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christmasairlift.com in just a few seconds. Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God with Mike Zwick. I've got my good friend Justin Noop back in K-N-O-O-P. Don't you dare spell it wrong. We've got our friends Robbie Dilmore, the Christian car guy who's here with us. We've got my friend Bob and also my friend Jeff who come to Wednesday in the Word.
And we're just having a really good time today. But you know, we just finished the revival. Robbie Dilmore was preaching.
He was preaching his heart out on Sunday night, and Friday night we had Pastor Dana Coverstone, and Saturday we had Cameron Horner, and I said a few words, unfortunately. But the name of the revival was Revive Us Again, and it comes from, I believe, it's Psalm 85, 6. There is a lot of talk, Justin, these days about revival. What is revival? By the definition of the word, to revive is to bring something back to life. So I think in the way that we understand it, revival is seeing the church who has fallen asleep or is compromised in certain areas be spiritually awakened again to God's presence, to things like righteousness, to things like prayer, to things like getting into the Word, evangelism, and things like that. So I think in a sense it's just reawakening the Christian. I think there's other elements to it, but primarily that's what it is.
That's what it is. And so I think sometimes people mistake revival and awakening. Do you know what awakening is? No?
Okay. What I've seen is that a revival is when the people who are already Christians or people who are already in the church get revived and get rejuvenated. And awakening is when the Christians are already revived, and then it starts to affect the people who are not Christians.
And then you see salvation that way as well. And there have been many, many, many different revivals, and the ones that I've kind of studied have been over the last 100 or 200 years. But one of the revivals, and I believe it was over in Wales, there was a young man, and it really started with prayer.
Sometimes in my own life, Justin, and this is where I kind of mess up, is I'm doing all of these things, and I'm doing all of this work for the Lord, but one of the things that I sometimes miss out on is my one-on-one time with the Lord. Is prayer important for revival? I think prayer is essential for revival. Usually you see, if you look at past revivals, even the ones you were talking about, it started usually with one person or a small group of people that began to shift their focus entirely on Jesus, on prayer, on Him, and that's what ignited them. So it's like those people were experiencing personal revivals in and of themselves, and it's like a flame that gets too close to a dry forest like this time of year that gets too close to a pile of leaves, and all of a sudden, next thing you know, the whole forest is on fire. Wow, and so one of the things that I heard you say when we were talking about revival before was, you said, well, what if a revival broke out?
Would we even know what to do? What did you mean by that? My thing was, if you look in the past and you look at different revivals and stuff like that, you'll see that a lot of times they'll spark up, things will be going great, and eventually something will happen to where people begin to try and control a move of God, and they'll begin to put the flame out.
And then all of a sudden, it's like, what happened? So I think we have to have discernment and knowing how to steward that move of God in a way to where there's structure enough to where it's not getting outside the turns and the bounds of Scriptures, but also loose enough to where we allow the Holy Spirit to do what He desires to do in that time and that place. But I think quickly, if I can jump over here for a second, we can get into that, but what we're experiencing now or what we're going to experience in the future, I think is going to be a little bit different than what we've experienced in the past. And we can talk more about what our family is experiencing personally, but what I see coming in the future is that if a revival takes place in America, in our state, in our city, whatever, in the past revivals have tend to focus around one person or a group of people, and people come to that place to experience that revival. What I see happening now in the communication that I'm in with certain people is that things are popping up all over the place, and that this is a little bit more, what I see God doing now is a little bit more decentralized than what we've seen in the past.
So a little bit more of a grassroots organization. It's funny that you talk about that because when I was praying, it was Thursday night, the night before we had the first night of the revival, I was praying and I actually saw some grass that was actually growing. There are many people who say, well, you have to go to a church building. You have to be there every Sunday, and that's kind of how it's going to happen because that's the way that it's happened before. But as what you're doing right now, there are a lot of people who are meeting in home groups. There are a lot of people who are doing sort of maybe the street evangelism and stuff.
What are you seeing in Alamance County? Yeah, I mean, to answer that question, I would just have to say, you know, just show me in scripture where it says I have to go into a building to experience revival. Jesus walked around with his disciples and he brought revival wherever they went, right? They encountered people, and it was because the presence of God went with them. Same thing in the Old Testament. It was all about the presence of Jesus going with them and empowering them to do the supernatural things that would bring people back to God.
And so whether that happens in a building, outside a building, in a street, in a grocery store, in a coffee shop, it doesn't really matter. Revival has no bounds. That's why Jesus came and what he said about the temple and how he was saying now, you know, in the New Testament church, you know, you are collectively as the body of Christ, the temple, that is so that the presence of Jesus can go wherever we go. And so that's what I'm seeing is that now when we don't restrict revival to a certain place, then I think God, not that we're restricting him, but God has the ability to move in places that he wouldn't be able to because there's nobody there.
There's no messenger. Yeah, I'm actually, for me, I feel like I'm seeing a revival that's starting where we live in Burlington, Mebane, Alamance County. And you're one of the people that I'm actually seeing it with because you started with just a small group. You started going to church and then you came out of there. You guys went on a mission trip to Nepal. Is that right?
That's right. Was it any different over there than it is here as far as Christianity? Yeah, very different. I mean, you go into a place which is, you know, 1% or less, you know, people, the population there are Christians. And so you're going to run into some different stuff. You're going to run into a culture, not that our culture is very far from the idolatry that exists in third world countries anymore, but you're going to run into, it's not the norm anymore.
So what do you do? What do you do when you enter into? And I think this is where most people miss a key idea about revival is that you're entering into a spiritual atmosphere where the people are worshiping other gods. And if you're not equipped, if you just walk in there because you have a degree, but you haven't spent hours on your knees, you haven't spent hours in the secret place, you know, being filled with the Spirit and empowered by the grace of God.
And you're going to get stomped into the ground. And that's what we experienced. There's like many missionaries go out. And that's why the Lord, before we went on the mission field, we went through a season. The Lord told us both. We were, I know I'm jumping all over the place, but there was a time where we were praying when we should go. We knew that we should go, but we were praying.
We were in Colorado Springs visiting a missionary base there. And me and my wife, we said, what are we supposed to do here? And she said, well, let's go into separate rooms and pray.
And we're like, this is how we know we get a right answer. I was like, I'm going to listen, you listen, we'll come back and tell each other what we heard. And so we did it.
She went into the, to the, to the bathroom of the hotel room. And I was in there and we prayed for about 15, 20 minutes and we came back. I was like, all right, on the count of three, you know, are we supposed to go now? Are we supposed to wait? Let's just say it on the count of three, how long we think we're supposed to wait until we go? I said, one, two, three, one year, we said both at the same time.
Wow. And so we were like, that was it. We're like, all right, well, we'll spend this year in preparation. And in that year, little did we know that the Lord was going to teach us how to fast, you know, for longer than 20 minutes, you know, or from one meal to the next. I was just going to ask you about fasting because when I've seen revivals, there have been a lot of people who right before the revival started to fast and pray. Yeah, absolutely. So that was key.
So I don't share this to be boastful in anything. I, fasting is very difficult for me. It's easier for my wife, but we started with one day and then once a week. And then when we were up into the, through the point to where we began to travel around the world, we entered a season of about three or four months where we fasted every other day, me and my wife. And so every other day we would take a 24 hour period and we would fast. My wife would do seven day, 10 days. And then eventually when we went to Nepal, she did a 40 day water fast. And then nothing at all for 40 days.
Water. Yeah. Our friend Bob, who is here, has done that too. He's done a 40 day fast. So, you know, and Robbie's done a 10 day fast as well. What I've heard is that when you first do it for the first 24 hours and maybe the first couple of days, it's really tough. And I've heard after a while, it's not so tough.
Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. You go through phases, I think, you know, what I've noticed and I haven't done them as long as my wife, but through observing her experience, probably like a week. Okay.
Yeah. I was more, I'm a super skinny guy. I lose weight extremely fast. So I chose, that's why I chose to fast on a regular basis, but not extended fast. And my wife will do extended fast and she's more, it's easier on her system and stuff like that. But what I've experienced is that the first few days it's hard because your body is detoxing from all the poisons that we put in it.
Right. And then you'll hit around day four, all of a sudden your, your digestive system has stopped if you're not putting anything in it, but water. And so it actually, your hunger leaves, you're not hungry anymore. And then all of a sudden you'll get a burst of energy. You'll go from being tired to get a burst of energy and then you'll have that for a few days. And then again, you'll hit a point where now you start to lose energy again. And it kind of, you know, cycles like that.
So you go through different phases, but powerful experience. Jesus, Jesus did a 40 day fast. So when I was looking at revivals, I saw Jonathan Edwards, the revival, and I believe it was North Hampton, Massachusetts, and somebody is going to, if I'm wrong, somebody will point that out. But the, before the revival happened in this area, he, he preached a sermon and it was sinners in the hands of an angry God.
But what a lot of people don't know is that there were many people who were in that area who were fasting and praying that there would be a revival in this place. And if you actually, if you go back, there's people who say that he was, I think he was nearsighted. And so he had to read the manuscript very close to his face. And he said that there were, the way that he spoke was a real monotone voice. So it wasn't because of him.
He wasn't, he wasn't excited. He wasn't this gifted orator, although he was very intelligent, but that it was, it was the Holy Spirit and that it was people that were praying for this, fasting for this. And then because he started preaching the sermon sinners in the hands of an angry God, there was an absolute revival that took place. People were actually holding on to their pews because they were afraid that if they let go, they would fall into hell. But yeah, I mean, and so when I hear about all of these revivals that have taken place, when I hear about what's going on in your small group, in your small groups, the groups of people where you're praying and people are, people are getting delivered of all sorts of things is that revival, it's, it's, it's gotta be something that we're very serious about.
It's not, it's not a casual thing. But in addition to all of that, there's something that people like to leave out of revival and that's repentance. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. I think it, I mean, how do you experience revival? How do you experience connection with God without actually turning from the things that are blocking you from him? I think that's why repentance has always, is always, and has always been a key point revival. But you'll see, as you look at, you know, the first great awakening, the second great awakening, different revivals that have taken place through history, the Azusa Street revival and things like the early 1900s and a businessman's revival, and then up into the seventies and the Jesus movement and all that stuff. When you look at these revivals, there seems to be an emphasis on one thing or another that the Lord kind of uses to birth a revival.
Does that make sense? Sometimes there's a, there's a focus on repentance or a focus on judgment or a focus on faith or a focus on the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. So I think what happens, and Cameron actually talked about this when he spoke at your event, he said that you'll see through history, it'll go in cycles to where there'll be a revival and then things will eventually begin to decline in society and people will get desperate, right? But I also think there are cycles in the church to where we experience something, we emphasize it, and then other things get neglected. Things that are important to God. Repentance gets neglected. What's God going to do?
Is he just going to say, well, we'll just kind of leave that out of the gospel, right? So what I think we're experiencing right now, and I know I'm very early in stating this, but with the people I talk to, other people are experiencing it as well. And we catch a lot of slack.
Trailblazers catch a lot of slack because they're usually the first group of people to mention something. But what I think is going to head this revival is going to be the ministry of deliverance, and that's because it's been neglected for so long. And there's a cry of the body of Christ. Just like Israel, they cried out to God for help. There's a cry going out. You wouldn't believe how many people contact us through YouTube because none of the churches can help them in the situations that they're in, and they fly to our house, they drive to North Carolina hours and hours, and they experience radical deliverance and freedom because either the church they went to wasn't equipped to pray for them or they just didn't want to.
And so I believe that cry going out from the body of Christ at large for freedom has caused God to begin to raise people up and to call people. Not everybody is going to listen to that call, but he's began to call people to say, Hey, are you willing to do this? Are you willing to look foolish?
Are you willing to be slandered? Are you willing to look silly so that my bride can be set free, right? Because there's people that are born again, but they're still living in bondage, right?
Because they haven't received everything that the cross paid for them to receive, and it's not necessary. Some of this bondage is not necessary. It's not your calling to struggle as a believer in bondage to the devil. Jesus said to that woman who was, what, bound 19 years... This woman has been bound for 19... She's in the synagogue, bound for 19 years by Satan. Satan, let her be loosed.
And loosed her right there. Yeah, and so I think you've said this, deliverance, the ministry of deliverance with Jesus' ministry was maybe a third of his ministry? Absolutely. Is that right? And that people... I think you just got an email from somebody about this. They said, well, no, Christians can't have anything that's bothering them or that they need to be delivered of. And you said that Christians can't actually be possessed. Is that right? Correct.
But... So a lot of people say you can't be possessed, but you can be oppressed. The funny thing is, neither of those words, sorry to offend people, but neither of those words are in the Bible. The biblical terminology for somebody that's dealing with a demon is the Greek word daimonidzimi, which means to be demonized, which in a sense is just described as being under the influence of a demon. Now, whether under the influence of demon or being under the influence can describe someone who is mildly affected from the outside, or it's the same thing that describes the demoniac of the Gerasenes. It's the same thing.
It's the same scale. So people get confused. So the reason we use the word possession, because the King James Bible renders that word daimonidzibi as possessed. Now, possession we see as a word that is defined as ownership. Of course, a Christian who is owned by God cannot be owned by the devil at the same time.
So I agree. A Christian cannot be demonized, cannot be possessed, demon-possessed, but a Christian can have a demon in their body. I know it's a bold statement, but... Let me say this real quick. If a Christian can't have a demon, I don't know what in the world we're doing because we've probably delivered over 500 Christians in this area. I don't pray for deliverance for non-believers.
Why? Because Jesus gives us a very good example in Matthew 7 of why you shouldn't. It says when a demon leaves a person, it wanders into dry places, and it says, I will go back to my home, right, where I came.
And when he goes, he finds the place swept, clean, and in order, but unfilled. So I don't pray for non-Christians for deliverance unless they're wanting to be converted to Christianity because the door will be left swung wide open, and the thing will just come right back. Wow.
So it could actually be worse than it was before. 100%. And one of the things that you and I have talked about is because people say, well, Justin, you're so focused on the deliverance thing. That's all you talk about is deliverance.
Right. Don't you share the gospel with people before you even do the deliverance, though? What's the gospel? And I'm kidding. Of course.
Of course. Without the gospel, there is no deliverance. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. You know, some people get mixed up because the gospel in its most concise form is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, right? Jesus died according to the scriptures, he was raised according to the scriptures, and he was witnessed by the apostles, the disciples, the 500, all that. So we know, and he was resurrected.
He sits at the right hand of the Father. That is the good news in its concisest form that we have in the Bible. But we forget that all four of those books in our New Testament are called what? The gospel according to Mark, Matthew, Luke. So the gospel is the story of Jesus Christ. Well, let me tell you something about the story of Jesus Christ in the gospel of Mark. It starts off in Mark chapter 1 with him going into a synagogue and preaching a sermon, preaching and teaching, and what happens? You know what happens? Immediately, there's a man, right, who is demonized, and he cries out, right? Jesus, what do we have to do with you? So a demon starts speaking out of him. So the first speaking engagement Jesus has, what happens? A demon comes out, and the people are looking around, they're like, what is this new teaching? Yeah.
Right? Because they have never seen authority like that. Authority so much so that the power and the truth that he preached caused a demon to manifest. And in Mark chapter 1, verse 39, it tells you what Jesus' custom was to do. It says he went around preaching and casting out demons in all the synagogues in the surrounding areas. Wow. You know, when I think of revival, one of the things that I've really learned from you is that you don't go chasing people down.
Of course not. Mark chapter 4, beginning in verse 1, it says, He began to teach again by the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered to him that he got into a boat and went down, and the whole crowd on the sea on the land. He was teaching them many things in parables, saying to them in his teaching, Listen, behold, the sower went out to sow. As he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on the rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of soil. And after the sun had risen, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.
Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And he was saying, He who has ears, let him hear. From what I see there, there were four groups of people who heard the gospel. The first group, from what I understand, they said no. But the second and the third group, right away, they were like, Yeah, I'm in. They received it.
But only one out of those four groups bared fruit. And so, you actually named your business after that? Yeah, I named it for multiple different reasons, but it's a very powerful portion of scripture to me, because the Lord showed us one time while reading and studying through that, because we were discouraged, me and my wife were discouraged, because we were spending so much of our time sharing the gospel and pouring into people. And we were seeing about twenty-five percent of return on people that would actually respond to this thing, and were hungry. We kept seeing people that would grasp it, and they're so excited, and we go home, we're like, Yes, they got it!
And then weeks or months later, they were right back into the same place that they were before. And we're like, Lord, what is going on? Like, what is this? And he took us to Mark 4, and he's like, You think you're going to have better success than me?
He's like, This is what you expect. But the beautiful thing about that, the beautiful and encouraging thing about that is, number one, that it lines up with reality. But number two, those twenty-five percent, what is the fruit that they were bearing?
Thirty, sixty, a hundredfold? Do you know how much that is? And so, Jesus, that's what I was speaking to you about. I don't remember if it was earlier in the last show, but I was talking about pouring into the people that the Spirit is drawing. Jesus goes on after that portion of Scripture, and he talks about the ones who, you know, have what is, you know, the ones that have, it'll be taken away from you, or, excuse me, the ones who do not have what you have will be taken from you and given to the ones that do have, right? That's right.
The people that do something with what they have, right? That's right. We're not bearing fruit because we're pushing. An apple tree doesn't, and out comes an apple, right? Yes.
They bear fruit because they're an apple tree, right? And so, in that same sense, we look for where the Spirit is bearing fruit, and that's how we have found ourselves not getting so exhausted in ministry, because we learned the hard way the first time, is we're trying to help everybody, and then we're trying to convince other people to, like, get passion for God. And trying to convince unconvinced people or motivate unmotivated people, which is the job of most pastors, unfortunately, is exhausting. It's exhausting. It's exhausting.
Jinx. And the Lord had to teach us. He's like, what I want you to do is do what I did. Discern?
Sometimes you have to give them a hard word, right? And if they're like, they lean in, and they're like, yeah, I'm willing. I want more.
Tell me more. There, you know, the Spirit of God is at work. They're receiving it, and those are the people that you pour into, not because you don't care about the other people. You pray for them, and you pray that their hearts will get to a place to where their soil is tender, and it can actually cultivate that seed into a full-grown plant.
But until then, we're people. We can only give so much of our time and so much of ourselves. In Jesus, what I see his example setting is that he poured into the ones that were hungry.
They bore fruit. He even had three that came a little bit closer, and he poured more into them, right? And he gave us that example, and I don't think we need to go far beyond what he teaches us to do. His example seemed to work. Yeah, man. And it's tough because I have cared so much about people. Yeah.
That people who really weren't excited about the gospel, I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and they're like, yeah, I'm good. Yeah. And I'm starting to learn. I've only got 24 hours in a day.
That's right. I may only live 80 or 90 years if the Lord tarries. That's another subject. But we've only got a certain amount of time.
We might as well do the most with what we've got. And I tell you what, with your group that you've got and the people that I've seen, we actually went to a meeting, was it at a barn or something that we just went to? Oh, yeah. Same place Jesus was born.
Same place Jesus was born, and the people who were there were excited. Yeah. Not only are they excited, not only is there a revival, but when I see the people who were on fire for Christ, I also see a love that they have for other people. That's right. Do you see that?
Oh, yeah. That's one thing that we didn't speak to that I'd love to hit just for a second, is a lot of times we look at revival as simply conversion, simply repentance, salvation. That's part of it. That's the beginning.
Beginning that race. But what I think true revival is, and you may call this an awakening or it affecting other people, but I think true revival is not when it's held to a building to where you just have to experience it in one certain place. But the gospel and that revival that takes place in the heart of the believer transfers into the home. It changes marriages. It changes relationships.
It restores relationships with your children. All of a sudden, it penetrates and people begin to experience revival like that and entire communities get changed. That's what I see true revival as. Wow. And so we're seeing it right now.
We're seeing deliverance. One last story. You did something on Facebook.
You posted something on Facebook. You were actually praying for a lady. Yeah. And the color of her eyes changed? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I could go on and on. What happened? So what happened was we were baptizing a gentleman, a family that came down from Louisiana. We're baptizing him. His wife is sitting on the couch over there on a different side. And as we're baptizing him, somebody starts tapping me on the shoulder and they're like, hey, hey, you got to come over here.
And I turn around. His wife had lost consciousness. She passed out. So normally you would call the medic, but we called on Jesus and we started to pray for her. We sat her up. She began to manifest a demon.
We sat her in a chair. And you'll find out when you're in deliverance for a long time, you'll run into the same demons a lot. And they start to learn you. They know who you are. And so I had called out the name of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit had revealed what this Spirit was. And no lie, this woman, she's looking straightforward. I've got the video. You can watch it on our YouTube channel. But she turns and looks at me and her eyes just turn black. It's on tape. We've seen this multiple times where people's eyes, as the demon comes to the surface, their eyes will darken.
They're no longer there. You want to talk about demon possession? That's demon possession, right?
But it's not all the time. It's just for a moment. And it looked at us like, I hate you. I'm like, you don't hate me.
You hate Jesus, right? And so we began to command that thing to come out. It did take some time.
It gave us, sure, a wrestle and a fight. But that woman got set free. And you'll notice in the end of the video, if you watch it, she embraces her husband and they cry together.
There's 20 people in that room. They're all weeping. And that's just the beauty. That's revival to me is people experiencing Jesus on that level to where it changes. And they're still changed until this point. They're still sharing that testimony with people.
And it encourages other people because then the faith rises in them to experience that amount of freedom. Well, I tell you what, you know, Jesus, we know. The Apostle Paul, we know. Justin and Brooke Noop, we know. But who are you?
Yeah. If not for God. If not for Jesus. If not for Jesus. This is the Truth Network.
