Let's dive in. 2 Kings chapter 20 is where we're going to be today. If you're taking notes, here's the big idea: our big God answers big prayers. One of the marks of ministry at Mercy Hill. Is that we say, hey, you know, we are gonna pray big prayers to our God because we believe that it honors him to pray big prayers.
He is honored by big prayers and he honors big prayers, right? Big prayers come from big faith. Let me tell you guys a 2,000-year-old story from Jewish tradition, okay? This is not a Bible story, but it's in a lot of the writings and rabbinic tradition. There's a guy named Honi the Circle Maker.
Okay, that's a great name. Honey the Circle Maker is legendary. He was a rabbi in the first century BC. And one day, in the middle of a drought, famine, I don't know if this is true or not. This is like a traditional rabbinic story.
One day, but he became famous for it. In the middle of a drought, he goes out with his staff and he encircles and draws a huge circle around himself. And here's what he says: bold prayer before God. He says, God, I'm not going to leave this circle until you send rain for your people. And when he said it, the story goes: all of a sudden, the drizzle started and it started to rain, and people were just overjoyed and they couldn't believe it.
Like, man, he had put this big bold prayer out before God, and God was answering. And then the story goes. Then he looked to heaven, this is the bold part, and he said, For such rain we have not prayed. Meant, I'm not here for a drizzle. And about that time, boom, the bottom fell out and the rain came.
Now, that's a traditional story. I have no idea if it's true or not, but here's what I know: that story is one that has gotten into me that I think about on the weekends. Every Saturday, I pray big prayers for our church and for my family, right? Big things. Things about, you know, the church baptizing 5,000 people instead of 500 missionaries by 2032.
A thousand chosen kids, right? I mean, these are the types of things we pray about for the church. I pray about for my family. We have a certain amount of money that we want to give away over the course of our lifetime. And I set that in our heart when we were young.
And now, even over 20 years in marriage, now we're thinking about that. We want to give that amount of money away over the course of our lifetime. Those types of things, big, big things, right? And it's like that story kind of helped me. I want to draw circles around these things.
I want to have almost that attitude of like, God, I will not be moved. I want to be the persistent widow that comes to the unjust judge. And just over and over, Wears him out. I want us to be on that edge, but that will not happen if we don't have big faith. All right?
Big faith is what produces the bold prayers. And if we get a glimpse of God and what he's done for us, it'll grow our faith into those prayers. What are the God dreams that He's put in your heart? What are the big things that are out there? All right, maybe you're praying for a child's salvation.
Maybe you want to see a day when you get a chance to baptize your kids. Maybe you started a business. You're praying, God, blow it up. I'm talking 10x for your glory so I can be generous and I can employ people and treat them the right way. I don't know what it is.
Maybe you're praying some of these things for our church. I think about the 600 for summer studies. You know, one of the things that Mercy Hill, if you noticed, everything we do has a number attached to it. And here's what people, sometimes that rubs people the wrong way in church, which I could not care any less, okay? Because here's the deal.
We love to have big goals with big numbers for the reason of it gives me an anchor point for prayer. That's all it is. It's a prayer goal. I'm telling you right now, there's a big difference in saying, God, move in our church this summer and help us reach some people versus saying, God, we are begging you to put 600 new people around Christian community this summer because we think it'll change our church and we think it'll change a community. God, give us these 600.
That's a different prayer, isn't it? I mean, it's different. It's sharper. Man, it's putting it out there before God. It's bold.
That comes from a place of big faith. And that's what I want us to try to build through this story in Hezekiah. There's a story in Hezekiah that's a little crazy, okay? But it's a story that is meant to build our faith into people that will pray big prayers. Look at chapter 20, verse 1.
In those days. Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amose, came to him, and said to him, and this is tough. Thus says the Lord, Set your house in order, for you shall die. And you shall not recover.
Now interesting detail here. Look. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and And prayed to the Lord, saying, Lord. Please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and I have done what is good in your sight.
Now, I'm not gonna bury the lead here. The Lord is going to answer his prayer and heal him.
So, even though the literal words here are not, God, heal me, that is what the essence of Hezekiah's prayer is. He's basically, he gets the news, he turns his face to the wall. And he's saying, God, remember what I have done and give me more time. Give me more time to train a son to take my place. Give me more time.
Right, to continue to shepherd this people, especially with all the things that they have going on in terms of geopolitically. And before I, and so here's what happened. And Hezekiah wept bitterly. And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him.
Now, God answers the prayer: Turn back and say to Hezekiah, the leader of my people. Thus says the Lord, the God of David, your Father, I have heard your prayer.
So, this is the prayer, all right? The prayer is got out one more time. I have heard your prayer, I have seen your heal tears, and behold, I will heal you.
Now, I'm not going, man. This is, let me go 30,000 feet. If you want one idea from this story, a big idea would be, like I already said, big God, big prayers. God honors big prayers. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.
All right, now you say, Well, I'm sick and I prayed and I didn't get healed. Hey, I'm not saying we have a promise of every single time we pray. God is sovereign. We don't have a promise, we have a pattern. And a pattern is our God is big and powerful.
He sees our tears, hears our prayers. And there are times in this life where he takes the gloves off, enters in, and will move things around in a miraculous way. But it happens because his people pray to him. All right, prayer is the trigger. Prayer is like um One pastor said like this: prayer is like nerves.
I don't know if you ever had any nerve pain. But nerves control everything. They're the tiny activator that controls the muscle. This is how you think about it: prayer is like the nerve that moves the muscle of God.
Okay, it's like that when we activate through prayer, he loves to answer. And how do prayers happen? Look, this is one of those hard truths that I don't like and you don't like, but it's so good that we have a God that we can go to in the midst of crisis. Look what it says in verse one, set your house in order, you will die. You will not overcome this.
Hezekiah was sick to the point of death. One of the things that we've got to understand is that crisis moments are big moments to build our prayer life. You know, I don't want crisis, you don't want crisis. But crisis sort of kickstarts the prayers.
Okay? My son, my younger son, he's been riding a dirt bike since he could walk. I mean, he's had every kind of dirt bike, mini bikes. I mean, he's busted them all up and broke them and everything else. And he would just keep kind of moving on to the next thing as he gets older.
And it just got time to get him a new one. He kind of outgrew the other one. And when I was looking for them, there's all these new dirt bikes, there's all these new things, all these new features on them. I don't care about any of that. I want a dirt bike that still has a Kickstarter.
Okay, I'm okay if it has an electric start, but I'm not okay if it doesn't have a kick start. Because I want to be able, if that battery's dead and we're out somewhere, I want to know I can kind of rev the engine at any point, right? And so I think about Kickstarter, I think about it like this. You know, crisis is like the Kickstarter. That revs up the engine of prayer.
I don't like that, you don't like it, okay? I wish it was different. But here's what I'm gonna say. That is a reality. God builds something in our prayer life when it is kick-started by a hard time.
You can see it right here. Then at verse 2, then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. What is that meaning? He is getting away from distraction. He is going to that quiet place.
He is getting into a very intense posture. He turns his face to the wall and he prays to the Lord. Crisis will do that in your life. Crisis will turn that prayer, turn your face to the wall, and put a prayer in your heart that is deeper than maybe you even thought could happen. I mean, I think about it like this.
You know what you'll never see in your life? You will never see somebody in a deep crisis that's crying out to God praying with a cell phone in their hand. You'll never see it. You're not going to see somebody in this moment. Praying a quick prayer to God with a TV running in the background.
That is different. There are two big things I think about when I'm thinking about this scene right here. Number one, the absolute grace of God that we have somewhere we can turn. That we can turn our face to the wall when we're down, when we're up against it. When we get the news like this, man, when it's midnight and the phone rings, or you got the tax bill that you didn't expect, or something with maybe you have an adult child and they're walking, you know, maybe they're walking away, or maybe they're going through a marital issue.
Or you didn't get into the school you want to, or whatever.
Somebody in your life that you love is going through something really hard. I mean, you know, this shows us. Humanity, and I know not everybody here is a Christian, man. We have this beautiful mix of people who are searching, checking things out. I want you to know one of the most appealing things about coming to Christ and walking with the Lord is that you always have a place to turn.
You will always have a place to turn your face to the wall and begin to pray. And you won't be alone. But the second great thing that I see. Here is the model of Hezekiah. That when we are faced with things that are hard, that we have that protocol to go to.
You know, I think about the deep prayer life that is produced when you are on your face before God in tears. There's only a few things in your life that will put you there. A lot of times it's crisis. But I take from this story: hey, why does it always have to take a crisis for me to end up in that type of dependent posture? You know, I know this right now.
You may feel it today, you may not. I don't know what's going on in your life. You and I are no less dependent on God right now than whenever it is we're walking through whatever crisis it is. Like, we are just as dependent right now.
So, man, I pray that we would turn our face to the wall and beg God a little more. I'll tell you what, though, I think about Hezekiah. You know, mortality has a way of waking us up, doesn't it? Look, thus says the Lord, set your house in order. You will die.
I mean, just as quick as you will die, you will not recover. Can I say something to you in love? Can I say something to you at our campuses today? You will die. Welcome to Mercy Hill.
Okay, we just go straight. I mean, Hezekiah, God was telling him, You're not going to recover from this sickness.
Now, he ends up getting healed. But every single one of us, and I'm looking right at myself, I can see myself back: this is our fate. You will die. You will not recover. From something.
What do we do with that? Like, what does that do in our heart? Are you ready for that? Are you ready for the news to come? I don't want it.
You don't want it. Death is an incredible enemy. But for the Christian, There is a different way that we look at death than someone who doesn't.
Someone who is not a believer, they don't know what's going on in the afterlife. They're thinking, man, I don't know. It's scary. I think about, man, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?
They're not sure about those things. And yet, for the believer, we are settled. I don't want to go through death. It's an enemy. You know, but at the same time, we understand that on the other side of that, there is something else that is glorious that God is going to do.
But the thought of passing from this life to the next, it does sort of wake us up to what is important. You know, it kind of drives us into that place, face against a wall. God, I'm praying that you will give me more time, legacy, impact. I think about a former senator, Ben Sasse. Maybe you guys have seen this.
It's kind of blown up on social media. But he's dying. I mean, he's going through pancreatic cancer. There's no cure. All they can do is a ton of stuff to try to help prolong.
And we're talking months, not years. I mean, you'll prolong months. And he's done a couple different interviews that are just shocking. And I can't, the attitude that he has, I would imagine that if somebody is not a believer and they're just in the world and they're looking in, it would just be the most foreign thing in the world to them. Ben Sash sitting there, 60-minute interview, having to get up and walk off stage to throw up.
And I mean, it's, you know, he's going through all this sickness, and yet he's able to say, I hate cancer. But I'm also grateful for it. Why? Because he said it wakes me up to the fact that I am not superhuman. I am not at the center of this universe, and it makes me focus on what is important.
You know, you think about death, guys, death can sort of wake us up. To these things. And that's what's happened in Hezekiah's life. Maybe it's what needs to happen in our life or at our campuses here, even today, that it would be that kind of jolt.
Now, I already read this, so I'm not going to read the whole thing, but let's just kind of skip back through it again so we're familiar. The Lord, you know, he prays, Lord, remember me. I've walked before you in faithfulness. He weeps bitterly. Before Isaiah goes out.
Verse five. God says, turn back and say to Hezekiah, You will, I have, I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears, and behold, I will heal you. Can I just encourage you with this today? I have no idea if you're walking through something hard right now.
I mean, at our church, man, we come on Sunday, we're celebratory, we serve a huge God that can do great things. And man, we want to point your heart to that. We want to sing big songs, pray big prayers, preach big sermons.
Okay, that does not the same thing as we all come and slap a smile on it as if everything in our life is fine because we got a lot of people that are going through a lot of stuff.
So it's never taken as that, okay? Yes, we come here, we're celebratory, we want to point to a big God, but that's a way of us sort of grabbing a heart that's in grief and just helping it to remember that there's a greater hope.
Okay, it's not slapping a smile on something that's really hard and acting as if it doesn't exist. We have people right now that have been going through, you know, you think about Mother's Day. I mean, people have lost children, miscarriages. We have people that have had disrupted adoptions. We have some of you that have foster children that you're scared to death about the situation they're going back into, and you're having to just pray to release them back into that situation.
We have missionaries on the field, you know, right now under the threat of persecution and being kicked out of countries. Maybe you got people that are going through, maybe, maybe it's you. You're going through divorce. Man, you got someone in your life that's dealing with addiction. Maybe you're wrestling with an obedience issue that you just can't put down.
I don't know what it is. I don't want you to hear in any way. Slap a smile on that and go on because that's not Christianity, that's very shallow. But what we have is something that's very deep. You ready for this?
God hears your prayers and sees your tears. Just as simple as that. He hears your prayers and he sees your tears. And in dots, Man, we can take great comfort. God not only sees it all, but he is doing something with it.
There are some of you right now, after we, you know, I'm going to preach for a little bit longer. A little bit longer. I'm going to preach for a little bit longer. And then we're going to have prayer, and we're going to come down and we're going to anoint people and ask for healing. And some of you are going to get healed today.
I believe it. I don't know that, but I'm telling you, every time we do this, we get crazy stories. All right, so God's doing something. Not everyone will be healed. Pro probably if if percentages, the vast majority won't be.
It's not a promise. But what we of an outcome, it's a promise of a reality. that the Lord hears and sees even in the midst of the trial that you're in. Even in the midst of the hardship and the sickness and the pain. You know, I already mentioned this.
They asked Ben Sasse if they felt, I mean, he's going to die in the next few months. And unless God heals them. And they asked him, they said, Do you still believe God has a plan? He said, Absolutely. And then this was the money quote that caught me and went viral.
He said, There are no maverick molecules in the universe. You know what Maverick means? It means like a rebel. He said, there's not one molecule in the entire universe that is off doing its own thing. All of them are moving together toward God's glorious end.
Now, I don't see it a lot of times. You don't see it. Man, we are finite, we are contingent, we are mere humans. All right, and God is playing a bigger game, but we can trust that He's moving all of these things together. And if you are a believer, you are going to participate, man, in the great renewal of all things.
And you would be able to say, even this, all of this, is going to work out for the glory of God and for my good. Romans 8 is so helpful for us there.
Now, here's what happens, okay?
So, and some of this stuff, y'all, the timeline on some of this, the story, even the way it gets translated, can be a little tricky. Here's what he says: On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. and I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.
Now, I'm going to go back and read this one more time, just as a little clue for those of you who have been following along in our series, okay? Because I know some of you guys are new, this wouldn't make sense. But if you've been following us and you've been following the story arc of Hezekiah, let me read this again and see if something clicks in your brain that makes you go, wait, that ain't right.
Okay, let me read this again. And I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.
And Isaiah said, Bring a cake of figs and let them take it and lay it on the boil that he may recover. I held something back from you. In this sermon, okay? And I want us to have this moment right now, all right? Because this is so important for us to understand.
The last time I preached in Hezekiah, which was not last week, but the week before, because last week we did Mother's Day, right? The last sermon I preached in Hezekiah, do you remember what it was? It was about the king of Assyria circling, remember, circling up Jerusalem. And then end up, the angel comes, whoops everybody, Sennacherib goes back to Assyria with his tail between his legs and gets murdered by his two sons. You remember that?
That's chapter 19.
Now we're in chapter 20. And what happens? Right in the midst of all this sickness, God says, Oh, yeah, and by the way, Hezekiah. I'm going to deliver you. I will.
Deliver you from the king. And I will save this city for the sake of my servant David. Y'all, here's the sixth sense moment of this story, okay? This is a flashback. It is not sequential.
And you say, well, that's cool, but why does it matter? I'm going to tell you exactly why it matters. Because if you were here two weeks ago, you might have had the same thought that I had, which was, where in the world? Did Hezekiah get the faith to be able to stand up to the king of Assyria when he was barking down his door? How in the world could he trust God in that moment?
I'm going to tell you how he could trust God in that moment because he had already learned to trust God in this moment. This moment here was about one man being saved from one death. And through that tragedy and watching God move in his life. the faith that he needed. To not one man and one death, but one whole city and a nation.
The faith that he needed to lead the people and pray the big prayer then was built in the smaller crisis right now.
Now that's a big truth, man. Because this is what God does in our life. God will build us time and time again.
Now, you know, this is so crazy. God, He's not the source of evil. The Bible says God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, but He uses. All of the suffering, all of the pain, all of the brokenness, he will use it in our life to build us to be the type of person who can face even greater challenges with more resilience and more hope and more faith later on. Is that good news?
That's good news, right? Like, God is building us through the things that we go through. You can say it like this: God uses Christ to build people. into people who can face crisis. With purpose and with hope.
I'm going to tell you, you guys know this, and some of y'all are, we got young people and students, and we got a bunch of you guys, athletes, and stuff. There's only one way to get strong. You know how it is? You gotta pick up stuff that's heavy. That's it.
If you want to get strong, you got to pick up stuff that's heavy. And in life, sequentially, as God is moving us through our days. Man, we pick up things that are heavy, and it prepares us for the next time that we got to pick up something that's even heavier. That some of us, man, you know, different life walks and all that.
Some of you guys pick up things that are really heavy at an earlier age, at a later age. Man, that's all in God's hands, it's all in God's timing. But you can rest assured that anytime we are walking through something hard, a crisis that kickstarts our prayer life, okay? Is also something that God is using to build us into that person who can face things in the future. Let me give you an example, okay?
Sometimes in this church, you will see people that are just, man, older veteran, wily, okay, Christians who have been doing this for a long time. They have faced a lot. With faith and hope, and God has built them into the type of people who will do things that will shock you at times.
Okay? And sometimes I get shocked by it, all right? Let me tell you one.
So This past week, we have a dear brother in our church. Has been walking with Jesus for a long time, man. Raised a family business guy, not a pastor, but just, man, just walk with the Lord for a long time. And he's one of the guys that I'm talking about. Man, veteran, you know, been doing this a long time.
Man, it's not his first rodeo, okay? He gets a diagnosis that he's got to have surgery. It happened late this week. Serious. I mean, this is like big-time surgery, I see you, you go to the hospital, you're in there for days and days, and all that kind of stuff.
So, this is not like some fly-by-night thing. This could be potentially a life-altering type of thing. And so um so the night before the surgery The Holy Spirit said, Andrew, you got to text him. And by Holy Spirit, I mean Anna.
Okay. Came and reminded me. All right, so Anna's really good at the people and reminds me of what's going on in people's lives and things.
So I was like, man, absolutely. And we had been praying for them as a family. We had just prayed for them. We were walking and thinking about them and stuff.
So, anyway, I text him and I say, very simple. I say, brother, praying for you. It's all in God's hands. That's all I said. This is what he texts me back.
And I'm going to read this to you verbatim. And I'm going to tell you, this is what I mean by somebody who. This doesn't happen by just waking up one day, okay? This happens by a life that is built. Over time, Crisis kickstart prayer, crisis kickstart prayer, faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness, and you get built into the type of person who can respond in this way.
All right, remember, I said, hey man, praying for you, life-altering surgery, all that. He texts me back. This is the exact text. Amen. Thanks, brother.
We are praying for the marriage conference. Yeah. I almost moved my surgery date so we could be there. Smiley face emoji. God has been so gracious and good to us, we are thankful for Jesus and for Mercy Hill.
I'm going to tell you something right now. You don't just wake up with that attitude one day. The Lord saves you. He puts His Spirit in you.
Now you have a chance to start bearing fruit over the course of your life. And then God shapes you over years and years and years. I don't know about you. There are times in my life where, if I think my blood pressure is high, I wouldn't even be thinking about the marriage conference.
Okay. I can be so focused on myself, and to text the night before and to say, hey man, we're praying for you. We're praying for the marriages of our church. We're praying that God's going to do something awesome. And I'm going to tell you, knowing this brother, that's exactly what they were doing.
When we face things that are hard, realize that God is building us into this type of person who can face things that are even harder later.
Now, here's what happens: okay, this is kind of where the story takes a funny little turn here, but it matters and there's a reason for it. Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me? And that I shall go up to the house of the Lord on the third day. And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to you from the Lord that the Lord will do the thing that he has promised.
Now, Isaiah is going to ask him a question. Shall the shadow go forward ten steps? Or shall the shadow go back ten steps?
Now, that's confusing, but it's really not. The idea here is the steps of Ahaz were a sundial.
Okay, you understand sundial. It's like, man, when the shadow, when the sun's going down, the shadow's longer. If the sun was going the other way, the shadow would go up, but instead it goes down. And they're looking at these steps, kind of like a sundial.
Now, actually, Ahaz was evil and psychotic.
Okay, and pretty much had probably put this sundial in to worship a false god of the sun, even in the Lord's temple. And so Isaiah says to, you know, Isaiah says to Hezekiah, do you want the shadow to go forward or back?
Well, as a guy's like, well, it's an easy thing for the shadow to go forward, you know, lengthen 10 steps. I mean, that happens every single day. Rather, let the shadow go backwards. You understand what's happening? It's like, hey, the natural order of things, we're going to see that reversed.
And Isaiah the prophet called to the Lord, and he brought the shadow back ten steps by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz. Y'all, when you see a weird miracle, you need to camp there for a minute and you need to see what is God doing because this is a little strange, sundial, all that. It's very clear what the Lord is doing. Basically, this Hezekiah. The sun is setting on your life.
But I alone can reverse it. Your father put this sundial in this temple to worship a God of the sun. I want you to know. The sun, the earth, the shadow itself. They go wherever I tell them to go.
If I want it to go backwards, it goes backwards. If I want it to go forward, it goes forward. You understand what I'm saying? God is setting up a me versus the sun God, and he is just declaring: man, I own all of this. Remember, there is not one maverick molecule for all of this.
And Hezekiah. What looked like it was going to get dark is about to dawn in your life. What looked like midnight is about to become noonday. I alone am going to reverse. You should be going the way of that shadow, and now the sun is gonna dawn, and you're gonna be lengthened in days of your life, and it's an incredible miracle.
All because somebody prayed. All right, here's the application: big prayers, pray big prayers, pray big prayers. When I think about Hezekiah. And I think about what enabled him to ask the Lord for more time in this life and to be healed of this disease. I think about the faith that he had in the Lord, right?
And this is the way that I think about it. It's confusing. Fast forward in the story, even though you got to go back one chapter for two weeks ago when we preached, okay? Hezekiah is sitting there with Sennacherib at his doorstep, and he has the faith in his heart to pray to God. Man, to be saved from senacherum and to trust of what the Lord says, right?
And here's what I think. If Hezekiah Built the prayer life and built the faith. To ask God to save a city because God had physically healed him. Then, what kind of faith does it produce in our life to know that God has spiritually healed us? Does that make sense?
Think about the gospel. What has Jesus done? You know, Hezekiah, actually, because his life was prolonged, he has a son and trains him. And if you go to Matthew chapter 1, Jesus Christ is a descendant of Hezekiah.
So one day there would be another Hezekiah that would come. But this Hezekiah, whenever he was kind of facing death, he didn't ask for more years in his life. Instead, he asked for you and I. To be able to reap the benefits of the life that he would lay down. You remember Jesus in the garden?
He doesn't say, God, remember me and let me just kind of, oh, no, that's not what he says. What he says is, your will be done, knowing that what that means is, I go to the cross so that I can save people who will call upon me. You know, the cross is this. You and I in our sin, we don't deserve to be part of the family of God, but Jesus died death in our place. The penalty was that judgment.
He took it for us. And if we will believe in what he has done and confess him as the Lord of our life, he will save us. The greatest miracle. I mean, think about the darkness in our life being reversed in an instant. Think about Jesus Christ three days after he was crucified, bursting forth from the grave.
What a great reversal. The sun was going down, and now it's dawning anew. You and I, think about this. You have Hezekiah gets healed physically and prays for a city. You and I, because we have been healed spiritually, we pray that the nations would come to know him.
You know, we pray that God would move in incredible ways. Our prayer life is based on a greater truth than Hezekiah could maybe have even remembered, ever even articulated. And that is, man, that God has not only healed us. Physically, that's a small thing. What he has done is he has resurrected us spiritually.
And if we get that in our heart, if we get that in our soul, now all of a sudden we can be the type of people who pray big prayers.
So here's what I'm going to do in conclusion, all right? In conclusion, I just want to say this. Let's get in a heart posture of praying some big prayers today, okay? And the first one might need to be for those of you who are not believers right now. You're not a Christian yet.
You found your way here. Man, this is at every campus. Literally, hundreds of people at Mercy Hill today are gonna be in this boat, all right? You're not there yet, you're interested. Man, you're trying to figure it out.
I want to call upon you. Hey, today is the day. Man, pray to give your life to God. Admit your sin. Believe in what he's done.
Confess him as the Lord of your life. There will never be a greater miracle in your life than the day that he resurrects your soul. And some of you right now, you have the opportunity to pray to see that happen and to come into the family of God. And there is purpose, and destiny, and calling. And may the spirit inside of you stick closer than a brother.
You will never be alone. I mean, it's just what's on the other side of that door for you. Is a lifetime of building faith and hope and having a purpose that you can't imagine. I can't express it in words. And I pray today that you would make that decision.
But some of us that have made that decision, it's like, hey, we need another decision to be made today. We need God to move in an incredible way today. And that's what I want to call us to do. Y'all, we're gonna have elders kind of in the wings here and at the campuses, kind of a little bit off to the side, so that we can come forward and pray. But some of you need specifically.
to come to the elders today. And to be prayed over for healing, they're gonna anoint you. You know, I mean, I even got mine right here. We're gonna anoint and we're gonna pray over people today. We're gonna see some people get healed.
I really believe that. Maybe it's something with your marriage, guys. If you were at the marriage conference, we said, man, you don't need to be in a crisis. Come and be prayed over by the elders. They want to do that.
They want to lay hands on you, they want to pray for a strengthening of your marriage. What are the big things that God is putting in your heart too, y'all? Man, what are the big things you want to see happen for your business? What are the big things you want to see happen for your children and their life, and maybe as they're growing and their faith? You know?
This is what we want to do. Maybe some of you, maybe some of you students. High school students are hearing about other high school students that have movements that they've put on their campus, the Lord is blessing. Maybe you need the courage to step into that. Maybe some of you guys need the courage to step into full-time vocational ministry.
Maybe some of you guys need the courage to say, man, I'm going to do a residency at Mercy Hill. Mm-hmm. You know, man, I don't know what it is. What are the God dreams? You know, I'll close with this.
I um Every Saturday Man, just like Hony the Circle Maker, or I think about biblical story, Joshua, the Battle of Jericho, there are things I circle every Saturday. And I have little two columns in my prayer journal. One's a column for Mercy Hill, one's a column for my family, and my personal life. All right. And man, it's just the biggest stuff in our life.
And every single Saturday, I come before God with these things, things for our church. God, give us 5,000 baptisms and 500 missionaries by 2032. God, allow us to see these 1,000 chosen kids. Be affected by the gospel by 2030 through foster care adoption and families count. You guys know all the stuff, man.
Big, big stuff. And And then I think about in my personal life too, like in our family. I mean, just big things. I mentioned, you know, Anna and I have a goal around money, around the amount of money that we want to give away in our lifetime. I have that.
I'm going to pray over that. Say it out loud. to the Lord. I want to baptize all my kids. That's hard to think about for me.
Because I've already baptized the three older ones. And we don't know if Faith Ann's ever going to be able to understand enough about the gospel to be baptized. But I'm gonna tell you what. I might have to circle that prayer for the next 40 years. I don't know.
I'm gonna keep bringing it before God. You know why? Because big God honored by big prayers, right? And I'm thinking about Hezekiah, and I'm like, Hezekiah could ask the Lord to turn the sun backwards, basically. I want that.
If he can do that, I can pray that our little girl would have the understanding to get in the water one day. Right, I don't know if he's going to do it, I don't have a promise. But these are the God dreams. What are the God dreams? that he's put in your heart.
Let's pray. Father. We come before you, God. I pray at our campuses as well. We're just going to have a powerful moment.
Lord, I pray that you would meet us. God, that your spirit would fill the room. Father, I pray that you would give this church some gifts of healing today. And Lord, I pray that you would answer and give us some of the God dreams that are in our heart. In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
