← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
On Pulling the Fire Alarm at Church
00:22:57
We must pull the fire alarm in here. Awakening starts with me.
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Foreign Good morning, Sower Nation. It is Thursday, February 19th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. Well, we're embarked in this journey of 40 days of walking together in the wilderness. We started up on the top of Mount Transfiguration and we're making our way all the way down into the. To the valley, really the bottom of the earth, the cross. And this journey, we'll call it the Way of the Cross. History is called these days Lent, the season of Lent. Thanks for joining us. We're walking through a series called Jesus Asking the three Transformational Questions of Lent. Some of you have gotten the book Jesus Asking. I appreciate it. It's not required. It will be on the wake up call every day. But it's a perfect companion to, to journal through, to have in your hands, to mark up, to be ready to work in a maybe a smaller group with and maybe a friend. Still time to invite people to join you. So let's dive right in today. Let's begin in consecration. Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. I don't know if you've picked that up yet or not, but I kind of anticipate that when I say, wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, you come in saying, and Christ will shine on you if you're up for it. And now let's pray. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. If you're new joining us. Every day we walk through this pattern. This movement begins in consecration, where we simply offer ourselves to God. That's like walking through the door into the great cathedral of transformation. It's a place where God reveals things to us by his word and spirit and we respond to that. And of course, that leads out the out the door, back out the door into the world for demonstration. Right? Wake up, sleeper, consecration. Rise from the dead. Transformation. Christ will shine on you. That's demonstration. I think of it as wake up, grow up, show up, and Jesus will blow up in the midst of it in a powerful way. So our title of today's entry on pulling the fire alarm in church, our text, Joel, chapter two, verse one. This is a classic text from Ash Wednesday. It's a good text for the beginning of Lent. Hear now the Word of the Lord, Blow a trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm on my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land trust tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. Indeed it is near the word of the Lord. Now consider this. Years ago, I served as dean of the chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary. I often did confounding things there. One I always wanted to do, but never did, was to pull the fire alarm in the chapel during a worship service. I always wanted to do it on Ash Wednesday, the solemn assembly that opens the door into the movement of Lent. Why, you ask? Because that's what the prophet is doing in today's text, which is the traditional classic text for the opening of Lent. Didn't he say, sound an alarm? Blow a trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm on my holy mountain. I once had a friend, Ricky, who was straight out of the Old Testament, a spitfire prophet type. He told me how he walked up to a lost and broken friend's door one day and greeted him with these words, bobby, if I was driving by and your house was on fire, would you want me to stop and tell you? The friend said, of course I would. Ricky then said, well, Bobby, your house is on fire. It was Ricky's way of pulling the fire alarm. Friends, I'm no doomsday prophet, but I am a bit of a truth teller. Have you looked around lately? Our house is on fire. I don't need to rehearse the story with you. And isn't that part of the problem? Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we've slowly accepted the disastrous status quo all around us. We feel powerless to effect meaningful change, and we often retreat into the enclaves of resistance we call churches or worse, political parties. Plenty of people are pulling the fire alarm and pointing at all the problems out there. But that won't fix the problem. We must pull the fire alarm in here. Awakening starts with me. How might I pull the fire alarm in my own heart? Here's how the prophet Joel says to do it. Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart and with fasting, weeping and mourning, and tear your heart and not merely your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and relenting of catastrophe. That's Joel 2, 12 and 13. Those seven words show us how to break the glass. Return to me with all your heart. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your son, Jesus. Lord Jesus. We're sorry for locating the problem out there and absolving ourselves of any real responsibility we want to confess. The problem is in here, in our hearts, in my heart. We are part of the problem. We know it even if we do not feel it and we can't fix it. It's why we want to return to you with all our hearts. Thank you for accepting them in broken pieces. Come, Holy Spirit, praying in Jesus name. Amen. Our journal prompts this morning, what are some of the broken pieces of your heart? What keeps you from simply and humbly offering them back to Jesus? Are you letting a part of your broken heart keep you from returning to him with all your heart? Ah, this is big. These are big questions, okay? Jesus asking, you know, that's what happens to us. Our hearts get broken and instead of turning toward healing, oftentimes we feel like the Lord let us down and we just. We won't turn to him. We've lost trust. Right. I often say that's, that's a wilderness wound. And, and it's not that we stop believing in God, it's that those wounds have a way of causing us to stop believing God. And those wounds don't heal. What happens is they harden and our hearts become hard, resistant, calcified, calloused. The Bible uses that language. And there's only one way back. We can't fix it from that place. We have to, just as much as we can, gather up our heart and turn back to him. Just run back to the Lord. Run to the Father. I love Matt Mars song. Run to the Father and say, you know, and here's what'll happen. He'll take the hardened heart, he'll break it back open. He's got gentleness, but he's firm. He'll break that, that hardened heart back open and he'll heal it. He's just bring it all. I don't need you to explain it to me. I don't need you to try to fix it. I don't. I actually probably need to. I'm going to have to pull the duct tape and the bailing wire off. I'm going to have to. You know, you probably develop some bad habits that have helped you to sort of numb yourself, to not feel it anymore. But let me have it. I am the healer of hearts. And then we'll go from becoming a broken, hardened heart to becoming a whole hearted soul, a wholehearted person. That's what we long for. We know it's possible. And it's closer than you think. That's what a season like this is about. Gathering it up, just taking stock. Stopping running away. Stopping hiding. Coming out, saying, here I am, Lord, you found me, thank God. And, you know, confession again. You know, it's not self shaming. It's not about feeling bad about yourself. It's just about becoming honest before God. He says, I desire truth in the inward parts. That's where he says, I want to create in you a clean heart. I want to renew a right spirit in you. I want to restore you to the joy of the Lord, the joy of healing and salvation. Would you. Would you give yourself to him in this moment, in this time, in this season? I mean, this could be the turning point. I believe it already is. Every day we're going to be coming back here. Invite friends to join you. This will create conversation among you that you've never been able to have with a lot of people, maybe even in your home, maybe even with your spouse. Guys, it's not worth it to hang on. Let's just. Let's just break the fire alarm open today. Break the glass. Return to me with all your heart. Okay, Dad's here with me. I'm trying to get him with me as much as possible through these days of Lent. We don't know how many days we got left, me and Dad. I don't know how many days I have. You don't know how many days you have. Let's just go. Go for it today. All right, here. Here we go. Let's sing. All right, everybody. We're going to be singing our way through these 40 days. We are trying to get in lockstep with Jesus and the. That's the thing. If we get in lockstep with him, we'll be in lockstep with each other.
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Amen.
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We. We can try all day to get in lockstep with each other and we'll never find it, right? But if we get in step with.
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Him, we got it.
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We're in with each other. That's what the 40 days are about. You know, we're. We're coming up out of the crowds, and we're running up by the 12. And before we're done, we want to be there with the three. We want to be close. You know, this. That's what Lent is really about. This. This great text from Joel. We read it on Ash Wednesday, but you do so much on a day, you got to keep coming back around. But it says, yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart.
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Amen.
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With all your heart. Return to the Lord your God. Our hearts get fragmented. They get divided, they get broken, they get left behind. Parts of our hearts just can die.
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They get weak.
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They get weak. And he's. He's like, listen, all, everything is forgiven. Come back. Come back. It's not worth it to hold on to anything that's keeping you from me. So we're going to sing. What? Tell them what we're singing.
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We're going to sing. Jesus, keep me near the Cross.
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What's our number?
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2:41.
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2:41 again. You know, the cross is not just something that happens on the last week of Lent. The cross isn't something that just happens in the last week of Jesus life. It's his whole life. He came all the way down. The cross is the whole story. It's the wisdom of God. It's the. The sign of Jesus. And we want to be near the Cross from the get go. So we're going to sing all four verses and invite you to sing with us. Let me pitch this, dad.
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Jesus, keep me near the cross There a precious fountain free to all the healing streams Flowed from Calvary's mountain in the cross in the cross be my glory ever Till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river near the cross A trembling soul Love and mercy found me there the bright and morning star sheds its beam around me in the cross in the cross be my glory ever Till my raptured soul shall lie rest beyond the river near the cross O Lamb of God, Bring its saints before me Help me walk from day to day with the shadows o' er me in the cross in the cross be my joy ever Till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river Last verse.
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Let's just. Let's take this up a little bit of a step.
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Near the cross I'll watch and wait hoping, trusting ever Till I reach the golden strand Just beyond the river in the cross and the cross be my glory ever Till I captured soul shall I rest beyond the river.
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Harmonies Amen. Dad, that's. You used to sing the bass.
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Yep. I sang it in the Methodist choir forever.
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For all those years you sang the bass. I could pick out your voice, even though I know you didn't want it to be picked out.
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No, I didn't.
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In the choir. And mom sang alto.
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Yep. She was an alto. She was a good one, too, because she could read music and I could. You know, I could read that halfway read it. But I wasn't that good at it.
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You know, I remember. I remember you when I went to college. You said, john David, there's Only one course that I care about you taking in college. You remember what it was?
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Yeah, it was that singing.
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University Chorus.
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Yeah, University Chorus. It was just a three. One hour. Maybe one hour.
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You made an A in that, didn't you?
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Yeah.
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University Chorus. Okay. I got up there. I looked all through the catalog. I couldn't even find it. I think they let that course go, but I wish that I had sang in it. The University Chorus.
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Yeah. I sang that because that was. I guess it was one hour.
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Yeah, that's right.
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But that was a sure one hour of a. I had a bunch of one hour to F. That pulled me up.
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Well, you know, dad always is. People will say, you know, he'll be getting some kind of award, and they'll say, he graduated. He's a graduate of the University of Arkansas. He'll raise his hand. He's like, I attended the University of Arkansas. Yeah.
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I couldn't. Couldn't let that go by.
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But he didn't graduate. So any of you out there.
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I sure didn't. I regret it. I've regretted ever since.
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But, you know, you've done all right.
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Well, I've been able to make a living.
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You've. You've done all right. You've become a famous farmer along the way. So, you know, we love school, but Jesus is better.
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Well, we just. You know, you just try to help people. When you go to a church on a regular basis, it's going to rub off on you whether you want it to or not. And it'll help you in your life just without you even knowing it.
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That's good. I think the other message dad would have for you is join the choir.
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That's right.
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All right.
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Get in that choir.
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We got to get out on the fields today. So get your seeds. I got mine. And for The Awakening, I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David Walt.
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And we'll see you on the field.
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We're gonna sing him more.
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We're done for this song.
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Okay.
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Today.
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All right.
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Jesus, keep me neither near the cross Bring its scenes before me that's what lint's about okay, now help me live from day to day with its shadow all right, that was a free psych.