NRB Chronicles - 2017 Classic - Time Square Churche's Pastor Carter Conlon

How exciting is it? We are at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, which they call the NRB, and we are on the convention floor and we get a chance to see person after person that God has given them a passion and seeing how that connects to the kingdom moving forward. And every once in a while somebody sits down in front of me and I'm like, oh Lord, really?

I get a chance to talk to him? Really? I do?

How exciting? And just because you've seen the mighty works that God has done through their ministry or you're familiar with it, and I have in front of me such a person. I'm so honored, truly, to have with me Pastor Carter Conlon. And many of you may know he is the pastor of the Times Square Church. And you know, what a legacy that that church has.

Anybody who's ever visited Times Square is aware that they have a real outreach to folks. And Pastor, welcome to Kingdom Pursuit. Thank you, Robbie. I appreciate being here with you.

What a cool thing. And as we were talking before we went on the air, God has really given you a sense of timing that it's for such a time as this. Those listening right this minute have an opportunity to connect with him and draw closer.

Yeah, well they do, Robbie. I really feel in my heart that we're living in a moment where we've been given a window to turn back to God as a people, as a nation, as a church age, as a society. It's not going to last forever. We're up against a spiritual force that hates the lordship of Jesus Christ and is bent on swallowing the society and its godlessness. And realistically, the only power that can confront it is the power that God is willing to give His people if we will humble ourselves and pray.

And you know, Robbie, like humility is the key. It takes humility to say, Lord, as Daniel said, God to us belongs shame of face as at this day. When he prayed just before Cyrus released the people to rebuild the testimony, he recognized we've handled lightly, loosely the testimony of God. We were given the keys to incredible power, but we didn't appreciate it. And we drifted.

And because of it, we find ourselves in the midst of this terrible situation in a society we're in today. But Daniel continues his prayer by saying, but to you, God, you know, and he turns it and he says, but you are the restorer. You are the one who is merciful. You are the one who is worthy of bringing glory to his own name. And Daniel begins to pray. And of course, after Daniel's prayer, of course, God moves on the heart of a king to release the people of God to rebuild their testimony. So all through the scripture, we see the undeniable power of prayer, but it is always preceded by humility. That's why 2 Chronicles 7 14 says of my people who are called by my name will humble themselves. I guess, Robbie, the question I have to ask for people here is do we have the courage to admit that on our watch the nation is perishing?

And if so, then what is deficient in us? Not to condemn ourselves, but to just say, God, what is it in us that needs to change so that the situation around us can change? Why are our churches half empty? We have churches in America on almost every corner, but we're not influencing our society. Our society is influencing the church and going its own direction.

So what is it about us that we're unattractive to this generation? What have we lost? And of course, in my opinion, we have lost the ability to pray and the understanding that when we pray, the hand of God begins to move again. And how wonderful is it to me personally, because it seems like God's had me on this lesson plan of prayer for some time and more specifically in the last few weeks, Daniel's prayer. And in Daniel 9, he falls on his face and he's saying, now here's a guy, he ate vegetables and I'm not thinking that he's a big sinner, but he is, he is like, we have sinned.

We have been deplorable. We, you know, and it's like, it's a joint thing. And I relate that back for myself to what happened in the book of Acts at Pentecost, that these guys were together all in one accord. And at that point in time, the Holy Spirit showed up. And so when you guys are doing, and again, this is Times Square Church for those who are just tuning in, Pastor Carter Collin. But when you guys are on your Tuesday night prayer meeting, this part of humility is joining in prayer with other believers, not just doing that on your own, but coming together as a church to pray in a common way, like on a Tuesday night prayers.

Oh, absolutely. We've our Tuesday night permitting now has people from 179 countries coming in and joining. We've had phenomenal, wonderful answers to prayer. People are getting delivered right in their kitchens from habits, from addictions, marriages are being restored, families. We have so many answered prayers of people who prayed for wayward children they haven't seen in five years. On a Tuesday night, they submit a prayer request. Wednesday, they get a phone call from their, and it's happened so many times.

There's no chance it's coincidence. God is a God who's willing to restore if we are willing to admit that we don't have, like these parents are saying, we don't have the resources. We don't even know where our son is. We don't know how to get ahold of him. God, can you bring him home? And suddenly there's a phone call the next day or two days later and mom, dad, it's me, it's Robbie, or it's Ricky, whatever his name is.

I'm out in San Francisco and I want to come home. So we get these answers coming in when people are beginning to pray. But along the lines of your original thought about Daniel, when Daniel prayed that prayer, it's very similar to the book of Acts. I mean, in that upper room, who was there? Just a bunch of failures, realistically. I mean, Peter had promised that he would never deny, I'll die with you, and yet he cursed himself with a note that said, I don't even know the man.

John, who leaned on his chest and effusively declared his love for the Lord, fled from the garden. There's nobody in that room that had a boast, nobody had a certificate, nobody had a diploma, nobody had a strategy. They'd all failed and they went together in prayer. And with the knowledge of their failure, that's really the key, with the knowledge that we can't do this without you, God.

We need your power or the society is going to swallow us. So 120 ordinary people went in an upper room, came out of that room, and they began to speak, in the Greek it says they began to speak the megalios of God, which means the anticipated outward working of the inward power of God that was now with them. In other words, they were talking about things that God was going to do through their lives.

Some things were being done. And in a way that everybody heard what they said because they heard them in their own language. And everybody understood it. They were declaring the mighty works of God, which saw them after saw them after saw them. I mean, you look at how many places that we're told to tell that to the younger generation. Well, and they overthrew the Roman Empire in the long run.

They really did. I mean, this is 120. But knowing this, knowing this, you know, I think of Paul's admonition to the Galatians, when he says, oh, foolish Galatians, you know, I think of Paul, he says, oh, foolish Galatians, having begun in the spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh? You know, you think of how the church began, of where the presence and power of God really is. But today, now we have smart people, we have technology, we have all these gimmicks, flashing lights and smoke machines, you know what I'm talking about. And are we foolish? Now, I'm not condemning anybody, because I said we. Are we foolish? Did we start in the spirit?

Have we moved to the flesh? Where are the prayer meetings? Yeah, that's, what would you say to a pastor who's struggling? And honestly, where I live in North Carolina, there's a church on every corner.

I assure you, there is. But many, many, many have abandoned the prayer meetings because nobody came? The pastor has to lead it. The pastor has to have a passion for prayer, and he has to be willing to pray no matter who comes. He has to be willing to be vulnerable and pray his heart before the people.

He has to throw himself out, I guess, as a living sacrifice to God, and then start following the leading as God leads him. When I was a young Christian, a young believer, I was a cop when I got saved. Really? In New York? No, in Canada.

The city of Ottawa, Canada. And I was living in an area of 40 square miles of nothing, no Christian testimony east of Ottawa. And I jogged. I used to jog a lot back in those days, and I had a constant prayer I prayed, Jesus, help me. It was my only prayer. I would pray it for like, I would jog for three miles, and the whole three miles I'd be saying, Jesus, help me. Jesus, help me.

Jesus, help me. Seven years later, to make a long story short, we had established two churches, a Christian school, a food bank feeding 237 families, no debt, all through the power of prayer. I mean, it was absolutely phenomenal what God did. All I knew to do was pray. We bought our first church for a dollar in a town of 65 people.

We renovated it. And within a year or so, 250 people were coming to church on Sunday morning in a town of 65 people. They came from a hundred mile radius.

And I'll tell you why they came. Because Saturday night we got together at seven o'clock, and we prayed for the Sunday morning service, and we prayed for the town. We, there was a rule, the prayer meeting ends when it ends, but you can leave anytime you want without condemnation. So if you came at seven, you could leave at 730.

Nobody even batted an eye. If it's, if you stayed till 11, that was fine. We prayed till we knew we broke through. Then Sunday morning, we met again and we prayed an hour before the service. And God came and he visited that church. And one year our missions budget was bigger than our operational budget for the church. We started reaching out to people, to communities in a very, very difficult area.

And God began to do the miraculous. As we continued to pray, I remember going house to house one night all night and just standing in front of each house in that town. There was, it was only a town of 65 people.

So there's, I don't know, there's probably 20, 25 houses. And I remember standing and praying for each family in each house and imploring God to move in that town and save those people. You know, we, I'm not willing, back then we had no money. We had no skill, but we could pray.

And we saw God do the miraculous. When I left there for New York, we left, we left phenomenal amounts of real estate behind us. We bought a two-story brick school. We started a Christian school. We left no debt. Everything was paid for.

We never pushed for money. We just prayed it in. We just prayed and God just kept providing. Now I'm in New York City, I have a church of about 10,000 people and we've got a multimillion dollar budget. But I'm telling you, Robbie, I am not willing to trade the power of prayer for strategy sessions.

I simply will not do it. Well, for me personally, and I hope for the listeners as well, you know, I've been really just kind of soaking in this concept of what happened there when people came together in one accord, but I had not made the connection in my own heart, which I just made a few moments ago, was these people were doing what you were doing when they were, when you were running, help me, Jesus. I mean, when they were up in that upper room, I mean, they were, this is, this is a dangerous place for them. And, and what Jesus has gone, he's been ascended and it's like, that was just us.

And what's next and help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus. It was that simple. It was, it was that simple. And, and, and Jesus knew the plan and then, you know, once they were encouraged through the prayer that he made that happen. And rather than declaring their own glorious works, whatever they were declaring the mighty works of God. And, and, and that's what everybody's hungry to hear. Yes, yes, it is.

We're seeing it now in New York City. I mean, a lot of, a lot of what God's given me to speak, for example, in the churches, I will declare to the people, if you will turn to Christ, if you will begin to call out to him, this is what he will do for you. So it's basically the same as they did on the book of Acts. They were declaring the, the wonderful things that God will do. Now they were doing it with an initial evidence of supernatural power, which I'm also doing in the sense that, uh, I have no power to speak other than God gave it to me.

I was a very shy man, very, uh, bound by fear actually because of some experiences in my life. And, um, God took me in that China and he sent me before crowds in Africa. For example, I preached to an audience of a half a million people for three nights consecutively, but only God can do that. And I declared to them the simple message of what God has done for me, he will do for you.

It's not profound. It's just like, if you will turn to him in humility, if you will open your heart, if you will let the spirit of God, Christ save you and the spirit of God come into your life, you will be delivered from being a natural being and be brought and be made in supernatural being in the sense that, that Christ's life inside of you will overpower your frailty, break the penalty and power of sin. And you will become a new creation, as the Bible says, and your message will be simple. It'd be telling the next man what Jesus did for me.

Jesus will do for you. That's been my whole life. I find myself in, uh, countries and places. And, uh, I've, I've found I've been in the home of two different presidents. I've, I've been asked for advice. I've always never qualified to be anywhere that I am. And that's what makes it such a beautiful journey. I love it.

I just love it with all my heart. Well, you don't know, and talking to the guy across the microphone, I was a car dealer. I would not do my own commercials because I was so scared of public speaking in any way, shape or form, who would have ever dreamed? Who would have ever, and when God asked me, and when God asked me to do, I was like, are you kidding me? If you heard my voice, this is not something that, but here's the part that's, that's that I really can't get over in my own life.

And I hope people can hear this. Is it, it says in the acts that you're going to receive power to be my witness. And when ever I've given the opportunity to speak and say, this is what God did in my life, then I'm, I'm clearly just being a witness. I mean, and in spite of the fact that I'm terrified to be on the air or all the things that you wouldn't, but that we know go on among shy people is, but I can tell you what I saw. I know what happened. You know, I know that I was healed from cancer.

I know that I've seen, you know, the unbelievable, unbelievable, you know, the unbelievable things and people's lives and freedom and, and, and families put back together in those things that, that you're seeing on Tuesday night. And I love, you know, honestly, I do a lot of interviews a lot, and most of the time people have some agenda, honestly, um, that is there, but I don't sense any from, I'm like, wait a minute, pastor, you're not selling a book. You don't have, uh, you're not trying to get people to go to your website. There's gotta be something here. I was going to get a badge made that says I don't schmooze and I have no business card. That's right. His name badge doesn't even have a name on it. It says Jerry. I was like, Oh wow.

Wow. Again, you're listening to kingdom pursuits. We're live at the convention floor of the national origins broadcasters convention. I'm with pastor Carter Conlon, who I am just delighted to, um, have had a chance to share with, you know, just how cool. Um, so you guys are there, right on time square, right there by Broadway. People, anybody can come visit your church when you're in New York city. This is the place to come in.

Oh yeah. Broadway and 51st. We're right there. Um, our services go all day, Sunday, 10, 10, one, three, and six. And, uh, the one o'clock services for seekers. We got about three, 400 people now where people are not Christians or they're very, very new or kind of on the fringes of Christianity and they have questions. So we deal with topics like who is Jesus Christ? Uh, what is sin?

What is the Bible? Why the cross? Um, you know, one of the topics is why does there need to be a God?

Because that's where New Yorkers are right now. They, they have no idea about any of these things. Um, and so we, we kind of deal with that with people and then we will frequently press them for a decision who is ready to follow Jesus Christ. And we'll get sometimes 30, 45, 10, you know, but there'll always be somebody that stands up and says, I am, I am, I'm ready. Then we take them into a more intensive class and then into water baptism on the, uh, but a month later on Sunday night where they testify. So, and I've, I'm encouraging our evangelistic team, press the people for a decision, press them. Don't let them think that because they're in church, they're saved.

You know, make them make a decision, draw a line in the sand every time you present truth and say, there's a decision here that needs to be made. Which side of eternity are you going to be on? And I just, I just thank God for the simplicity of Christ. You know, when you said you'll be witnesses of me, you know, a lot of people think that, you know, you'll be given the intelligence to talk about me. That's, that's part of it. But the way I see that is I will, I will declare who I am through you.

It's a whole other perspective on that. Christ in me, Paul said, the hope of glory. I, God says, I will, I will bear witness to myself through your life.

I will take you where you can't go, give you what you can't possess, make you what you could never be. I will do that for you. Do we have time to tell you a quick story? You too.

Okay. When I was 15 years old, I started suffering panic attacks. My grandfather was a judge and my father was denied an education because of World War II. So he more or less started living his life vicariously through my life.

I was going to be the next lawyer in the family and such like, and a tremendous pressure was put on me, but I, I didn't feel I had the, the wherewithal to achieve it. So at 15, I started to panic and panic attacks became a constant part of my life for nine years. And if you've never experienced these, it's the closest thing to hell on earth that you will ever experience. It's like somebody pours a bucket of sand on your head. Your heart starts to pound. You feel darkness closing in. A deep sense of hopelessness starts to overpower you.

You eventually get afraid of being on a bus, going out of the house. I, I kept it at bay largely through physical fitness. I became a fitness nut. I'd work out three hours. That's why you were jogging.

Yeah, that's exactly it. I got saved when I was 24 and I was at home one night and I had been reading my Bible and I only remembered half of the verse, but the apostle Paul said, if God be for us, who can be against us? And I felt one of these panic attacks coming on my life again. Now, up to that point, usually before being a Christian, I would take Valium and whiskey and a straight glass of whiskey and I would numb myself to it, you know, to get through it. But now there was no more Valium, no more whiskey. I was a Christian. I wasn't going back there. And as a brand new Christian, I went down into my living room and I still remember the prayer I prayed as if it was yesterday.

Now that's almost 40 years ago now. I said, Satan, you can only kill me if God allows you. And if he does, I win. I'm going to heaven.

So I win either way. So you throw at me everything you've got, but I throw back at you what I now have. And I said, in the name of Jesus Christ, the son of God, I resist you.

I resist you. And I was standing there and I felt a warmth hit my feet, go through my calves, my legs, my middle of my body, my chest, and out the top of my head, I was completely set free from panic attacks that night. My life began with prayer. And as I told you before, I've stood before hundreds of thousands of people. I've preached in Hindu Muslim prisons.

I've been in places that you could never dream that God could take you, places you should be afraid, and I'm not. And only so my life began with prayer. My life began by understanding that God answers prayer, that there's power in God to be set free from the bondages of sin and the bondages of everything this world can put in your life. And so starting there, by God's grace, I am absolutely unwilling to turn to strategy, reasonings, budgets, committees.

Somebody else can have that. I'm going to stay in the prayer closet. That's why Tuesday night we pray from 5.30 to 9 o'clock.

And that's why God has taken it worldwide. Pastor, we are out of time. However, I would be so delighted, and I know my listeners would as well, if you would pray for our listeners. I will.

Thank you. Father, in Jesus' name, Lord, I ask for those that are listening today, you are a God of the miraculous. You deliver, you heal, you give strength, you empower, you cause us to rise up, Lord, when we don't think we have the strength to even walk. I pray, Lord Jesus Christ, that you would put faith back in the hearts of your people, faith to believe your promises, faith to pray, faith to stand, faith to be a living witness again to this generation of the reality of the presence and the existence of almighty God through Jesus Christ. Father, I thank you, Lord God, for what you will do and how you will do it. I ask even now, as I pray, to open prison doors, give sight to the blind, heal those that have been bruised and wounded in their heart and they think they can't live again.

Oh God, open the doors to those that are in prison and set them free. Give strength to those who feel so poor they have no resource to rise up out of their situation. Lord God, let faith, just like it did in the men on the road to Emmaus, let it begin to burn in people's hearts again today. And God, reignite prayer in the hearts of your people. Deliver us, oh God, from ourselves and bring us back to you again. Father, I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.