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Come on, let's go. Let's go. I am loving this. I've heard about it now. I've seen it. This is remarkable. You can be seated. Thank you so much for having me, Pastor Joby. You told me this is the best church in America. Feeling strong vibes, strong vibes here. It is a joy to be here. And I'm bringing you love from New York City. I've just crossed the 20 year mark pastoring there. Love it. Call it home. I've got a. Thank you. Been married for 26 years to my amazing wife, Christy. She is a lioness. She is a woman in a world of girls. And I've got two great kids. I've got a daughter that's just moved to Tennessee. She's got a heart for the deaf community. And I've got a son who works on staff at our church. And he's just. He's on the lowest paid, on the bottom of the totem pole, grinding his way up. So. Bringing you the best of our heart, bringing you our love. And to be honest with you, it's a little bit intimidating to preach in a church like this. Really. You call it a movement, and that's probably right. What could I preach into a church experiencing this much divine momentum and favor? Some of you are probably sitting here and in your heart you're thinking you didn't even have a plausibility structure. That church could be like this. Some of you are in here, and your wildest dream of what it is that God could humanly do has already been met. And so what I thought I would do tonight, if possible, is try and stretch your imagination, if possible, beyond what you're already experiencing by looking at what happens when the hand of God comes on a church. And it's not just a great church, but it's a church that reaches an entire city. How many of you have a vision for God to move in Jacksonville, this whole area around here? In your spirit, you believe that God is not done yet. That God almighty with all of his power, hasn't run out of energy for what he wants to do. Well, let's have a look at God's word tonight about what happens when the hand of God comes on a church and it reaches the city. So if you've got your Bibles, turn to Acts, chapter 11. And we're going to be in verses 19 through 30. Acts, chapter 11, verses 19 through 30. Now, this is. It may not look like it just upon a casual reading, but this is one of the most pivotal shifts in the history of all of Christianity. This is a hinge moment where the gospel opens a new door. And Satan has not been able to close this for 2000 years. It's a remarkable moment where the gospel goes from primarily to being in a Jewish context to a complete and utter pagan setting. So we're going to look at what happens when the hand of God comes on a community and it touches a city. And we're talking about the city of Antioch. Antioch, in Acts chapter 11 that's mentioned here, is the third largest city in the Roman Empire. It was a melting pot for at least five dominant ethnic groups coming together. There was a lot of racial ethnic tension. It had Greeks, Roman, Semitic, Arab and Persian people coming into the city. And what it was known for was three primary things. They had chariot races, and so they had this amazing sporting culture where people would come from the whole region to watch these chariot races. They had a temple to Daphne, this massive structure to this goddess, and a crew of prostitutes that served this temple. So you've got a major city, ethnically diverse sporting culture, temple to a false goddess, and a massive culture of sexual immorality and prostitution. Now, I want you to imagine these Jewish believers hearing about cities like this and being intimidated by it. But you know what happens in the Book of Acts? The Holy Spirit comes upon them, and then slowly the gospel begins to move out. And after the persecution of Stephen, after Peter has the vision on the roof at Simon the Tanner's house, after the outpouring of the Spirit at Cornelius, now all of a sudden, the gospel is making its way into the city. And I want to note, if you got your pens, take these down. Five things that happens when the hand of God comes on a church and it begins to reach the city. Here's the first thing. When the hand of God is with us, there are radical conversions. There are radical conversions. Look at verse 20. The Lord's hand was with them. A great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. A great number believed and turned to the Lord. Now, the reason this is important is because we do live at a time of history where so much church growth and it's almost never the pastor's heart, and it's not even necessarily wrong or a bad thing. But a lot of times, massive church growth is people from other churches coming to new churches. It's just not bad. Reshuffling the deck. If you've ever played cards. I haven't, because I'm full of the Holy Spirit. But if you've ever played cards and you realize that Shuffling the deck and dealing a new hand enables a whole new set of possibilities to be played when the deck is shuffled. It's one of the things that God does in the kingdom ecosystem, in a city. But when the hand of God is really moving, it goes beyond church transfer to reaching people who are far from God. Now in this passage, when it says that multitudes turn to the Lord, these are not, you know, really Torah observant Jewish people. We're talking. These would be prostitutes coming out of the temple, giving their lives to Jesus. These would be people coming from all of these different ethnic groups and all these religions and all these background. This would have been messy. This would have been radical. This would have messed with their theology of what it is that God can do and how God can save people. But one of the things that always happen when the hand of God comes on people is there is radical conversions. We are seeing this in New York right now, and I just share this to just build faith that God is doing this in the earth today. There was a guy. The longest sermon I've ever preached, okay, is a sermon called Jesus and the Gay Community. It's an hour and 20 minutes long. I never set out to break a preaching record in my own church, and I never set out to have my longest sermon be about the gay community. But for whatever reason, that one seems to have been particularly helpful. There's a gay bloke who's living in Hell's Kitchen, which is a gay neighborhood in New York. He's living there with his boyfriend. Someone has the courage to say to him, hey, you should listen to this sermon called Jesus in the Gay Community. And so he listens to it, gets brought under conviction by the Holy Spirit, breaks up with his boyfriend, moves out, comes to our church, gives his life to Jesus, is radically. Thank you, not yet. He's radically transformed, meets a woman, falls in love, gets married, and is now helping an arts ministry in our city get massive traction. And I want to say this to you. Don't look at categories of people in a city and think the gospel could not reach them. The blood of Jesus can cover any sin and can reach any person. When the hand of God is on a community, it's getting into all those places that others have overlooked. We just had a woman come off the street and we just had a woman get involved in a Bible study we did. Someone invited her along, she started coming along. This is a woman who was praying to Satan. She caught up in the dark arts, absolutely disillusioned with life, sort of Got into spirituality, and it went dark. She comes along to evangelistic Bible study, meets Jesus, gives her life to Jesus, radically transformed while sharing with her father through a zoom call about her testimony and conversion, her father is radically healed on a zoom call through the power of her testimony and the power of her prayers. Don't tell me that God can't reach people involved in the occult and in the new age, it's absolutely possible for the gospel to do this. We just had a Jewish man come to faith in our church because in a dream, Jesus told him that he was the Messiah. Now, you know, in the Muslim world, that happens all the time, but doesn't happen in the Jewish community all the time. And I honestly think there was a moment where God was like, I've surrounded you with Jewish people. I'm telling you to share the gospel. No one's sharing the gospel. Let me just go do this one myself. And so Jesus just appears to him in a dream, and he shows up at our church, gives his life to Jesus. We just had a Muslim man come to faith on the sidewalk because someone walking past him sensed a prompting that his heart was open. He doesn't speak English. He pulls out chatgpt, uses the translation. They go back and forth for an hour, and then he prays and leads him to Christ through chatgpt on the sidewalk in Manhattan. I'm saying this to you to let you know there's not a category of religious background, spiritual background, sexual background, occult background that Jesus cannot reach. You should be more confident than ever about the message that we carry when the hand of God is upon us. There are radical conversions. Now, you hear these stories and you think, well, listen, mate, those are pastor stories. Those are pastor stories. But I want you to note something in this passage here, right around verse 19, you know what it says? Who were the preachers bringing the gospel to this city? Do you know who it says? Here's the answer. It says, some men, we don't even know who they are. In fact, these people were so empowered by the spirit of God, they didn't even ask for apostolic authority or permission to go into this city. They just went and started preaching. And in fact, there was such a move of God, they had to send the apostles to check in and even see if it was God. I want you to note this. You've been authorized by Jesus Christ himself to preach his word wherever you are. Some men, all of history was shaped by just a few people saying, you know what? Let me just try Antioch. Let me just try these pagans Let me just share the gospel. So listen, here's what this should mean for you. God has perfectly positioned in your street, your building, your job, your family, your relationships, because you are the best person that's ever lived to bring the gospel to those people. God, in his sovereignty, has arranged human history in such a way that he has put his best people in the lives of those who need to hear about Jesus. And you're his best people and he's put you in their life. And so you need to see if God wanted, if there was someone better, God Almighty would have put someone else there. But he's put you there because you're the perfect person. When the hand of God comes on a community, you will see more and more radical conversion. Second thing you see when the hand of God's with us. Category defying community, verse 25. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this wouldn't have been. I want you to imagine being in a small group in the church of Antioch. So you come off like, hey, how's it going? Good. Welcome to our group. Good. Tell me about yourself. Well, I just come. I was just working in the Temple of Daphne. A few months ago, I was involved in prostitution. Someone told me about Jesus. Now I'm sitting here. Great. What about you? Well, I'm a Torah observant Jew that believes that Gentiles historically are completely unclean and I shouldn't talk to women. So it's like, well, great, welcome to my group. Why don't you guys sit next to each other? Great to have you here. Just imagine. What about you? I'm from Persia. I worship another God and I've been involved in idolatry and evil practice. Well, wonderful. Come on in. Imagine going around this. Can you imagine the tension in that room, putting people from all of these different backgrounds in a group and saying, therefore, love one another. I mean, it would have been such a challenging environment. And yet for the first time in history, there was a new narrative that produced a new humanity, where a new identity was introduced to people the world had never seen. Where your secondary identity characteristics and your secondary religious convictions all bowed the knee to Jesus and Jesus became Lord overall. Now, scholars tell us that if you go back and study the ruins of what happened in Antioch, they literally, there was so much ethnic tension that they built walls in the city quadrants to keep people apart because of violence. And for the first time you've got people tearing down walls and climbing over Fences not to attack one another, but to love one another because of the way of Jesus. This is one of the most staggering moments that have ever happened. One scholar said this about that passage in Galatians. There's neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but we're all one in Christ. That that was the most revolutionary statement of human dignity ever put into the world at that time. Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because when you look at the Scriptures, you see that the church had this radical kind of community the world could not produce. And it had a radical kind of community that was its own testimony to the world. In Acts 13, when we read about the leadership of this church, we see it was incredibly diverse. It says now, in the church of Antioch, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, who'd been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. So here's what you've got here. Incredible ethnic diversity. Barnabas is a Cyprian Jew. Simeon, called Niger, is likely of African descent. Lysis of Cyrenes from North Africa. Saul is a Diaspora Jew from Tarsus. And they're all coming together into a radical, diverse team. And there's class diversity. You've got Manaen, who was raised with Herod the tetrarch. This is like a posh cultural elite. And you've got people from humble backgrounds. And they're all coming together and they're saying to the world, jesus can do what the world has failed to do. Now, why does this matter? Here's why this matters. Our culture is so broken and our culture is so fragmented, and the world has no solutions to solve it. And listen, I don't want to get too political or whatever. I feel a touch of freedom, but I want to be sensitive. Okay, but part of the reaction, we've seen things like DEI that have been shoved down people's throats. And anytime you shove something down someone's throat, at some point, people will vomit it out. And so I just say this. We've had all of these efforts that have been based on real issues trying to solve them, and they have not worked. Hang with me. In more than 400 studies of attempts to reduce prejudice in the workplace, they found that in 76% of cases, the best that could be said was the impact of the efforts were unclear. A 2021 Harvard Business Review article regarding 80,000 people who had undergone unconscious bias training found that such training did not change bias behavior at all. Another examination of three decades of data concluded that the positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two and can actually activate a bias or spark against racial justice. A fourth study found that after unconscious bias training, the likelihood that black men and women would advance in organizations actually goes down. Now, here's why I'm saying this. This is research from the top universities in America. I bring this up to say there's a need for something to change in the nation. And the secular culture has tried to shove its version down at our throats, and it has failed. But listen, listen, in the absence of that, the church cannot sit back and say, we told you so. The church needs to rise up and not forfeit that need for justice and reconciliation. We need to step in in the name of Jesus and show a better way that only the cross can do. We forget. We forget. Ephesians 2, 1, 10. We are reconciled to God. Ephesians 10:2, 10 on we're reconciled to one another. That dividing wall of hostility has been torn down. And so I want us to see this. The world is out of options, and the church is just getting started. We have something to bring to the table on this issue. And so the question has to be, what do we do about this? You can do this just by doing something small. One of our small groups in Queens, every day, they met for their small group. They said, we're going to fast at lunchtime, and we're gonna save the money we would have spent on food, and we're gonna put it into a generosity fund. And then once a month, we're gonna find somebody in this apartment building that needs a blessing, and we're gonna give them all the money that we saved up from fasting. We're just gonna bless someone. And those New Yorkers like to eat, and food ain't cheap. Some real cash here, some coin. And they found a Muslim woman in their building, and they just paid her rent for her and said, we're followers of Jesus. We live a couple of floors above you. We saw that you were struggling. We just want to say we love you and Jesus loves you, and we want to bless you. And then the next months, they paid for all the supplies their daughter needed for school. And they just did this time after time. And then the Muslim woman said, can I please come to your church and hear about Jesus? The woman came to church. The woman gave her life to Jesus, and here's what she said. Nobody in the Muslim community loved me when I was in need. And Jesus people loved me when I was in need. And so I choose to be with Jesus people, not massive, not a huge event, didn't heal a city. But you know what? It changed that building. And I can't imagine what would happen if 20,000 or so people like you just look for opportunities where the world has failed to bring the love of Jesus and cross those barriers and the boundaries that make us uncomfortable and stretch out and do it in the name of Jesus. I wonder what would happen in the city if the churches came together under the name of Jesus and as a prophetic declaration to a nation that has no solution, says Jesus is a solution. Now, the reason I bring this up, you're like, why are you bringing this up? Well, as you do, I was reading the Florida Historical Quarterly about histories of moves of God and demographic changes in your region, and I came across this article called Changing the face of Jacksonville in Florida. And it actually turns out that there was a revival in the early 1900s in your city. And this is one of the defining factors. Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches sponsored revivals frequently. In 1905, the Union Revival association, comprising most of the black and white protestants and organizations denominations in the city, organized a mammoth six week revival. A 6,500 seat tabernacle was built specifically for the occasion. In the St. James lot across from Hemming park, an estimated 6,000 people heard Dr. L. Munhall preach what the Times Union called the greatest sermon ever heard in Jacksonville to the greatest congregation ever assembled in the city city. Now, I see you, Florida Quarterly, and I appreciate your history and your vision. And I want to humbly submit that there could be a day coming when a even greater sermon is preached in your city and something greater could happen. Look, in 1905, 11.4% of Jacksonville's population attended the revival. About 6,500 out of roughly 56 to match that same percentage today, with a population of about one, just over a million, you would need roughly 115,000 people at a single event to mention that. Can I just put a challenge out there? Do you have faith in your heart for 115,000 people to gather in your city across ethnic, denominational and cultural lines and declare that Jesus is Lord? I tell this to you. This is your inheritance. This happened in your region. And I believe in all honesty, you're probably one of the only churches in Florida that has the courage and faith to actually believe that God could bring that kind of unity again. When a city desperately needs it, the church has a chance to lead. Start with friendships and the whole city is going to need the whole body when the hand of God comes on a church and it begins to reach a city, there are extraordinary relational reconciling dynamics that the world cannot produce. Number three, when the Lord's hands are with us, there is unprecedented generosity. Unprecedented generosity. Now, there's a little passage here. Look at verse 27. There's a little passage here that I found so startling. In this passage, I've never heard anybody else preach on. Just struck me. Look at what it says. During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. So they're in the middle of a move of God. One of them, named Agabus, stood up through the spirit and predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. This happened during the reign of Claudius. The disciples, each according to their ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. And this they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. Now, let's just put this in context. A prophet named Agabus shows up. Any of you guys know Agabus? I don't think a lot of them knew Agabus either. This prophet shows up and he's like, hey, folks, Agabus here. It's great to meet you. I'm a prophet. That means I hear from God, and God's told me that there's gonna be a major economic downturn in the Roman Empire. So I'd like to take up a little love offering. So if you go ahead and just prepare your giving right now, I take Venmo, Cash app, Bitcoin, whatever. And it would be like me showing up as a guest speaker here tonight and saying, hey, folks, they're about to elect in New York City a communist socialist, and it's going to destroy the city and things are going to be bad for God's people. So I just like to take a little love offering for our church up there. You would just be like, what are you talking now? Maybe some of you be like, I love New York, but you wouldn't get this kind of response. I want you to note this. They have an instinct when the spirit is moving, they have an instinctive generosity that's been released. They're not just freed from their sins. They're not just freed from their idolatry. They're freed from the tyranny of mammon. And everything within them says, hey, if God's moving, I want to be a part of it. There's not just a revival of salvation and diversity, there's a revival of generosity. Tim Keller said this. I love this. The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way. The pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and they gave practically nobody their body. And they gave practically everybody their money. I love this. Every move of God, if you study revival history, has been funded by gospel patrons large and small. But everybody's realized the move of God needs the resources of God. I got into a debate one time with a young guy when I was raising money for our church. And he's like, jesus didn't live like this. The son of man had nowhere to raise his head. He was just like a hippie wandering around. I was like, with all due respect, Jesus had a bunch of wealthy women and out of their generosity and love for the person of Jesus Christ, took care of his needs. And so actually, Jesus wasn't wandering around like a homeless peasant. He was well funded by a group of wealthy women who believed in his ministry. You're just believing propaganda. Those women will see. They came at when Jesus is going to the cross and what does it say? They came to take care of his needs. And I want to say this. You know that the church is always at its best when it's a generous church. This happens in key moments of history. Acts chapter two, Acts chapter four. You have these moments of extraordinary generosity when the gospel breaks out. We have seen two people this year sell houses and give the money to our church and say, I want the fruit of the book of Acts. And so I want to live the lifestyle of the book of Acts and sell their houses just like we read about in the scriptures. So we need these big gospel patrons when the gospel comes to be liberated. But you know what? We also need just everyday people doing whatever they can, wherever they are, every day. When I was a youth pastor, I lived in Franklin, Tennessee for a while, and I was a youth pastor there. And they had this great idea, let's take the salary of the older youth pastor and chop it in half and give it to two young youth pastors. And many of you don't know this, but there's a trailer park in Franklin, Tennessee. And I know that because I lived there and I was so poor. And we go to church and they pray us in, my wife's up there, my son Nathan has just been born. And they lay hands on us and they commission us to reach the youth of Williamson County. It was great. And we're so poor, I can't pay the Bill bills for the trailer park without my wife working. Now she's got a newborn, and she goes and gets a job. She's a manager at Starbucks. And one day she's working at Starbucks, and a man comes through and looks at her and says, are you that new youth pastor's wife? Yeah. You just have a baby? Yeah. Where's the baby? Well, John's watching him. Is John the youth pastor? Yeah. He's not youth pastoring. Ah. We got a bit of a schedule. We're sort of like, working it out. Here's my card. Give this to your husband and tell him to call me. So my wife comes home from work and she said, hey, some weird dude was talking to me, asking me a bunch of questions, told me to give you the cards. Like, give me that card right now. I was like, yo, homeboy, what are you doing talking to my wife at Starbucks, man? Freaking me out here. He said, hey, sorry about that. He said, when I was young in a very similar situation to you, I started a business. And the business did really, really well. But it blew my marriage up. And it was primarily because of financial stress and work pressure. And my wife and I just have a deal. It's an irrepressible instinct we have whenever we see a young couple financially strained. I just want to do something about it. He said, so I've got a proposal for you. He said, does your wife want to work? I was like, nah, she wants to stay home with our newborn. That's what I thought. He said, I've got a proposal for you. If you meet with me once a month, I will give you your wife's salary every month so she can stay home. And all I want to do when I meet with you is just pray blessing on your marriage. And I was like, I am strangely open to this arrangement that you have just come up with me. This is extraordinary. Changed my life, changed my marriage. And I just thought, I wonder what would happen if every person was walking around with an instinct like that. C.S. lewis. People always wonder, what did C.S. lewis do with all his money? You know what he did before it even came to him? He gave away two thirds of it, and he put it into a fund called the Agape Fund. And he said, if the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, then the love of generosity can be the root of all kinds of good in the world. And what he decided to do with that generosity fund is just bless everything from paying tuition and rent to major projects. I just imagine 20 plus thousand people in Your church walking around with just a little generosity fund looking for opportunities based on the passion God's put on their heart. There's blessing and service. Do you think your city would feel that? I promise you they would feel that. And anytime there's a move of God, you will see that there is a radical generosity unleashed. Fourth thing. When the Lord's hand is with us, there is destiny releasing leadership. When God's moving, the destinies of people in the city will begin to be raised up. Look back at verse 22. News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, news of this move of God, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to return to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Now again, movement dynamics. Multitudes turning to the Lord. He shows up and he's like, I can literally see the grace of Jesus showing up in the story of your lives. And Barnabas doesn't think. You know what? Let me get a website called Barnabas Ministries International. Let me just start me a little 501c3 for me. And let me just. Let me listen. I'm in this incredible atmosphere. I probably can leverage this to other major cities in the Roman Empire, maybe. I got me a new little thing here. Look what happens in the middle of the move of God. Barnabas stops. Look at the next verse. Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. Now, this is about 300 hundred miles away. Not easy to get to back then. And the word that's used in the Greek there to look for him. It's a strong word. It means like, he did not find him at first and he had to search him out. And then he finds him and he brings him to Antioch. You remember earlier, after Saul was converted, everybody was afraid of him and nobody believed in him. But Barnabas brought him to the apostles and said, he is for real. God's hands on him. You should believe him. And I just can't help but believe that. In their conversations together, Saul probably let out, hey, I had this vision and Jesus told me that my destiny is to speak to kings and rulers of Gentiles. And he just tucked that away in his heart. And he got in an atmosphere where Gentiles are being converted. And he's like, aha, this is good for me. But you know who this is better for? Saul. I bet if I get Saul in this atmosphere, his destiny will be released. And he goes and brings Saul into that atmosphere. And you know the fruit of what happens next. If you study through the book of Acts, Barnabas fades out, Saul becomes Paul and then Paul goes on and becomes an apostle, making it ultimately all the way to Rome. I want you to see this. There's certain atmosphere that unlock the future of people. And in moves of God when God's hand comes upon people, leaders observe this and leaders raise people up. I became a kid in a Pentecostal youth revival in Australia and it radically changed my life. I started working as a butcher when I was 14. I dropped out of high school when I was 16, I started dating a girl that said to me, if you want to go out with me, you've got to go to church. And I remember going to the church and everyone, it was all dark and people were speaking in tongues and I remember thinking this is a cult. But how bad can cults be if they're producing women this good looking? And so I was like, let me just get around the edge of the cult, just get around the soft edge of the cult. And ended up coming into it. The first night, the first night I go to that youth group, I walk in, I smell like meat and I walk in and the youth pastor says, young man, you think you're here for your own purposes, the hand of God's on your life. I remember thinking, which young man you mate? And that has never occurred to me in my life that God could do anything with me. It's a high school dropout working with a bunch of rough guys in Elizabeth South Meat store. Like in what way would God Almighty look at me and see anything in me? But that didn't just happen for me, that happened for so many people in my church. There's over 40 people from my youth group of 150 who are in full time ministry serving Jesus around the world today. Because the destiny of God was called out to them in that environment. I don't know if you've heard of a church in Nashville called Church of the City Nashville. It's grow to 10,000 people in the last 10 years. Well, that's a kid from my youth group. Have you heard of the Belonging Co? That's my small group leader and a bloke I used to surf with. And somehow the spirit of God, if you go back to Australia, many of the best churches in Australia are led by leaders who came out of that youth group. What is it about an atmosphere like that that radically changes you and you know this. Jesus said to pray that God would raise up laborers for the harvest. And it's not enough just to have one or two gifted people and a bunch of volunteers. You needed an army of. Of godly men and women rising up for the future of what it is that God wants to see in this city. It is possible and it can happen. Listen, I got the gift of faith. I don't have many gifts, but I got one of them. And I'm telling you, there is faith in this church to believe for the raising of destinies of people. Now, how do you go about doing that? What do you do about that? Well, it's quite simple. Find someone young that you believe in, or find someone you're working with and call greatness out of them. Most people are jacked up because their dad's never encouraged them or beat them down. Most people have lame bosses who just put pressure on them and don't see their potential. A lot of people just on the treadmill without anybody really seeing what's in them and calling the best out of them. Sometimes Jesus was a master at this. Sometimes people criticize the disciples because they would argue about who was the greatest and were like, oh my gosh, how inappropriate. You guys think you're great, but listen, I promise you, those little country boys there doing fishing on the lake, nobody ever expected anything from them. Nobody believed greatness was gonna come from them. And then Jesus comes along and says, hey, man, you see fish? I see men over your life. Put that stuff down. I'm going to upgrade your couch. Come and follow me. It was the first time in their lives anybody believed for greatness. And I want to say, you get around Jesus. Jesus has an atmosphere that brings the greatness out of his followers. Now he has to redirect it because the flesh gets in there. But I want you to know this. To say yes to Jesus is to expand the horizon of possibility for your life. So what do you do? Go find someone that you believe in and give them everything you have. This is how it happened for me, okay? One of the youth leaders is like, hey, John, the classic phrase, I see you have spiritual potential. I was like, great. I don't know what that means. He said, I would like to disciple you. I was like, great. Don't make it weird. And he says, what time do you get up? I said, I get up at 4 o'. Clock. Great. I'll be over there at 4:30 a couple mornings a week. Like, what are we gonna do? He's like, we're gonna do this stuff. I was like, great. So he shows up and he's like, hey man, show me how you read the Bible. Sitting on the couch in the dark, like, I hold it like this. Am I holding it right? Good. Good grip. Good. I'm starting the life of David. Cause I wanna be a man after God's own heart. Great. He said, show me how you read it. I was like, sorry, read it. He's like, do you take any notes? Yeah, take a few little notes. He's like, what do you do with those notes? I was like, I don't do anything with them. They're called notes, mate. I just leave them in the notebook. He's like, this is great, man. You're off to a great start. He said, can I show you what I do? I was like, please. This bloke teaches me how to do an inductive Bible study. And he's like, let me show you how to put this in context. Let me show you how to cross reference this. Do you know what a commentary is? I was like, I have no idea. He goes, let me show you how to pick a commentary. Let me show you how. And I remember when he did that, just going, how do you do that? And I want to do that for the rest of my life. And I still to this day preach in the middle of New York City with tools and skills that were given to me as an 18 year old when I was a high school dropout. Nobody saw anything in me. He saw something and he deposited it in me. He taught me. He taught me how to do evangelism. It was awful. He'd say, hey man, you're gonna share the gospel on Thursday at lunch at the butcher shop. I was like, look, mate, none of these guys love Jesus, okay? It was one of Australia's worst neighborhoods. It was called Elizabeth in Adelaide, South Australia. So it's full of sort of government housing and multi generational unemployment. I worked with a Hells angel associate named Flash who sawed off part of his pinky to get an insurance payout to buy a new Harley. Okay? I worked with a guy named Steve who was growing weed in his basement because he didn't make enough money to pay his bills as a butcher. And I was like, trust me, they're not open to Jesus. He's like, I'm gonna fast and I'm gonna pray and I'm gonna show up out the front of your shop like a strip mall. And he said, I'm gonna be walking back and forth where you can see me. And I'm just gonna be praying, God, open one of these butcher's hearts. God, open one of these butcher's hearts. Sure enough, he shows up. He's like, gonna be a good lunch, mate. I'm like, gosh. So I'm working, and out of nowhere, Steve says, hey, I've been thinking about evolution. Do you think in Genesis that God literally created Adam and Eve? And I'm looking around, I'm like, what are you even praying out there, mate? And why hasn't God heard any of my prayers? Two nights ago, I went praying and walking around Times Square and I shared with five people. Three of them were open to the gospel, two of them I prayed with. And you know what I did? What I was taught by a guy in a butcher shop when I was a teenager in Australia. And I want to say that you can do that for someone you can invest in, someone you can raise up. Listen, the people you need for the harvest that God has for this church are probably not even in the kingdom of God yet. They're still out in the harvest. And they're going to need people to disciple them from the harvest, into the kingdom, into the church, and into leadership. And you'll see this every time God's hand comes on a community, a destiny releasing environment is created. And if you lean into that, you will have the leaders you need for the harvest that God wants to bring. Last one here, number five. When the Lord's hand is with us, the church has a new cultural identity. Look at verse 26. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. Now, this may not seem like a big deal, somebody giving them a name, putting the name of Jesus on someone, but you know this. We're in a culture today where we're in a war for words. We've taken the word hell. This is a place of eternal punishment. Jesus warns and pleads against us going there. Jesus spoke about hell more than anybody else in the Bible. And we've turned hell into a casual word put into a sentence. We've taken sex, which is God's most intimate, beautiful, sacred expression of covenant love, and we've turned it into the F word. And we use it as a swear word that means nothing. We take the name Jesus, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Son of God, and we've turned that into a swear word. And one of the things that grieves me the most about going to New York, people are like, what grieves you the most? It's like the amount of people that say Jesus Christ as a swear word. It matters. It matters. And so what we need is that name of Jesus that is laughed at and mocked and put down to be lifted up and seen for the beauty that it contains. Demons tremble at the name of Jesus. And so we need to get that name honored and brought back up. Acts 19. Look at what it says. When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear. And the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. We want to make the name of Jesus beautiful again by living godly lives of witness that make people say, whatever you got, I want that. When I was in the butcher shop, I had this radical call. I want to be a preacher. I want to be a preacher fired up. Give me a Bible. Let me exposit this for you. And they were not that open most of the time. In fact, every day I would go in and they would put a new piece of pornography. This is before the Internet on my workplace every day. So I walk in every day, and they thought, this is really funny. So I went to a fundamentalist Christian bookstore and got a picture of heaven and hell with a cross above it, and I drew little men, and I put a name of each of those butchers based on how close I thought they were going to hell. And every day they'd come and they'd put a piece of pornography. And I'd say, ah, Steve, Steve, you're going to hell, mate. And you're getting closer. I'm gonna move you down the cycle right here. I'm doing scripture memory. I'm getting up, I'm getting on my knees. I. I'm lifting my knives to God as a holy sacrifice. Lord, if nobody else sees this today, every cut I do, I do for the glory of God. This is for an audience of one. I'm memorizing the Bible. I start weaving scripture into every sentence that I. I'm just working the gospel in nothing. One guy in particular, one of my managers, just starts getting stuck into me for a whole afternoon. He said, jesus effing Christ. And he said that repeatedly in a row to me for about three hours. It's the only thing he said to me. I'm just sitting there working and just looking at me, saying this. And this guy pushed me to the brink. And I would go home, 19 years old. I'd go home and I'd hold it together and I close the door, and I'd fall in a bean bag, and I'd just cry. So much resistance. But when I finished and I ended up getting A scholarship to come to America. My last day of work, that same guy comes to me, says, hey, man, I need to talk to you before you leave. I'm like, okay. I think, what's this? He's gonna curse me on the way out. He says, hey, man, for the last couple years since you've become a Christian, I have tried to get you to blow up. I've tried to make you angry, I've tried to get you upset. And you have not budged an inch. And I want you to know I would deny this if you told the other guys, but I've started taking my kid to Sunday school because I want him to be like you. Listen, all my preaching, my posters of hell, that's not what did it. Calm under pressure. Humble, faithful, serving Jesus. You don't need to do some big spectacular thing. Just tell him you love Jesus and then show up every day across this city and show them that it matters. So here's my prayer for you based on what we've read. All of this happens because the Lord's hand was on them. The Lord's hand was on them. And I want to say to you, I want to speak into your spirit. What God is doing here is special. It's special. You know that it's special. But I don't want you to think that this is it. I want you to be grateful every day for what the Lord is doing. But I don't want that gratitude to become complacency because you have a city and a region that desperately needs the good news of gospel to get into it. So in Acts, chapter four, we read this prayer. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. And I pray this. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. Stretch forth your hand. Would you begin to pray that prayer? Think about your life. You may look at. You may have some prodigal kid in your home, and you're just saying, this kid's never going to be radically converted. Lord, I ask in the name of Jesus, stretch your hand out over that kid. You may be dealing with bitterness or prejudice or pain in your heart. You may have all sorts of relational confusion, but just to stretch out your hand and just say, jesus, I'm asking you, because of the cross, do something impossible that you cannot do, that no one else can do but you. Maybe you're sitting there, maybe you're here tonight, and as I'm preaching about your destiny being released, you're a Young leader, and God's telling you right now, you need to go into ministry. Maybe this is a destiny moment for you tonight where the Holy Spirit is telling you like he told me as a young man, I want you to serve me. This could be a moment of destiny for you tonight. Who knows, 20 years from now whether this could be a door of destiny? Your life. If you sense the Lord calling you into ministry, just say to the Lord, you can have my future, you can have my life. Or maybe you've got some hypocrisy in your life and you just sense in your heart, I need to give this to the Lord. I think I got a disqualifying witness. When God stretches out his hand, anything is possible. So I want to just close by just reminding you of the urgency of the moment that we're in. You see, we're at a moment in the history of this nation where good church is not enough for the evil we face. And we're in a moment where everything we've tried seems to have failed. And we're in a moment where if God doesn't stretch out his hand, what hope do we have? And a lot of times you come to these moments and you get rocked and you look out and you're like, God, it's so bleak. It just feels like a desert. And that's the thing. You're talking about deserts, you're talking about the wilderness. But I just want you to know, even in places like that, God can still move. I heard about this place in Chile called the Atacama Desert. I think we got a picture of it here. The Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth. It's so dry that when they prepare the Mars rovers to go to Mars, they send them here for testing. Now you look at that and how many of you are like, now, that is where I want to do my next holiday. That looks pretty nice. Like, you look at that and you just think, in your heart, that is dead. There's no life there. Nothing could ever grow there. But you never believe it. Underneath the Atacama Desert, there are thousands of species of wild. Wildflowers, but they're all just tucked away under the desert. But they never get enough rain in any given moment to germinate. And so underneath this desert is this spectacular possibility. But it's never realized. About every decade or say that every decade or so, they, they have these remarkable events where they will get 10 years worth of rain in 10 hours. And it's just, it's just a downpour where it soaks in and it goes deep and it totally transforms it. And you know what happens? Next slide. Here, this is what happens. A super bloom happens. That desert is radically transformed into something that is absolutely breathtaking. And I want to say to you, if you go back one slide, many people look at the future of America and they think it is looking like this. What hope is there for our nation? What hope is there for our city? Violence, prejudice, crime, godlessness. But what we need is not just to do little bits of prayer here and there. God, would you touch this situation? We need a community of people. We need a church like this that says, lord, I will not let you go until you begin to reign again in the desert of this nation. God, I will not let you go until you start showing up in my family. I'm not going to let you go. Next slide. Until my future, this nation looks like this. This is called a super bloom. And I'm here to tell you tonight that I believe with all of my heart that God is looking for people to pray for rain to stretch out his hand, because this future is possible. It is starting to happen in little pockets of around the country. It's starting to happen in New York. And I want to preach to you that I believe this is the destiny of your region. God has got you here. The possibility is here. The question is, will you be the church that seeks the Lord until rain comes and then the harvest comes? It's got to be people wholly committed to seeing the purpose of God come like this. So I want you to stand to your feet. We are going to just take a moment and just turn to the Lord right now. What's in your heart? Where do you need God to stretch out his hand? Where do you need God to move in your life? Maybe tonight you want to turn this into an altar. Maybe you've got a member of your family and you need a radical conversion. Maybe you've got someone at work and you just think there is no way they could ever give their lives to Jesus. I dare you to fast and pray for them and see what God can do. So if God's got someone on your heart or something, that you need a breakthrough in the area of salvation tonight, what do you come for? Just turn this into an altar and cry out to the Lord. The prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective. So as we're singing and responding, come forward, respond to the Lord. Particularly, I want to say to you, if you have that sense of calling to ministry, aren't you glad that someone Looked at pastor Joby before he was a pastor and said, I see God's hand on your life. Aren't you glad someone called out his destiny? Listen, maybe the next pastors are in this room. Maybe the next justice workers leaders are in this room. If you got the sense. Tonight, I want to give my life to the Lord and I want to serve in ministry. I want to invite you to respond. We want to be able to pray for you and cover you. And I just want to close if you would join me in just praying for a move of God in your city. So as I pray, would you just lift your heart and list your faith? And let's just ask that we would see an outpouring of the spirit here in Jacksonville. Father, we just want to come into your presence tonight. And Lord, we just want to say thank you that we can gather here tonight. And not just here in all of these locations across the state. Everybody listening online. My brothers who are incarcerated. Lord, I just want to thank you for this evening. And Father, we just want to ask in the name of Jesus that you would send rain into this region. Father, we are asking that you would open heaven and pour your spirit out on this church and on this region. Lord God, Father, our hearts are broken at the barrenness and the wilderness. Lord, our hearts are grieved by the violence and the brokenness. And no we, Lord, Lord, we know nothing has worked and we're at a moment where only you can act. And so, Lord, we ask as your church come in power to this city, Lord Jesus. Father, I'm just praying that prodigals would come from the furthest reaches of this city to this church and come home to Jesus. Father, I just pray denominational lines, ethnic tensions that have held the church back would be broken in the name of Jesus and strange reconciling unity would emerge. Father, I pray for unprecedented generosity, generosity that gets the attention of heaven and the United States church of what is possible. Father, I just want to ask in the name of Jesus that you would raise up and release the destiny of the next round of pastors, ministry leaders and teachers in this church. And Father, I ask this so that the name of Jesus would be lifted up, you would be glorified, and your church would have credibility again. So we pray for rain. We thank you that it's on the way, and we thank you for your word that gives us hope and we lift these things up. And everybody said amen. Amen.