want it's because I believe that the soul of America is good, but this is what I know that the golden age of America doesn't show up because a president declares it. The golden age of America is only possible if the church first has her golden age. See, so goes this, the cities go as the church goes and the nation goes as cities go. It's got to begin in the church. If the church of Jesus Christ will rise up and take her place, then we can continue to have, if the church declines, if the church forfeits her place, if the church just says, nah, we're good, we'll just see what happens. If God wants to do it, he'll do it. But you know, I'm just going to sit on the sidelines. If, if you can hear the report, like Nehemiah heard it, and it don't bring a tear to your eye and say, okay, God, if you'll enable me, if you'll help me, I'll do my part. If that's not there, then America's best days are behind her. I was speaking at Tommy Barnett's pastors conference earlier this year. If you don't know him, he's 88 years old. One of the greatest men of God yet living in that generation in our nation. And much of the message I just gave you was inspired by my conversation with him at dinner the night before. In 88 years old, he began to talk about how God told him the next four years, speaking of the golden age of America will come. If the church does four things, these are not my words. These are an 88 year old man's things that he said, if the church will do these four things, everyone can do these four things. Every single one of us can. He said, number one, pray every day, believe God and pray for your nation. Pray for the city that God's placed. You pray for God's protection, pray that God would raise up the right people, keep the wrong people out and bring the right people in. Number two, he said, get in the word every day. You've got to renew your mind. You can't just listen and on your phone, you got to renew your mind by the re how does God think and make sure you put that in the spirit. of your mind. Number three, witness to the unsaved, bring people to church, do what you

can do to make sure that the same love that you've encountered by God, others encounter. And number four, he said, serve and give like never before, because to win our nation back to Christ and see revival, it will take that kind of sacrifice in our serving and our giving. And my question is this, what would make an 88 year old man ask God to give him four more years, not so he could relax, not so he can enjoy the fruits of his labor, not so he could just kind of look back and say, look at a life that's been well lived, but that he would tell God, I want my last four. If you'll give me four years, I want these last four years to be my most effective four years. And he said this to God, I'll work harder and I'll go harder these next four years than I've gone any year ever in my life at 88 years old. He said that. And what would make a man do that? I'll tell you what it is. It's that he knows the devil is going harder than he's ever gone before because he knows his time is short. All you have to do when you see the spiritual attack that we're seeing everywhere, it's God's time clock that, that he's intensifying his wrath as God saying, that's how, you know, that's how, you know, the time is short. And I don't know about you, but I'm not going to let hell go harder than I'm going to go. I'm not going to let hell want this nation more than I want this nation. I'm not going to sit back and watch hell attack our city without me saying, I want to do something. Pray, read your Bible, care about lost people, invite them to church. What a great time during at the movies and serve and give like never before. What about you? What about you? Would you say, I want that golden age for America. It begins with us and asking God, would you do it one more time? You did it in Jonathan Edwards day. You did it for George Whitfield. You've done it in times past. Would you do it one more time for us? Revive our great nation that we love in Jesus name. Can we all say an amen? Let's stand up to our feet and give the Lord a good hand clap.