Missional Formation | Revival + Awakening - Jon Tyson

G'day folks John Tyson here. I hope you're doing well. Hey, I wanted to take a moment just to address those of you who listen to our podcast. Thank you so much this past year for walking alongside us as a church and for listening in on what God is doing. It really has been an incredible year for us as a church. I really don't think we've ever had a year like this. I've been here for over 20 years and what God's doing right now is really remarkable. We are seeing a spiritual openness in New York that everybody I know in New York across the city says they've never witnessed since they've lived here. This is incredible. The amount of prayer that's happening here, friendships, relationships. It's just wild and so for those of you who are listening in and you've been praying for us and cheering us on as a church. I didn't want to take a moment just to say thank you. We feel it. We're so encouraged by not just your listening in but the support that you give us. We are really, really grateful. I also wanted to give you a chance if what's happening in our church is something really meaningful for you, for you to partner with us. At the end of the year, we do a living, the liturgy campaign and in some sense it's just our attempt to ask God what does he have for the future and to rally around that both with prayer and resources to live into the future we think God's God for us. This next season is really definitive because as a church right now, you're probably aware of this. We do have a ton of God given momentum right now. And we do not want to just keep that for ourselves. I remember in the early days of being here thinking, if God ever really blesses us, I want to be one of those churches that turns outward and seeks to serve the city, not just serve itself. And we've done small attempts at that over the years but this really is a paradigm shift in our church's identity and mission to turn outward and care about what God wants to do in the city as a whole. So it's our heart to become a resourcing church to become one of those pillar churches that blesses the city beyond its own borders. If you'd love to be a part of what that is, you can go to church.mlc/give. You can read about our new efforts to launch a new gathering in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, our efforts to serve the marginalized in our city and give towards justice initiatives. And to help resource pastors, we've got something beautiful happening with 4.mwc. It's remarkable. There's a lot there. You can go on there. You can read about that. And we just would encourage you to pray about joining us in what God is doing here in New York. We get the sense that a window is opening. God's doing something special and we want the resources to rush in and take a hold of what God's doing in our midst. So thanks for listening. Grateful for you, church.mwc/give. Now let's get back to the podcast. Today's teaching text comes from Nehemiah, chapter 1, verses 1 to 11, and it says, "The words of Nehemiah, son of Hikaliah, in the month of Kizlev in the 20th year, while I was in the citadel of Susah, Han and I, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile and also about Jerusalem." They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire." When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Then I said, "Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant, who is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins of we Israelites, including myself and my father's family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses." Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, "If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the furthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this year's servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. I was the cup bearer to the king. This is the word of the Lord." We are in a 10-week or so series trying to give a crystal clear vision of discipleship to our church. It's a little bit of a DTI. It's a little bit of a explanation of what we're trying to do as a church together. When people come to the church, they have a thousand different ideas of what it means to follow Jesus and we are trying to lead as well as we can by doing two things, defining reality about where we are and providing clarity about what it is that we think God wants to do in our midst. And so we are just staying in this theme of a radical minimum standard of discipleship. I talked about that last week. And then what we want to do, oh, that's a beautiful slide. Folks, I'd get my phone out if I was you. I'd just be turning that into a screen little thing because that's what's on my phone right now. We wanted to give clarity about what brings me so much joy to see you just bring those phones out and take that screen. Can I be honest? We wanted to bring clarity on what we mean by these things. And so, under tangible presence, we've tried to articulate sort of three ideas about what we mean by that and three core practices under counter formation, three ideas, really explaining what we mean by that and then three core practices and then under sacrificial mission, three ideas, three core practices. There's a lot more that could be said and done about these things, but we tried to choose definitive ideas and keystone practices. Out of all the practices, there's over 90 spiritual disciplines when listed out and we try to pick one of the most important ones for us on mission here in New York. So we're going to unpack each of these over the next weeks, next slide here and today we're going to talk about this under tangible presence. We're going to talk about why our church cares about revival and awakening, why we talk about it as a church, and then the key practice I want to invite you into is really getting a vision of being a person who is committed to contending prayer. The reason this is important because whenever we talk about the idea of prayer, it's normally, I think, these three main categories. We've got comforting prayer. I would put this down as I'm really anxious. Lord, I need your peace. Lord, I'm really lonely. I need your comfort. This is not bad. That's biblical. Sometimes we have venting prayer. We're in those imprecatory Psalms like, Lord, I pray that you would dash that guy's head against a rock that I'd dated, jerk. Lord, I pray that you would take my former employee and I pray that you were throwing from the heights. Some of those wild passages in the Old Testament, very meaningful for you, venting prayer. And then, at least you can't have these wishful prayers. And these are just like, it's today the Super Bowl. It must be people from Philly here. I don't even know. But whatever, my point is, the Turn the Hail Mary, which is like, I don't know, man, there's like a bunch of guys in the end zone. And I think if I just get this thing there, who knows? A lot of times people's prayers are like that. They're just kind of like wild wishes like, God, it would be amazing if. I don't know if you can, but your God and there's stuff I need. So, let's have a God. You know, you're just sort of like, in Jesus' name, you're just like hoping something happens. These things are fine. You see expressions of this in the Bible. But I just, I want to talk about a different kind of prayer today. And I want to ask this question, do we really expect things to change when we pray? Like, do we do it out of duty? We do it at sort of cathartic. It's in some ways functions like a kind of mindfulness for Christians. Relaxes, this comes us down. I'm not against that. But do we really anticipate that the things Jesus says about prayer and the Bible teaches about prayer will show up when we present on the pages? Not just the Scripture, but our own stories, our own lives. The Bible talks about prayer differently than most of us talk about prayer. And you see this in James chapter 5. James 5, it says, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being even as we are. He prayed, honestly, that it would not reign and it did not reign on the land for three and a half years. And again, he prays in the heavens give reign and the earth produces its crops. How many of you view yourself as righteous because of what Jesus has done for you? Is anybody here? That kind of disappointing considering how many people took communion. That's okay. Let me just restate it. How many of people are like trusting what Jesus did on your behalf and that you're righteous because of him? I don't know if that was a true response or I just shamed you. I don't know. The Lord knows. Righteous people, it's not earned righteousness. The president of a righteous person, it says there are two things. What are they? Powerful, what's the second word? Effective. And James wants us to know of all the people he could have picked in the Old Testament about learning from prayer from. He believed that history, the doors of heaven would be open and closed over nations and regions due to the prayers of righteous people in those regions. Isn't that an extraordinary reminder? So I want to talk to us today about this idea of contending prayer. Now, I just have to warn you. I think I've given this a very close version of this sermon about six times in the last four years. Why would I repeat it? It's not because I've run out of content. I have more content than I know what to do. I have content to read. I literally have so much stuff coming out of me. It's because I don't think that this is established in our culture as a heart cry of everybody in our community. And again, so I want to bring this back if you can be so kind to let me use an analogy. A coach is not just happy that people are out there playing a game. That's called kindergarten. Just, hey man, I was glad they're out there. I know it's cute when they don't play by the rules when they're little. But the older you get, the more you want people to sort of shape you and give you feedback as to whether or not you're actually playing well or getting better and improving. And I want this series to be one of those things where we sort of establish a shared stand and a shared vision of what we're talking about. I want to say this, our church is a remarkable church when it comes to prayer. And if you hear people praying out church, it's thrilling. It's heart-stirring. But I still believe in this particular area, we still need to, because it's been so rare, we need further clarity on it. And so what I want to do today, I'm always asking myself, how do I get mentored by people whose lives and fruit I want to see? So I'm always asking, who saw through their life the kinds of things I want to see through my life? And how do I have the mentor me? Now a lot of the problem is those people are in the person queue to church or they're dead. And so I'm stuck between accounts from other parts of the world and people who are dead. And so I'm always being mentored by a redemptive history. And today I want us, if we could imagine, to ask Nehemiah to come and mentor us on this idea of contending prayer. Because Nehemiah's circumstances, Nehemiah's heart and the kind of person Nehemiah was, the exact kind of leader and mentor that I think we need for where we are here in New York City. What I love about Nehemiah, Nehemiah wasn't a pastor, wasn't a priest, Nehemiah worked in government. Nehemiah's family, it seems, had financial interests and was in business. And so you can't say, well, you know, you picked one of those weird people who's like, well, they're a pastor, they get paid to pray. And so this is irrelevant to my life. Now this is relevant to your life. This is just a godly man who God got a hold of who was used to do something remarkable. So I want us today to sort of learn three core lessons about how to pray for revival and awakening in a time of radical decline. It's sort of a reminder of the context of Nehemiah's life. God had warned his people in the Old Testament that if they were unfaithful to him, that he would send them into exile. In fact, the language is quite strong. He said, I will vomit you out of the land, which is strong language. And again, this kind of brings an element of justice to God. God's not just playing favorites with the Jewish people. They are held to a standard as well. And God said, if you do not live up to the covenant that I've given you, you will be disciplined by me. And the people had ignored God's law and ignored God's covenant. They were idolatrous and they were exploitive in how they were ruling and living as God's people. And so God allowed the Babylonians to come in and conquer Judea. When they first came in, they took the most skilled and educated young people into captivity. They did this in three ways. And they basically wanted to take and implement the skills of other nations to build their nation. And so this is where we read about Daniel Shadrach Meshach and a bed and ago who were taken young men of learning and aptitude. And they were taken. And then ultimately they come back. Jerusalem is destroyed, including its walls and its temples. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel prophesied that the exiles who were actually captured and taken into Babylon were fortunate because God would preserve them, prosper them and restore them, and that from them the Messiah would be born. And eventually, after 70 years or so, this happens. 536 BZs, a rabbi belt, leads the first return of those exiles back to Jerusalem. 515 BC, the temple was rebuilt. The Jews were saved from annihilation through Esther and Mordecai. Many scholars believe that Nehemiah is a relative of Esther. And then Ezra returned to restore the Lord of the people. But Jerusalem as a city has a problem. It doesn't have a wall. It has corrupt leadership. It's experiencing economic hardship. Worship is inconsistent. The word of God has not been taken seriously. Young people are drawn into relationships outside of God's ways, as external threats from regional warlords who are pressing in on them. And here you have a time of heartache that many people have just accepted is the way it is. But you have a man named Nehemiah in the Persian palace who God chooses to awaken his heart. And this prayer in Nehemiah 1, in fact, the whole book of Nehemiah, I've taught on it in 2018 that this series could wholly ambition. But this prayer is about as good a teaching on prayer as exists in the Bible. So imagine having all of that in mind if I could just say, "Ladies and gentlemen, here's your boy, Nehemiah." And Nehemiah would just sort of walk over here and we could interview him and say, "Nehemiah, God used you in an incredible way. He used to govern an employee." Like, what would you say to church of the city about how to pray? Like, what would you say to us of people like us at a time of history like this? I think the first thing Nehemiah would say is this, you have to get a bigger vision. You have to get a bigger vision. Prayer is about seeing differently than looking through the eyes of your circumstances or your pain. We don't walk by sight. We walk by faith. We don't fix our eyes on the visible or our circumstances. We fix our eyes on the invisible and on God. And part of the problem of worldliness, it's not just that it makes us act like the world. It's that it seduces us to think like the world, see like the world, and want what the world wants. It's always reducing our vision. Nehemiah won again in the month of Kislev in the 20th year while I was in the citadel of Sousa and not any one of my brothers came from Judah with some other men and says this, "I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile." And I also asked them about Jerusalem. And they said to me, "Those who survived the exile are back in the province and they're in great trouble and they're in disgrace." The wall of Jerusalem is broken down. It's gates have been burned with fire. Now this is interesting to me. You can tell a lot about what people care about by the questions they ask about life. Questions reveal heart. You ever met someone that just asked a bunch of dumb questions that are irrelevant to life and about trivial things and you're like, "Bro, lift your vision." Who cares? And you ever met someone who's acutely interested. They're curious. You see their heart go out. Their retention is bigger than their own life. I think this is interesting about Nehemiah. His concern is not just, "Hey, how's your mom doing?" It's good. Always loved her. She was always kind to me when I was younger. No, his questions are about the state of God's people at his moment in history. He has a kingdom vision, not just a personal vision. One of the things about New York that is such a paradox is that it's filled with vision rees. You've got to have vision to get here. Everyone who gets here, I think about all the people that move to New York. I just see waves of people with their dream in their heart. Get punched in the face when they realize you've got to make 20x the rent. No one told them that. It's at least an apartment, a 40x. I just watch everybody overcome insurmountable obstacles just to get here. It's amazing how that vision gets reduced to a personal survival. The most visionary people end up having one of the tiniest visions. Our dreams that start so grand are often reduced and become so small. One of Satan's greatest plans is to limit our dream to a secular dream. You stop dreaming out of the heart of God, the future of God, the promises of God, and you just start dreaming about what your friends want. I've done this several times, but here we are again on a repeat Sunday. All I'd like to now call a clarifying and reinforcing Sunday. If you were to ask the typical Christian, what do you want with your life? They're going to say something like, I don't know, a great place to live. Something comfortable that I can go after my thing with. I'd like some sort of romantic relationship, someone who's attractive, emotionally well-adjusted, not horrifically in debt. And once kids, when I want kids, if we both want kids at all, and I want someone who wants to live where I live, he likes kind of my hobbies or at least puts up with them in a way that I can't tell they're only putting up with them. And I'd like to do a great vacation every year that my friends go, wow, you went there. And I'd like to have a really meaningful career with a measure of success that just makes my friends some college envy. And then I'd like to retire and not have to worry about money at all. And just be really well respected by strangers for the contribution I've made in the world. That's what most Christians want. And the thing is, it's not that those things are necessarily bad. I mean, I don't think it's godly to say I desire to be lonely, living a squallor, hate my life, never go anywhere. I'm not, I'm not a masochist. Trust me. But I just want to say this, every pagan who could not care less about Jesus wants those things. And if you don't want more than the pagans want, your vision is too small. You're going to want something bigger than that. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called The Great Evangelical Disaster and a book called A Christian Manifesto. And he wrote a Christian Manifesto in response to the Communist Manifesto and the Humanist Manifesto about a vision of how Christians participate in society. And in those two books, he lays out a vision where he says, he warns the church, if the church's vision, which is for the kingdom and for others, gets reduced to these two things, personal peace and affluence, the church is doomed. Personal peace. Like, are you good? I'm good, man. How you doing? Good. How you doing? Cashed up and good. Won't he do it? You know, if our whole life is reduced to I'm good and I've got enough and the boundary of concern that I draw around my heart and my vision ends with me and my people being okay, he says the church will fail in society. And I want to humbly submit that has happened. The typical Christians heart never gets past their personal stress and desires out into the heart of what it is the God wants to do. God gave us through Jesus the Lord's prayer, not just to fill in the content of our prayers, but to shape the order in which we pray, to shape our desires. As I've referenced, here's the Lord's prayer, you might be familiar with a father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, you will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us a stay out daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Leave us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. Most people do not pray it like that though, do they? Most people reverse the order of the Lord's prayer. So all their energy goes to their personal needs and the afterburner of obligation gets to God. So we're like, God, people are killing me here. Deliver me from my coworkers. Deliver me from the neighbor upstairs. Lord, please, deliver me from that old person I dated and he's just creepy. Lord, please deliver me. Leave us not in temptation. I'm dying here, God. I am dying out here, so much temptation, so little accountability, so much opportunity. Also, Lord, I've got so much relational conflict because all my stuff's coming out under pressure, all my unresolved issues, and I'm just saying dumb stuff and I'm in conflict. Now, also, Lord, please, I have so many needs, practical needs, Lord, any daily bread, Lord, Chipotle is like $19 now. Lord, daily bread, the 10-dollar lunch is gone from this city. Also, yes, Lord, your kingdom and your glory, hallelujah. Thank you. Father, thank you. And here's what I want to say, we never get to the heart of God, the burden of God in our prayers. James 4, you don't have because you don't ask God. And when you ask, you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives. And look at what he says, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. And so, if God answered every prayer, you've prayed for yourself, what would you do with what you've received from the Lord? And how much of that would be stewarded beyond your circle of concern into God's larger concern? I think it's important for us to get a kind of vision. I read this this past week as a survey on Gen Z, 73% of Gen Z say they're spiritual, but not religious, but only 16% actually practice any form of religion. Does anybody care that we are witnessing a generation far from God in total free fall? What questions do we ask? Why is nobody asking, hey, why is Gen Z in such a radical spiritual decline? What happened in previous generations to all of those moments? 43% of Gen Z grew up in a home without a dad. What happened to promise keepers? We had stadiums full of men saying, I'm making these vows and where'd they go? What questions are we asking to help us understand how things got here? Are we drawn to the crisis of what's happening in our generation? It breaks my heart to see people in the city more concerned with geo-politics than the church concerned with the spiritual dynamics of what is happening in a radical time of decline. And I think if you and Nehemiah would come along and we'd say Nehemiah, what do you want to say to us? I think you'd say lift your eyes, lift your vision. Richard Foster says this when we move from petition that's getting our stuff to intercession, we're shifting our center of gravity from our own needs to the needs of concerns of others. Intercessory prayer is selfless prayer, even self-giving prayer. Maybe in our lifetime the biggest selling book on prayer is a book by Mark Patterson called the Circle Maker. If you guys read the Circle Maker, it is a brilliant book. And it's like, listen, if you understand how books work and how to sell books and how to get an idea to become a cultural meme and viral, this is exhibit A, this is like the best thing ever. Because you get it, you draw a circle around what you care about and you don't leave God alone until it's answered. But then you still have to read the book to figure out how to do it, but you know the whole message in one message? I've written five books since I read that book trying to crack that code of how to do that. Masterful. But I have one observation from all the people I've talked to have read the Circle Maker. You know what it is? They draw very small circles, very small circles. And I just want to say this. I think near and I would say draw a bigger circle. You've got to draw a bigger circle to get the heart of God in your moment about what it is that you care about. So I want to pause here at the end of my first point. I have nine points. That's a classic preachy move. If you know it's going to be long, tell them there's a lot more and then provide relief by having a lot less. I just want to say to you I want to I don't know quite know how to get this into your heart. I'm just I'm asking you to care about something bigger than your own life. I'm not here to tell you exactly what that is. I'm just saying every Christian should have a vision for something bigger than their own story and their own success. That's the nature of Christianity. It's an other focused faith. It doesn't matter if your heart is for international issues. It doesn't matter if your heart is for something here in this city. It can be your friends who don't know Jesus. Your heart just has to be bigger than your personal circle of concern. And the prayers we pray will only be prayed based on the vision we have and the way we see the world. And so we've got to ask God touch my eyes, open my eyes, give me a vision bigger than a New Yorker's vision for their own personal success. Friends, I want to come down from the stage. I want to look each of you in the eyes and just say, what are you born for? Tell me about your heart. There should be things that you care about. Each one of us needs to carry that in our hearts. This has to be the starting point for prayer. Number two, when you get that vision, the reason you've got to have it is because when you pray about something, this is such a revelatory principle, you're like, I don't care about anything. You don't care about it and then pray about it. You see it and pray about it and God gives you the heart for it. And many of you are waiting for feelings that are only given in the place of prayer. So you're walking out like, I don't care about anything. That's not how this thing works. It's like enemy love. You can't love your enemy. When you pray for your enemy, divine love for that enemy is accessed in prayer. And so it is in the place of prayer that our hearts change. And if we were to say to me, am I okay, God gave you this vision, you could have just personally talked in and said, hey, you know what, I'm doing pretty good here. I've got a position of power. I'm for the most part, seeing to be pretty comfortable and well off. And you could have just justified in your mind. He's placed me here strategically just to be salt and light. You could have had a million ways of thinking about it. But from that capital, you went to the nation. Now, what else would you say to say this? Oh, listen, the burden, God has to get that burden into your heart. So you have an irreparably broken heart. Your heart has to break in such a way that no human can put it back together. No hobby can deal with it. No movie can numb it. No relationship can distract you from it. You have to have an irreparably broken heart. Look what happens to near my out. When I heard these things, what things? He heard the same things everybody else had been listening to for decades. It just hit his heart. He says, I sat down and I wept for some days. God will tell us this is about four months. I mourned and I fasted and I prayed before the God of Heaven. The thing is, we often move on from an issue before God gets our heart to the point of breaking for that issue. I talked at the altar's conference on a heaven-rending prayer and I tried to identify three layers of prayer that prayer gets into the heart. The first layer is sympathy. Sympathy is something that maintains a power distance. Fusar for them, man, that's hard, yeah. Do you want to round up 75 cents to do, yeah, that's hard. I can do that. That's sympathy, amount of fusar for them. Then you've got empathy. Empathy is that deep sense of connection of experiencing something as if it's happening to you. There's a layer about below empathy that I think that God wants to invite us into and that is agony. That is when your heart is so broken, you just can't move on from it. Now the thing is this, it's only Jesus that's going to make you want agony. All of life in the modern world is designed to alleviate and distract the agony of the human experience. And so this is such a counter-cultural request. It's such a counter-cultural claim. But I think one of the things we have to say to the Lord again is Lord, I want to ask you to give me tears again. Lord, help me weep for things. Help me feel it so deeply that I can't turn away, that I don't have dry eyes, that I don't change the channel or go out for brunch and then the burden is left in another part of my life. Lord, Jesus wept three times in the gospels. Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. Even though he knew he was going to raise him from the dead, he still wept at the experience of death. Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane at the cost of drinking the cup of the father's wrath and he went to Jerusalem and he went over the cities. Here's Jesus' heart, he's just like, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you together. I want to get my arms, I want to get my arms and my heart around this city, but you are not willing. And here is Jesus, you've been a prayer meeting with Jesus. Jesus did not have dry cheeks, Jesus is weeping for a city. If Christ came into one of our prayer meetings in the prayer room, do you think he would pray like you pray? Or would there be another level of intensity and desperation? I'm not trying to guilt you into this. I'm trying to say when we bring ourselves for the Lord, this is the wonder of the grace of God in prayer. The Bible says we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit will help us. And so you don't have to like beat your heart off. If you're just like, God, I don't care and I want to care and I want your heart and I won't quit to your hearts in my heart. And if you're looking for someone in this city to feel about the city the way you feel about this city, Lord, here's my heart, Holy Spirit, help me pray. There's men and women who have prayed in history and their tears have been the seeds of a different future. And I always, I read the diaries of these people and I look at the lives of these people. David Brainard, 1745, he prayed for revival among the American Indians until the snow melted around him and was stained by his blood. Brainard recorded the results of his prayers. The power of God seemed to descend upon the assembly like a mighty rushing wind. And within a stounding energy, born down all before it, I stood amazed at the influence that sees the audience almost universally and could compare it to nothing more aptly than the irresistible force of a mighty torrent. Now, do you know who this was? This was a kid at, I think it was at Yale and he got kicked out of Yale for a little bit of a controversy. And he went out to try and love the native peoples that were being overlooked and exploited. And he was just, he just had nothing, he was in a little heart. And he just would say, God, you got to give me these people, I love these people. And he would pray to the snow would melt and blood would be in the snow. And you look at that, you say, that's so intense, but isn't that the way Christ prayed till great drops of blood were sweated out of him. There's other times in history when men have prayed, I did a little, a little bit of a prayer to it, I try and honor the lives of people. I went up and saw Abel Clary, Abel Clary as an upstate New York, and he was one of Charles Finney's intercessors. And I went to his grave, so I'd not to do anything weird, but just to sort of honor what God did through this man's life and just to sort of remind myself, John Tyson, you have not experienced all the Bible offers in prayer. And the Bible says that it's possible from blood from one generation to speak even though someone's dead. And I was like, I want his life of prayer to preach to my cold heart. And this is Abel Clary, and he was a partner with Father Nash, Daniel Nash, his whole tombstone just reads, "Laborer with Finney mighty in prayer." And he was a preacher and a pastor whose church fired him because he wasn't very good at speaking. And he was in his 40s and they're like, "This dude's too old. We want a younger preacher." So he's little church fired him. And he ended up being one of the most intense intercessors ever. And his heart would just break. And he would go into a town and he'd get a list of the most notorious sinners in that town. And he'd just say, "Holy spirit, haunt them, get them, convict them." And sometimes people would hear him praying in the woods and think someone was dying. Extraordinary life. Finney said, "This about him, I've never known a person sweat blood, but I've known a person pray to a blood started from his nose. I've known persons pray to their were all wet with perspiration in the coldest weather and winter. I've known persons pray for hours till their strength was all exhausted with the agony of their minds." You ever cared about anything that much outside of your own self? Has your heart ever gone out so much that your very self was caught up in the well-being of another? Paul, when he was going through Acts 17, says this while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see the city was full of idols. Now I'm a bit of a, I'm a bit of a, what they call a prayer walker, okay? Not just in the prayer room, I like to do, do laps. I like to get out into the city and pray. Many of you guys know my story. The first almost two years of living here in New York, I would walk from the upper west side to Times Square every night and pray for two hours. I'd pray Psalm 67 in Times Square and that was like my evening entertainment. It was like watching all these people and just praying Psalm 67 on them. And what God did in my heart? People say like, what do you, what do you love New York man? Like where did that come from? I'm like, I'm like, it came for praying on location. And on location, what's happening in front of you gets inside of you. I love praying in my, you know, my place. I've got a little, I have a pulpit in my room and I pray the foot of my pulpit, repenting and I pray behind my pulpit preaching, asking for power. You do you, I'm doing me. You hope I take that seriously. But nothing stirs my heart like praying on location. And you know, all it takes sometimes is you hear some words from someone coming out of a club late at night and you just think, oh gosh, do women have to hear men speak to them like that every day in this city? Oh God. And then you hear sometimes when you're sitting on a train, what people who have to commute in a long distance for jobs that don't honor their dignity and exploit them and you hear them talking about their kids and what they go through. And that stuff gets in your heart and you sit in the playground and you hear the idolatry and you hear what people are giving themselves for and what they're anxious about. And that stuff gets in your heart and if you spend enough time doing this, you will become greatly distressed at the idols of this city. I spent a lot of time praying particularly in hell's kitchen. Our church offices were in hell's kitchen on 42nd and 9th. And people said like, why do you spend 13 years praying there every Saturday night for revival? One of my personal altars. And everyone was like, what drew you to that community? And I was like, hell's kitchen is like one of the most significant launching paths of history, shaping moves of God that everyone's forgotten about. There's a church, maybe you've seen a show here. I saw the screw tape letters here. This is on 43rd Street and this is used to be a German congregation. And on the corner of it right there, next slide you can see it says, Christus did something, okay. And 1855, it's Christ the cornerstone. And this is the home of Walter Russian Bush. He launched the social gospel movement. His definitive prayer was on earth as it is in heaven. Everyone was about evacuating the planet and going somewhere when you died and he actually cared about the poor. And I would just go, I would stand there. A little weird, but the beauty of New York is everyone's a little weird. And on the street no one sort of knows if you're talking to God or you're on a call or whatever, it's magic. And I just sort of lean and put my hand on that cornerstone there like I'm waiting to go on and see a show. And I would just pray Jesus be the cornerstone of this neighborhood again. Come on, there was people here who believed and rallied and they wrote you a name on this street. But the reason I care about it so much is what happened. That church was sold in 1960. And here's what happened to that building. So this building is now theater. Before that was a theater. It was a club. It says in what the New York times would call a painful period of transition. Arnie Lord converted the church building into a night club called church in the 1960s. Peter Shapiro and his turn to beat around the secret history of disco called it perhaps the most over the top of all the hippie sensoriums. The ironically named Lord installed an enormous mural of Satan opposite the altar. Crouting around the demon were new to angels engaged in sexual acts. Puse were arranged around the perimeter of the sanctuary as banquets and the DJ was stationed in the marble communion table back by a screen of organ pipes. The sacrilege of church club was so offensive the Roman Catholic diocese normally unaffected by Protestant affairs pressed the courts to close the club down. What should have seemed to end the humiliation of the church's structure and truth only worsened it. The building was taken over by another club and it was now called sanctuary. The patrons were mostly young gay men in the pre-AIDS days of rampant sex. The club became a McConnell. Shapiro noted the sex wasn't confined to the dance, floor nor was it confined to simulation. There were constant orgies in the toilets and the club would eventually close down in 1972 because its patrons, patrons regularly used the hallways of neighboring buildings for impromptu bump sessions and it's currently showing little shop of horrors and at some point I just look at this and I just say, "God, someone's got to care that your glory has fallen and what was an altar to your glory has now turned into a little shop of horrors." John's Pizza Rear on 44th Street, I think they've partner gave it an 8-2. John's Pizza Rear. Who's ever been to John's Pizza Rear? It's quite good. Next slide. Here's the inside of John's Pizza Rear and it's beautiful. Next slide you go in and you just like, this place is cranking and you look at it and you just go, "Gosh, that would be an amazing building for a church." And the truth is it was a church. Have you heard of the Christian missionary alliance? Heard of A.B. Simpson, A.W. Tozer, those guys? Heard of Nayak College, remember that? This was called Simpson's Gospel Tabernacle. And in the 70s because Times Square was such a disaster, they sold the building for about $17 million. The denomination did. And then when you go to John's Pizza Rear and you read the story, listen to the story from the website. Next slide. In 1995, Madeline Castelotti had a vision where frightened visitors saw adult shops and violence, Madeline saw potential. It was then she decided Times Square would be home to the world famous John's of Times Square. And she walked the crossroads of the world. She was looking for a location that was as unique as her pizza. After stumbling upon an abandoned church on West 44th Street with a homeless squatted and spray-panning gang signs were a part of the decor. Madeline instantly saw the beauty of the old Gospel Tabernacle church. During her initial tour of this location, the perfectly intact stained glass ceiling caught her attention. It was made up of eight parts, all equal in size, just like a pizza. Madeline Castelotti knew this would be the home to her dream, the most unique pizza rear in the world. Next slide. So here's Gospel Tabernacle. Here's the pizza shop. And on the roof, AB Simpson had designed this, the logo of the Christian missionary alliance, the nomination is on the roof. And you know what she saw? Pizza. AB Simpson was the Tim Keller of his era. He preached at a prestigious Presbyterian church here in New York. He went to Times Square with a burden for the poor, led 100 migrant workers to Christ, tried to take into his church. His church said, they're not welcome here. He said, if they're not welcome here, I'm not welcome here. He started the Christian missionary alliance, which since the Moravians was the most effective sending church for missions in the world. I, to this day, support missionaries from the Christian missionary alliance. To this day, I have friends on the mission filled in this denomination. And yet here in New York City, they had so lower vision for the city, the place of their birth, that they sold the building and it's selling pizza now. Does any, I walk past this building and I weep. God, I want the building back. We've got enough pizza. We don't have enough churches. Lord, I'll give them a great deal on this building. Your heart's got a break for something. You've got to walk around and see the idolatry. It's got to get into your spirit. It's got to get to the point of agony. Number three. And at this point, so it's ready, you're still with me here. Nehemi hasn't really gotten into it yet. This is all, if you were to ask, nehemiah man, this is pretty heavy. He'd say whenever God gets ready to move externally, he will spend time shaping his people internally. It is primarily about becoming the kinds of people that have the conviction and courage to deal with the warfare and the journey of seeing those prayers fulfilled through your life. And so he has to form us into those people and then nehemiah really, you get to eavesdrop on the kinds of prayers that shaped history. A couple of notes on this first, nehemiah's prayer was not casual prayer. He wasn't like, hey, daddy, papa, abba, god. He wasn't talking to daddy. He was talking to the god of the universe in a crisis. This was not comforting prayer. This was desperate prayer. Look at what he says. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's family, have committed against you. We've acted very wickedly towards you. We've not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses. I've mentioned this principle before, but it is so important to note, if you do not include yourself with the problem, you'll never be given authority to be a part of the solution. And this applies to every cultural issue. Listen, it doesn't matter if your ancestors were in America during the time of slavery or had anything to do with it or not. If you want to be used by God to deal with racism and racial injustice, you've got to care about it and say it may not have been my fault, but it is my responsibility as a follower of Jesus. You've got to do this on every cultural issue. And the problem with America with a rights orientation, I love America, the problem with that super bowl, a problem with America and its rights orientation is that we're obsessed with our rights. And I'm reminded of Victor Frankel, who said, "On the east coast we have the statue of liberty and what needs to exist on the west coast is a statue of responsibility." That's what we need. We need to accept responsibility for what's happening around us. So Nehemiah, though he appears to be godly, weeping, heartbroken and caring, says it's my fault. It's my people. This is my problem. I'm connected to this. Next, he prays, prays of faith. Look at how he addresses God, "Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keeps his commandments." He's praying to a God he believes can do something about it. He's praying to the great and awesome God, the covenant keeping God, the God of heaven and of earth, the one who can act and do something about it. Second thing I want you to see is that he starts praying, the promises of God back to him, not his personal wishes. And this is such a key for contending praise, he says, "You said, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your ex-old people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I've chosen as a dwelling for your name." This is such an unbelievably bold request. He's like, "Hey, your people are absolutely struggling and scattered across the nations, but you said." I didn't come up with this God. You said this that you, if we repent and return to you, will bring them back in and so God, you're up. I want you to see this. His prayers begin to push on the promises of God. Look at how he starts praying. Look, it's not me, me, me, me, my, my, me, me, me, my, it's you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you're, he's putting God on the hook. They're your servants, your people who you redeem by your great strength and your mighty hand. Let the Lord let your ear be attended to the prayer of this, your servant, to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. His whole heart is unlike God. This is your promise, your covenant, your word, your people, God, you're up. And do you know how much more bold you are when you are praying the words of God to a mighty God rather than your feelings to a God of your own imagination? This is an extraordinary key for prayer here. And then something extraordinary happens. His heart is broken. His vision is stirred. His position himself before God. And then the craziest thing happens. God's like, thanks to me and my, appreciate that. Now, I'm going to need you to be the answer to your own prayers. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'll do a contending prayer, man. I want to do it like rebuilding a nation. I'm not doing a nation building. He's, you're doing nation building because there's no one else who cares like you, sees like you, has a heart like you, contending prayer forms you into the kind of person that could be the solution to the thing you pray for. It leads to divine acceleration. Nehemiah saw more in 52 days than the previous 52 years. And do you know why? This is what it says, the good hand of my God was on me. That's what contending prayer does. The hand of God will never come on your life just so you can do well. The hand of God, the favor of God will always come on your life for the purposes of God. And Nehemiah's heart is formed, his vision is clear, his position himself before God. He's been internally formed for the situation that he faces. And now he's going to find out that he's the very man that God uses. And he's not on his own because his heart and his motives are right. And his vision is bigger than his own success. And he's oriented and humbled himself before God. So he's rightly positioned to be a part of the solution. There is power. So can we just do a little research? I'm almost done here really. How many of you just being really honest? Just ask yourself, how many of you are really familiar with this sort of prayer? How many of you just like in your heart, you're like, oh yeah, man, like this is every Tuesday and Thursday nights for me from 10 to 2. I mean, it's my lifestyle. I think the majority of us would say, John, I've heard you talk about this so much. I genuinely never really experienced this. Like sometimes in the prayer room, I put a prayer album on and someone gets a little intense on my, ooh, a little intense. You watch someone praying and he's like, gosh, are they crying? Are they shaking and doing something weird with their body? Like, what is this? Well, that's okay if that's where you're starving. I just want to say this, if you want to be friends with Jesus, he's going to take you into the place of prayer. That's got to change. That's got to change for all of us. The Bible says in Colossians 4, devote yourselves to prayer. If you know more about the statistics of this Super Bowl than the stats of decline of the church in this generation, can I just humbly say, you may have disordered priorities? You've got to know about what's going on. You've got to have a heart, you've got to care. This is the tragedy post-World War II. Part of the great German shame of the nation was they all said, we never knew the Holocaust was happening. Just found a way to manage a massacre in their minds. I think we're going to look around and people are going to be like, yeah, were you a sleeper awake? Like God didn't put you at a moment where you had the luxury of collapsing inward and not caring about your life. And so I just want to call us out of love beyond ourselves into the heart of God. You know my story. I am here because my dad prayed me into the kingdom of God out of desperate contending prayer. That's why I've told this story so many times. But I was just thinking about this with zero self-importance, genuinely. But this church wouldn't exist. Pray on what I see would not exist. All the stuff I've done in my life would not exist if my dad didn't get a vision for my life and weep in prayer. I'm so glad my dad prayed me into the kingdom. I'm glad he fasted and he wept and he asked God for a promise and he said, I refuse to let John Tyson destroy his life. God, you've got more. I'm so thankful for a dad who prayed. I look at the kids in our youth group. I just think God, let them reach their full potential. Who knows what you're going to do with them, where they're going to go, who they're going to be. I'm so thankful that someone cared and prayed for me. I think about this city. I think about the churches that are planted in this city. One of my little prayer altars, Times Square Church. David Wilkerson, just a pastor, you know his story. Next slide, he sees this time or this life magazine about these kids murdered up in Washington Heights. It's like someone should do something about that. God says, "Yo, man, you're that someone." Next slide he goes to court, holds up this Bible like an idiot, but this ends up breaking open all the gangs in New York City. Times Square Church, I'm so thankful for that church. But this exists because someone said, "Lord, why don't you do something about New York?" And then he became that someone. What about the story about press shaping nations? Do you forget how communism ended in East Germany? The fall of the Berlin Wall you remember was started by a praying pastor. He's got together in the church, he's the Berlin Wall. Show the Berlin Wall. Is there no Berlin Wall? That was a laid out on my end. Show the pastor. Show the pastor. This is a New York Times article, Christian Führer, East Germany, whose presence by protest dies at 71. No one talks about this, but at St. Nicholas Church, let's show St. Nicholas Church, is that in there? It's their St. Nicholas Church. He started hosting little primities for communism to win and for freedom to come. And over the course of time, over the course of nine years, these meetings began to grow until 70,000 people were in the street chanting. And look what the New York Times said about his life. Look, next slide. The German police sought to gloss traffic to the church in May 1989, but with pastor Führer preaching on violence, the demonstrations continued to grow. The protestors' chance of we or the people was taken up by some 70,000 people on October 9, 1989 and across East Germany into the communist system gave way on November 9 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. A former pastor from East Germany and a fellow dissident who's now Germany's president wrote to Sebastian Führer after his father's death, "Your father saw standing up against justice as an essential mission of the gospel, or in his own words, not listen, those of you who came to alters, not throes and alters, but the street in the older and the things that belong together." Next slide. In an interview last year with a newspaper, Leap Zig-Evolt Jean-Dezing, pastor Führer responded to critics who had characterised him as a social romantic and an incurable optimist. I heard the same thing in the days before October 9, 1989. He said, "At that time, they said, you don't really think that your candles and prayers can change something, but history saw things differently." This was the definitive breakthrough that happened. It took nine years of prayer to swell into a movement that took the Berlin Wall down. So, church, here's what I want to do. I want to call out church. I want to call every person who's a part of our church to get a vision in their life to becoming a person of contending prayer. I want to call you to a personal commitment. Here's what I want to ask of you. I think this is January. This is a stretch. Next slide. This is a stretch, but I think this is doable. 15 minutes a day. 15 minutes a day. One hour a week. Fast one day a month. And then three days a year, just like, do a three day prayer and fasting for whatever it is you want to say. Listen, is this unrealistic? No, this is not unrealistic. 15 minutes a day. You can reclaim your commute. Just put a photo on your phone and say, "Father, the name of Jesus, I'm praying breakthrough. Do something. Change something. Change my heart. Bring breakthrough." 15 minutes a day. One hour a week. Come to a press set. It's like pick a press set. Show up at the press set. It's amazing in the prayer room when you're praying with other people. How it's kind of like bad to just pray for yourself all the time. But the nature of being in a room, people praying God's Word, they tend to go up. And the beauty of those prayers, I've been in the prayer room of our church for seven years. And a lot of those prayers were me-centered prayers, not anymore. Those prayers are kingdom-facing prayers. So that's just on a personal level. Get your phones out. Take a little screenshot of that just real quick. That's good. And then I want us to give us a corporate expression of this, okay? We launched something a few years ago called Pray.mysc. How many of you have heard of Pray.mysc? Okay, great. The good, gracious hand of God is on Pray.mysc right now. We're seeing things we've never dreamed about, happening with Pray.mysc behind the scenes, other churches, other pastors, other leaders, amazing. Next slide. So this is Pray.mysc's new website. It's beautiful. But I just want you to know that we've got things coming up that haven't happened in prayer in the city for 40 years since the prayer movement in the 80s. We've got city-wide prayer where we're bringing people from every borough, hundreds of churches coming together to pray for God to move in New York. This has not happened since the 80s. We've got borough captains coming. People contending for each borough of New York City giving themselves, setting up prayer alters all over these boroughs. Folks, I don't know how to say this. I'm going to say this in love. If you don't roll in with this, you will be a spectator when other shape history by being a part of this. Now I don't say this lightly. This is not my hype. I'm not like trying to manipulate you. I'm letting you know God is doing something here. And years from now, you will look back and be like, I would have given anything to be there. Wouldn't you would love to have been at the 1857 businessmen's revival? Do you imagine being in the room and be like, dang, this things get some heat. And then a year later, a million people are converted. I'd give anything to be one of the first six that went in that room and was like, I think God's on this. I'll be back tomorrow. I think something like this is going to start again. And it's amazing how many prayer ministries in our city are rolling up under this saying, let's do this together rather than on our own. The city fathers, the people who have stewarded this prayer movements in our city for 34 to 30 40 years in humility have come and said, we want to roll in with you guys. We think we can do more together. These are impossible kingdom dynamics that are happening. So, folks, here's my closing statement, New York is ripe for revival and awakening. It's right for revival and awakening. Sometimes people come to me and they say, how do you know God wants to do it? I was like, because he's put it on the hearts. That's what God does. He puts the things he wants to happen on the hearts of his people. And then he shapes their hearts to pray for these things. And then he forms them into the kind of people who will live those things out. So that's how I'm really confident that God wants to do this. Because he's stirring people everywhere to care about this. New York is ripe for revival and awakening. And I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss it. I want to give you space to make a commitment this morning because hearing the word of God and not responding to the word of God is just called spiritual entertainment. And what God's interested in is obedience to his word. And it'd be tough for somebody to tell me, like, it could happen. But if someone says, I think the Lord has spoken to me really clearly that I'm not to pray for 15 minutes a day. I'm not to pray an hour a week for God to move. And I'm really convinced the Lord has not asked me to pray once a month for something significant. But sometimes he does. But here's what I'd love to do. I'd love to just respond right now by just asking you to just bow your heads and just ask the Lord. And maybe committing to the Lord, are you willing to be a part of this? Are you willing to say, I will be a person who enters into the pain and the mystery and the heartache of contending prayer? If you're thinking I could never be good at prayer, I just want you to know, I don't think you ever really get good at prayer. I don't think they're like we're performing before God with degrees. The Holy Spirit who's probably outside of Jesus, the best person at praying in the Bible, that says often can't even use words. He just has to groan. So sometimes it's not even a word. It's just lifting up your heart. Jesus prayed by sying his side. I made a commitment to God that if I ever got to be a senior pastor of a church, that I just would use whatever influence I had, to be a praying church, to lead a praying church. And if you want to be a part of this church, I don't even understand these words, but if you want to be under the spiritual covering of the leadership of this church, I'm just telling you it comes with a call to prayer. I refuse to lead a prayerless church. I refuse to make disciples that do not have the burden of God for their moment in history. I can't be content with adding another service and a bunch of people coming and enjoying sermons and never getting the heart of God for their city and their spirits. It's going to take more than just a few folks. It's going to take more than that. So if you're willing just to say to the Lord, Lord, I will give. You can set an alarm in the morning or the evening or you lunch break. And if you're just willing to say, Lord, I'll just for 15 minutes a day. I'll just pray for something bigger than myself. I'll pray for the city. I'll pray for my neighborhood, my apartment building, my street. I pray for my college friends who don't know you. I'll pray for the arts. I'll pray for the UN. I pray for the South Bronx. I pray for advertising. I'll pray for a high school or an elementary school. I pray for teach. I'll just get outside of myself into the kingdom. Will you just make that commitment to the Lord? Just say to the Lord, maybe it's not even a commitment. Maybe it's just an intention of the heart. Lord, I say to you, I intend to shift to some energy of my heart towards your heart, God. Lord, you've been so good to our church. Thousands of people, millions of dollars. And Lord, we're grateful for what you've done, but we just say we're not satisfied until the heart of Jesus for this city is in our heart, God. Lord, I think about 8.3 million people. How many people you hear every day crying out, God are you real? Lord, people just like God is there any hope? And Lord, you're just looking for people to care like you care, to act like you act and to be available. And so Lord, we just lay our hearts on the altar before you. And we just say, teach us to pray, Lord, give us tears, God, sustain our attention beyond our own concerns, lift our vision, break our hearts, take us deep into covenant prayer when we've only been in the shallows of personal prayer. We acknowledge Lord, it's awkward. We acknowledge we're not even exactly sure what we're talking about. This is just stuff we've read about but haven't really experienced. But Lord, we do just say if you are looking for a people in this city to care about what you care about and feel what you feel and love what you love and hate what you hate and we pray for what you weep over. Lord, we just say here we are, here's our hearts, Lord. We ask offer them to you. And Lord, I pray that you will make every one of us a mobile prayer room. Lord, that everywhere we go, we would be a temple of your presence. We would be priests of intercession standing between the needs of those around us and you're very hard. The Holy Spirit, only you can sustain this, only you can stir this. And so we just say, would you come mold our hearts, open our eyes, let a groan come to our hearts to feel what you feel. Sustain us beyond the emotions of a moment into a restructuring of our time, life, rhythms and priorities to care about what you care about. Here we are, pray through us, Spirit of God we pray. Jesus' name, Amen.