Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. I want to speak to people today who have a groaning inside. You don't even know what it is.
You know what I'm talking about, right? It doesn't have words. Sometimes the groan is so deep you're not quite sure where that come from. What's the source of that groan?
We're so glad you've joined us for A Call to the Nation and this special message from Carter Conlon. The definition of the word groaning is to utter a deep moan indicative of pain, grief, or annoyance. We've all experienced this at one time or another in life, and the Bible tells us the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. It's the deepest groaning. It comes from God. Let's join Carter now with his message titled The Deepest Groaning Within. There's a groaning of God inside of you.
There's a yearning of God. It's not yours. It's yours in measure, but it's His first. He has things that He wants to do through your life and through my life that most of these things we haven't even thought of. They're outside of our purview as it is, our self view, our ideas of ministry. God has something different.
It's not necessarily bigger. It's just God, and it's different. It's something that He wants to do in and through each one of us. I was in prayer one time with a group of pastors here, and just out of nowhere, this whisper of God came into my heart. Gather the people in Times Square to pray for the future of the city.
You have no idea how many people told me that can't be done. There are seven committees you have to get through to gather the people to pray for the future. That's holy ground. The only one that's ever been able to get it is Paul McCartney and New Year's Eve.
Other than that, nobody gets to have a gathering in Times Square. I remember saying, well, the Lord, He spoke to my heart. We're going to do it. It was a succession and series of miracles. Lastly, just to make a very long story short, Mayor Michael Bloomberg just issued a decree. He found out about it and issued a decree and declared that particular day, prayer in the square day for New York City. All the committees fell over, and Mayor Bloomberg eventually himself came to the prayer meeting.
It was just amazing. We had about 60,000 people. There were about 50,000 in the pens the police department set up and about 10,000 outside by estimation by the third year. I don't know what it did for the city. I know this church is still here. Maybe that's part of the answer to prayer, but I do know a car bomb just across from where the platform was didn't go off a year later. We don't know what God is doing when we pray, but we do know what God will do when we are willing to obey Him, willing to just simply do what He says.
Even though people say it can't be done, we're just willing to do it. Now that's a grand scale, and I've experienced a lot of those things in my life. A lot of them are in a book called It's Time to Pray.
I'm not trying to sell a book by the way, but the things that are in that book, the stories and stuff. Another time I was leaving the church, heading back. I lived in New Jersey, heading back on the train, and for whatever reason that day on the train, they had turned the seats facing each other on the car that I got on to, and it was extremely uncomfortable. Like you're sitting with the other person's knees are more than about 18 inches from yours.
It's not... So I had this rag of a paper that I bought somewhere, the 50 cent thing, and you get in the train station, the daily blab, and I'm pretending I'm reading this thing. I just don't want to look at the people in front of me. There's two business guys from New Jersey sitting across on the other side, a young lady in her 30s right in front of me, and two business guys from New Jersey, all wearing suits on this side of me. As I'm writing, the Holy Spirit says to me, tell the young lady in front of you that everything's going to be okay. I said, your God, you tell her. I'm not telling her, because I got 40 minutes longer to go on this ride, and this thing is going to go south, and she's going to look at me and say, get lost you creep, and these guys are going to think something about this.
You know New Jersey guys, right? You know exactly what they're going to think. I'm in my 50s. She's 35. This is not happening. Not doing it. Fingers in ears.
Go ahead. God, you tell her it's going to be okay. So I'm trying to read this paper and this voice. The one thing I love about the Holy Spirit is he just doesn't stop speaking, because you say no the first time. He keeps on speaking. Tell her everything's going to be okay, and it just kept going.
Five minutes, 10 minutes. Finally, I said, oh God, here I go off the edge of the cliff. This is really going to go south. So I put my paper down, and I said, young lady, I'm a pastor in New York City, and already these two guys are grinning next to her. Already.
The two guys from New Jersey. I knew exactly what they're thinking, and I said to her, well, the Lord's... I don't know if you understand this. I said, but the Lord speaks to me, and he told me to tell you that everything's going to be okay, and she burst out crying. I mean the tears shot out of her eyes and said, oh Jesus, thank you.
Oh God, thank you. A prayer meeting breaks out, and she says, I am a young mother. I've got a husband.
I've got two or three little kids, and I've got cancer, and I'm going in for an operation tomorrow, and I've been sitting here saying, God, you have to tell me if everything is going to be okay. Now, you should've seen the Jersey guys now. It's like looking at each other like, holy smokes.
You believe what you just heard here. God speaks to people. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, the Holy Spirit wiped the smirk off of their faces in a moment of time, and I felt so relieved, but you see, that's day to day, and we all have that opportunity if we learn to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. If we learn not to back away because we fear rejection.
If we learn just to cooperate. You see, we have the third person of the Trinity abiding in these earthly bodies. He lives here inside of us, and this is the God who created the universe by the word of his mouth.
He actually knows what the people walking by you on the street are thinking. He heard their cry the night before. God, are you real? God, is there hope for my child?
Can you save my marriage? If we learn to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit and move with the promptings of the Spirit and begin to speak and move in cooperation, miracles start to happen. Prison doors start opening. Blinded eyes can see. Wounded hearts are healed. People are given direction, and as with the situation on the train, two guys from New Jersey now know that God speaks to people.
You can imagine them going home. Honey, you're not going to believe what happened on the train. This guy said God spoke to him, and he spoke to this girl who was speaking to God, and God's speaking to everybody.
Does God speak to us? Amazing. I was in the corner store a little while ago, and this lady behind the counter, she just looked sad. She's in her fifties. She just looked sad.
It's one of these corner store things. There's two guys behind me in the line, and I get to the counter, and I said, I don't tell her I'm a pastor. I said, ma'am, please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say.
I said, but you look sad. Can I pray for you? She looked at me and said, you would pray for me?
I said, sure. I'd love to pray for you. She just starts pouring out the struggles in her home and her family and her kids and stuff like that. I reached the cross. I took her by the hands, and I began to pray.
Now the two guys behind me are in a prayer meeting. This lady's heart is being touched. Another time I was at a supermarket, and I was buying roses for Pastor Teresa. She was coming home when she was at the school.
She would come home every weekend. There was a gentleman with me about my age, and he was buying two dozen. I still remember, two dozen white roses, and I was buying a dozen red. I said, do you need a bag for those? He said, sure.
I gave him a bag. Then he said, what are you buying roses for? I said, it's for my wife. She comes home on the weekend.
She's president of a Bible school. I just like to have the house ready for her when she gets home. I said, so what are you buying roses for? He says, well, it's my anniversary. I said, oh, congratulations.
What's your plan for your anniversary? He said, well, I'm going to take these flowers, and I'm going to take a chair, and I'm going to go to the cemetery, and I'm going to sit beside her grave. She died three months ago. When he said it, I started to cry.
It's ironic that his wife died, and I'm crying. I said, can I pray for you? He said, oh, would you pray for me, please?
I put my hands on his shoulders, and he put his hands in mine. We're two guys in our 60s, and we're both crying in the supermarket and ShopRite. People are going by with their carts, and now they're in a prayer meeting. I'm saying, God, comfort this man with the comfort only you can give. He's just going, oh, God, please help me, comfort me.
I don't know how long we prayed, but we were both like it was a snotty nose prayer too for both of us. When I was done, he said, what church do you go to? It's called Times Square Church. It's in New York City, and Broadway, and 51st, and he says, can I go there? I said, of course you can go there.
You'd be more than welcome. He said, would I see you there if I go there? I said, most likely you'll see me there.
If you do, come and say hi. You see, Pastor Teresa teaches at her Bible school that we should be a supernaturally natural people. We should have a sensitivity to the needs of people around us, and we should be able to hear the voice of God. But in order to hear God's voice, the agenda in us has to die. We have to be willing to die to reputation.
We have to be willing to take the risk. I could tell you dozens of illustrations like this, and for me, it's just awesome to finally have that card fall in the slot where God just, I'm available, Lord, if you want to speak to me about somebody or something that you want me to do, and I'm not caught in the grandeur of ministry. Ministry's not all about a pulpit. It's about who we are, and who Christ is in us, and where we travel every day. The book of Romans, Paul says these words, Romans 8.22, we know the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.
Not only that, but we also have the first fruits of the Spirit. We groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. So I want to speak to people today who have a groaning inside. You not even know what it is, but there's this groan. You go to prayer, and it's like, oh, you know what I'm talking about, right? It doesn't have words.
It's deeper than words, and you don't know what it is, and I've been there, I go there, I live there. Sometimes the groan is so deep, you're not quite sure where did that come from? What's the source of that groan? Now, there's a collective common groan. The whole world is groaning under the weight of sin right now. Everything from the birds to the beast to the environment, everything is groaning under the weight of sin of humankind. Then the secondary groan is the one within ourselves where you ever just, when you click on the news and read it, something inside of you says, God, get me out of here. I groan for the redemption, that final moment where the trumpet of the Lord sounds and the dead are raised and we are gathered and finally with the Lord.
I mean, I groan for that, and I think all of us do. You know, you read one more story about one more abusive situation, one more debauched situation trying to present itself as good, and there's a groaning inside. God, I want out.
I want out. I want into that eternity that you promised for me, and that's a good thing. It's a natural thing. But there's a third groaning inside of us, and the scripture in verse 26 says, likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we don't know what we should pray for as we ought to, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. So there's a third groaning. There's a deep groaning that it's actually the deepest groaning of all inside of us.
Now hear me on this. It's the groaning of God. It's the groaning of God that you and I would come in to a place where we can work in cooperation with the Spirit of God, where we come to the place where God's will becomes our will. His voice becomes our voice.
We start working in unison with him. Now listen to verse 27. It says, he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. God knows what he has destined for your life. God knows what he has for you, and there's this inner groaning of the Spirit.
Oh, I don't know how else to explain it. It's a groaning that the scriptures cannot be uttered. It's not that God can't utter it.
We can't utter it. We find it so hard to come into a place of cooperation or agreement with God because it doesn't fit our box. It doesn't fit our self-image.
It doesn't fit our 10-year plan. It doesn't fit our view of ministry. So he is groaning within us, but we can't bring ourselves to agree with it. We can't bring ourselves to speak when he says speak or stop when he says stop or don't do this when he says don't do it. And it must be grieving in measure to the Holy Spirit to have taken up residence, actually God dwelling in these earthly bodies, and we won't cooperate with him. The God who wants to do miracles, the God who proved his heart for all of humanity on the cross, the God who wants to give us giftings of the Spirit, the God who wants to take us out of the natural and into the supernatural, and yet we resist because we set our own reasonings above the word of God. He makes intercession for us according to the will of God. He groans with groanings that we find so difficult to come into agreement with, but we know, verse 28, that all things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, let me go down a couple of verses. It says, what then shall we say to these things, verse 31, if God is for us, who can be against us? You did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him freely give us all things? How shall he not with him freely give us all things? In John chapter 11, we see a pattern actually of a lot of Christians today.
We know the story. There was a man that Jesus loved who died. When he finally shows up in the scene, maybe it's a church vision that died, maybe it's just hope has died, maybe you're just going through the motions of ministry and the passion for the work of God has died. And he finally shows up. And as Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary was sitting still in the house.
And there's a lot of people today just sitting still in the house. The word goes out, Jesus is here. Big deal.
Big deal. Where was he when I needed him? Where was he when we called out?
We knew the state of the nation 10 years ago and we called out to him and he didn't come. So I'm not going to get fooled again. I don't care if the preacher gets up and says, Jesus is in the place.
I don't care anymore. I'm not willing to be disappointed. I'm not willing to get my hopes up one more time. But the reality is Jesus has come. Not on our time, his time. Not when we think he should or according to our plan, but he's come according to his plan because his plan was to let Lazarus die.
That the name of Christ might be glorified again in the earth. And Martha comes to Jesus. She's another type of Christian who just kind of hate every time he, she just hastens to him. And, but I love the interaction.
She comes to him with an accusation. It's amazing. I'm excited to see you, but if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. If you had been here, our church wouldn't look like this. If you had been there, my ministry would have life.
It wouldn't have died. If you had been here, all of this stuff and heartache wouldn't have happened. But she's got to cover this accusation up with, with faith now because she accuses him of not being here when we called out for you. But she says, but even now I know that whatever you ask of God, he will give you.
It's almost like I accuse you, but I'm going to, I'm going to be nice to you at the same time. And Jesus said, your brother will rise again. He's speaking now in the present. And she says, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection and at the last day.
Isn't it amazing when we don't want to trust him again, we put away his promises to another day and the dear old by and by we'll understand it all. It'll all come one day, not now, not here. We don't care if you've come.
I think my point is this. If Jesus Christ chooses to visit us again in this generation, are we willing to receive him? Will we be able to hear him? Will our grievances with him be such that we'll just, even though he does come, we'll sit still in the house.
There's always people are good. Every time there's a spiritual awakening in history, there's always people who will resist it and they wouldn't have earlier, but they've been disappointed in their own thinking because their plan as they thought it was supposed to unfold, didn't unfold. Jesus said, I am the resurrection, the life, and he who believes in me, though he may die yet it shall he live.
Do you believe this? And Martha says, yes, Lord, I believe you're the Christ, the son of God who's come into the world. She doesn't even answer him. She just throws scripture at him. Have you ever been to the point where he's trying to speak and you're just throwing scripture back at him?
That's what she's doing. This is not even an answer to what he had just said. Then Mary rose up and went out finally and came weeping and says, Jesus, when he saw Mary fall down at his feet, she said, if you had been here, my, my brother wouldn't have died. Where were you, Lord, when we needed you? Therefore, Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping and the scripture says he groaned.
Remember the spirit within us groans. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled and said, where have you laid him? Then he began to weep. The Jews, of course, misunderstood his weeping completely. And verse 38 says, then Jesus, again, groaning. It had to be an audible groan for it to be recorded.
It was like a, oh, oh, oh. When will they trust me? When will the people believe that I am God?
When will they understand? He came to the tomb and said, take away the stone. And Martha said, by this time there's a stench. He's been dead too long.
It's been four days. And then Jesus said something profound. Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God? The glory in the original text means that which God does that brings reputation to his own name, not our names, but his name. Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory? And this is the challenge I feel that the Lord's laid on my heart to give you today. If you will believe, you will see the glory. If you will believe and let God speak, if you will trust, you will see God do what only God can do. Not just in your church, but in you, your life.
Suddenly you'll come back to your first love. Suddenly, you remember when you first got saved? Remember what brought you into ministry in the first place? It was just Jesus is everything. And you told everybody that would listen about Jesus.
Then you got some theological training. What happened to you? Where did that go?
How come it's changed? How did it turn formulaic when it was a relationship? You loved his presence. You long for his presence, but you felt disappointed.
I'll tell you why, because he didn't come on your time according to your plan and according to your schedule. And you looked away from God and you went to the internet and you started patterning your ministry after your brother or sister, so and so online. And that is not the plan of God.
Unless the Lord builds the house, you labor in vain. And if your church is dead, give thanks to God today because he's going to raise it from the dead. He's going to visit you again. He's going to give life to your ministry. He's going to give life to your church.
Now you can either sit still in the house or you can accuse him like Martha, or you can be like Lazarus. I love the fact that with all these people around, Mary, Martha, the Jews, all their history of being the people of Abraham, the only one that could hear his voice is a dead man. Oh, hallelujah is right. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Glory, glory.
I don't know where he was, but he started to hear his name being called, Lazarus. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? It's everyone else is steeped in unbelief. They're all weeping.
Nobody can hear. They're quoting scripture. They're sitting still in the house, but a dead man starts to hear his voice. You're going to be shocked at the numbers of people that will turn to God in the days ahead in your church and your ministry. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. As they begin to hear the voice of God calling them. Jesus said to his own people in Jerusalem, you'll not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
The cry of your heart has to be today, God, I want to hear your voice. I don't want to hear the Martha's. I don't want to hear the Mary's. I don't want to hear the gloom and doomers. I don't want to hear the voice that say it's too long. It's too late.
America is done and doomed. I don't want to hear any of those. I want to hear your voice. What do you have to say about this? What does he want you to do right now? What's he asking of you?
Do that. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
