Welcome, welcome to the line of fire.
Michael Brown here, here to tell you that you are not alone, and you are not crazy. What you feel in your heart as you look at the madness of the world, what you feel in your spirit as you read the word and look at the craziness of society, you're not the one that's crazy. Things have shifted around you, and we are all in the line of fire today. We are all on the front lines.
But friends, I'm here to encourage you. Empower you, equip you to help you stand strong. I want to hold your hands up as you're there on the front lines and say, come on, in Jesus' name, we can do this. Come on, in Jesus' name, we can see moral and spiritual ground that was taken from us. We can see it taken back. I'm not talking about a political takeover where we dominate the country.
I'm not talking about setting up some kind of theocracy where if you don't go to church on Sunday, you get whipped. No, I'm talking about believers so radiating the reality of Jesus, God pouring out his spirit so powerfully, people coming under such deep conviction of sin, the gospel being preached with such vigor and conviction that people are changed in such a way that minds are changed, that hearts are changed, that attitudes are changed, that it actually affects the whole nation. That's what you call an awakening.
That's why I wrote Revival or We Die with the subtitle, A Great Awakening Is Our Only Hope. If you're not getting my frontline equipping newsletter, we sent out our first edition ever last week. Those that got it, I trust you are blessed. And hearing great reports from readers already, I want to encourage you to sign up.
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Okay. In chapter seven, or revival of revival or we die, set the trumpet to your mouth. If we want to see revival, we're going to have to preach the truth. It doesn't mean condemning people. It doesn't mean hating people. It doesn't mean that we are mean-spirited, self-righteous, obnoxious. You know, in some of our church circles, the louder you preach, the more you spit, the angrier you sound, we think, oh, you're really anointed. That just may be human emotion.
It may just be some style that you learn somewhere. That may be you're worked up in your flesh. It has nothing to do with the spirit. And God's not interested in your opinion or mine. God is interested in us aligning ourselves with his word, with his purpose, with his truth, which is the only truth that there is. And it is time, friends, for pastors, for Christian leaders, for those that have platforms to be bold, again, not to be mean-spirited, not to preach in some self-righteous way, all you miserable sinners out there. Well, we live double lives.
No, God forbid. It's time for us as God's spokesman with humility and brokenness and love. So if you cut us, we bleed love, hearts of compassion, backbones of steel, hearts of compassion, backbones of steel, reaching out to the people with compassion, resisting the agenda with courage. It's essential that we do this, that we do not walk in fear of people, that we do not walk in fear of losing finances, that we do not walk in fear of losing popularity, that the only fear we have is the healthy fear of God. So in Set the Trumpet to Your Mouth, I say this, we're living in urgent times, critical times, desperate times.
Friends, do I need to convince you of that? Living wherever you are around the world, but especially in America, do I need to convince you of the urgent, critical, desperate times we're living in? We're living in times when the watchmen on the wall need to sound the alarm, stir the people of God, warn and exhort, and call to action. Instead, so many of our churches and on so many of our social media platforms, the watchmen themselves are slumbering and lulling their people to sleep.
How then can we awaken a dying world? Now, I want to speak for a moment. I want to speak for a moment candidly and graciously to pastors that have so much pressure on you already. If you know me, you know I have been preaching in churches for over 50 years now, since 1973 when I was 18 years old. I've had the privilege of preaching in some of the finest churches, congregations in America and around the world. I've had the privilege of knowing and working with many, many fine pastor-shepherds leaders, and to this day as I travel and get out to as many different places as I can, I see fine men and women serving God, loving God, trying to make an impact, trying to do the right thing. And as pastors and leaders, I know you have a lot on your plate. And friends, there is this misperception that people preach the gospel for money.
You do have some people, the outlier, the extreme outlier. You do have some people who have gotten rich through the gospel. But if you will look on average, your average pastor of your average local church, how many hours they work and what their salary is, they tend to be some of the most underpaid, overworked people in America. When you look at burnout and you look at how many drop out of ministry, you'll find that a higher percentage than in other professions often burn out because in our structures, we often have everything falling on one man or one couple or a handful of people.
It's not healthy. It's not the way God designed it. But I'm very sympathetic to the fact that you have a lot on your plate, that pastors and leaders I'm speaking to now and everyone listening that members of churches, be praying for your pastors and leaders. If we spend as much time praying for them as criticizing them, I think they'd be doing a lot better. Yeah, and I've been guilty of that as well, failing to pray and being more critical. But hear me, I understand the burdens you carry, and your burden is not my burden. God didn't call you to be me. God didn't call you to do what I'm doing. God didn't call you to tackle all the controversial subjects day and night the way I do. That's my calling. It's not everybody's calling. I understand that.
But I want to ask you an honest question. When you have so many families now in your congregation, unless you just have one family in your congregation, but if you've got any size of hundreds of people there, you absolutely have families who are dealing with some kind of crisis within the home that has to do with LGBTQ activism. I mean, that's just the truth. And kids questioning their gender identity and kids saying they want to transition at the age of 10. And this marriage in trouble because of a gay relationship is not to demonize those who identify as LGBTQ. Jesus died for them the same as for straight people. He shed the same blood for all of us. We're all created in God's image. We all fall short.
I'm just talking about a reality, the world in which we live on a very regular basis. When I go out and preach, someone will come up to me afterwards. If a church calls me, a Baptist church in North Carolina asked me to come in last year and to talk about these issues, they had watched the great documentary that I hosted for American Family Studios in his image, which you can watch on YouTube in his image on YouTube. It's about an hour and 45 minutes, inspirational, informational, absolutely great to watch.
And it's free. They had shown the movie and then asked me to come in afterwards and do some teaching and then Q&A. And it was unbelievable to talk to person after person of the several hundred that came out that night in a Baptist church with issue after issue, heartbreaking stories. How, friends, can we lead our congregations without addressing these things? Or take the epidemic of porn, for example.
How can we be shepherds and leaders and not help our congregation, especially men, but all the congregation, to be equipped to deal with this epidemic? Or so many other issues that we're struggling with, the culture wars. Where do we weigh in? The political obsession.
Where do we weigh in? Or just preaching the standards of God. You know, there's something I addressed recently with a Christian actor, an outspoken Christian actor, upset with what he called quote, supposed Christians, supposed Christians. He was upset with them because they questioned how he could play a certain role in a TV series. And he's kind of a morally ambiguous guy, but he gets the bad guys.
He always gets the bad guys. You know, big, hulking guy, and it's violent, it's profanity. But put that aside, there's some scenes in it. You know, someone asked him, how could you do a scene in the shower with a topless woman?
A love scene. How could you do that as a Christian? And he was upset with those who questioned him, calling them quote, supposed Christians. This is the morally confused world in which we live today. We've got to set the trumpet to our mouths. We've got to speak clearly and say, this is what the word of God says. You can say it with tears. You can say it with brokenness.
You can say it with love, not apologizing, but because you care for people that are hurt, that are lost. This is where the line is drawn. This is what God says. Pastors, leaders, your congregants want you to do this. George Barna did a survey a few years ago and asked pastors, do you believe, do you believe that the Bible gives us all that we need to address the moral and cultural issues of the day? According to the Barna survey, he did this two separate times with the same results. 90% of the pastors said, yes, it does. When they were then asked, do you yourself use the Bible to address the moral and cultural issues? The answer came back. 10% did, 90% didn't. What? But here's the real kicker. When the congregants were asked, do you want your pastors to address these issues? 90% said yes. This is like a parent that doesn't give clear guidelines to the kid and the kid gets very frustrated, very rebellious because they need parameters.
They need parameters. I'll tell you what, I'm going to come back to the urgency of the hour and share some startling wake-up quotes with you, stirring quotes from Revival or We Die. But first, you know, when you're blessed with something, something plays a good role in your life, you want to share it with others. So give me a minute to share something. It's been meaningful to me.
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So call now 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com. Thanks for joining us on the Line of Fire. We are here to infuse you with faith, with truth, and courage to help you stand strong on the front lines. If you're not getting our Frontline Newsletter, go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org. Sign up to get our emails and you will thank me when you do because you'll be blessed.
You'll also find out about thousands of hours of free resources we have waiting for you on thelineoffire.org. 2019, June, a Christian publisher asked me to write an article and what I sensed the Spirit was saying. I responded with this.
This is June 2019. How much more does this apply today? As I pray and ask the Lord, what is the Spirit saying? I hear in my own spirit one word, urgency. These are urgent times, contentious times, confusing times. These are times of great upheaval and great opportunity. These are intense times, difficult times, blessed times. The Spirit is saying, urgency. Unfortunately, the message from all too many of our pulpits is not one of urgency, it is one of complacency, of comfort, of personal success. It's not a message designed to wake up sleeping church, not a message designed to prepare for war, not a message designed to challenge and stir. Instead, while moral confusion and spiritual deception rises, many of God's people are enjoying a peaceful slumber, lulled to sleep by voices of compromise that refuse to confront sin, that refuse to address the culture, that refuse to talk about divine judgment. It's time to wake up. Now, that's been a burning theme of mine for decades.
How much more relevant is it today? As Jesus said to the church of Sardis, you have a reputation for being alive yet you're dead. As Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus and said, wake up from your slumber.
This is what the Spirit says to those who are slumbering. Catherine Booth, who lived from 1829 to 1890, co-founder of the Salvation Army with William Booth, had a sermon called Aggressive Christianity. In fact, her six volumes of sermons were given to me by Leonard and Martha Ravenhill, this beautiful edition that was put out by the Salvation Army, beautiful hardcover edition.
I don't think you'd find it anymore in that edition, but I remember seeing those books, and in my mind's eye, I saw like smoke coming out of them because they were so hot. Listen to what Catherine Booth said. Opposition? It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day.
Remember, she's writing in the 1800s. That it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I should know from that. When the church and the world can jog along together comfortably, you may be sure that there is something wrong. The world has not altered.
Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was. If Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord and separated from the world, living so that their lives were reproofed to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as it ever did. As much as it ever did is the church that has altered, not the world. In other words, the world is changing us more than we're changing the world. The good news is there is more and more opposition to the gospel. It's painful.
It's difficult to see. There's more and more of an attempt to silence the church because the darkness is getting so dark that even a little light shining is perceived as a threat. Doesn't this mean that we should have a sense of urgency? I don't mean that it's wrong to rest. Didn't Jesus say, come to me and find rest in Matthew 11, 28 to 30? Don't we recite Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing, and he causes me to lie down beside the still waters and the green pastures. Yeah, so we rest in him, but we're also called to war. We're also called to battle. And Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2-3 and said, endure hardship with us as a good soldier of Messiah Jesus.
And Philippians and Philemon, he calls colleagues of his fellow soldiers because we are in a spiritual war. And he says in Ephesians 6, we are wrestling. We are battling.
It's just not with flesh and blood. We're not fighting people. We're not taking up arms to overthrow the government. We're not marching down the streets with AK-47 saying, believe in Jesus or we're coming to get you.
That's the exact opposite of the gospel. But we are in a real life and death battle with spiritual forces and it's not the time for complacency. It's a time to rest in the Lord and be strong and then go out and stand and go out and fight. The battles come to you like it or not.
You know, I was talking years ago to a friend who opposed radical gay activism, a Christian brother, and the work he was doing, the ministry he was doing, never had much money. He was under attack. I remember being in an event with him in a building and next day we find out that someone's throwing a brick-through window in the building and he's getting maligned and attacked, accused all the time, very thankless. He was on the radio with me one day and I asked him, not as if I thought he should quit, but I asked him, why don't you just quit?
He goes, I'll stop when they stop. In other words, he didn't start this. I didn't start this. The knock came to our doors. The agenda came to our schools. The curriculum came to our universities. The activism came into our places of business. The Antichrist spirit rose in our society. All we're doing is pushing back. All we're doing is seeking to recover that which was stolen from us. Listen to what A.W. Tozer wrote, and all of this, friends, is in my book, Revival or We Die, Great Awakening.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listening to support it. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
