Viola Solid Rock Assembly
Ennis' for the Ethne
[APPLAUSE] Good morning. I want to say thank you to Pastor Joe for letting us come. Joe is one of the few pastors who actually contacted us while we were in Africa. I don't even know if you remember this. But you contacted me while we were in Africa and said, do you need money? And the answer was yes. It will always be yes. But we were able to build some wells and do a few projects around different parts of the country because of your guys' support, even during the middle of our trip. So I want to say thank you from Almasia assemblies of God in the Gambia. Thank you for your support and thank you for helping us do plant churches. So I am Jordan, and this is my wife, Alex. We are planting churches that plant churches in the Republic of the Gambia. That's what we do. I will start by explaining who these three beautiful girls are. You'll go back to that slide. So, like good Africans, my daughters, their names have meaning. Our oldest is Adelaide Janelle. And that means my God is just and Yahweh is merciful. See, we work with Muslims who have a very warped view of God's justice and mercy. They think that God is only about wrath and punishment. So we wanted our daughter's name to point to who God really is. Our middle child, her name is Eliora Joel. And that means my God Yahweh is light. We live on a continent that for years, the West has falsely called the dark continent. They've said that all that exists in Africa is just darkness and monsters. And while that's not true, even if it was, my God is light and light is always more powerful than darkness. Light, if light exists, darkness cannot be there. There's not a battle between dark and light. It's either light or darkness. Our youngest, her name is Zaria Jubili. And that means my God has helped to bring restoration. And we believe that God wants to radically redeem and transform the entire country of the Gambia. And we believe he will use our family to do so. So I was the associate pastor at one of our local churches there that rolls shifting a little bit. I'm gonna be working more on a national church level, working with all 13 churches that we have. I'll be working more with that. And I also teach at the country's only Pentecostal Bible school. So we're a small country. I'll get into that a little bit more later, but I wanna get 'em in my text first and I'll kind of disperse more information about the Gambia as we go. So if you'll turn with me to Acts chapter two, this is a pretty common missions passage. Verse one says, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a mighty rushing wind. And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared under them cloven tongues, like as a fire. And it set upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. I don't have time to go through and break this down. Like I want to. I am a teacher in the Bible. So like this is, I love teaching. But one thing I need you to understand about this is that fire is the sign of God's presence. So God, you know, he starts with there's, there's a fiery sword in the Garden of Eden telling him they can't come anymore. There's fire that comes by day. There's a burning bush that speaks to Moses. There's fire comes and takes up the sacrifices at the first temple when it's built. There's all these different places throughout the Bible where you can see that fire is a sign of God's presence. And here God is saying, my presence is no longer just confined to the temple. My presence is among my church. That word there for church in Greek is ecclesia. I think I'm terrible at Greek pronunciation. I'm barely passable in English. But with the Greek pronunciation, ecclesia means those who are called together. In my opinion, it's related to a Hebrew term kodesh, which is also just as bad as my Greek. So don't quote me on that pronunciation, but that is usually translated in your Bibles as holiness. It means those who are cleaned and separated for a purpose. So we as a church are to be a holy church, which means we are cleaned and separated for the purpose of gathering, okay? We'll go down to verse five, it says, and there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation, everyone say nation, under heaven. Now when it was noise to broad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language, everyone say language. It begins to list all the different nations and languages. And as it's listing these, you get to a certain point and it points out three that I wanna talk about, Egypt, Cyrene, and Libya. See, there's a false narrative that has been spread in America today that Christianity is just a white man's religion and it's only for Americans and Europeans. Well, from the very beginning, Africa was always a part of God's plan. Africa was a part of the church from the very beginning. And as I'll explain later, the gospel actually comes to Africa before it ever gets to Europe. Because this was not a white man's religion. This has always been a part of God's plan that Africa was a plan for God's church. Verse 12 says, and they were all amazed and were in doubt saying to one another, "What meaneth this?" I'm gonna be skipping around a little bit. Peter standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them, "You men of Judea and all you who dwell in Jerusalem, "be this known unto you and hearken to my words, "for these are not drunk as you suppose. "But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, "and it shall come to past in the last day, "say of God, I will pour out my spirit "on upon all flesh. "And I will show wonders in heaven above "and signs in earth beneath. "Before I really get into what I want to talk about, "I need to explain what Pentecost is. "Pentecost is the Greek word for a Hebrew festival "called shivot. "It's the feast of weeks. "Basically, it's a harvest festival, "and they're celebrating the harvest, "but they're also celebrating the completion of the Torah. "This specific Pentecost, they call it Pentecost "because it's 50 days after Passover, "there was a new word that had come. "It was no longer just celebrating the Torah. "There was a new word that as John said, "the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. "There was a word who stood up in his hometown "and he stood up at a pulpit kind of like this "and he began to read from the prophet Isaiah. "The word said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me "because he hath anointed me "to preach the gospel to the poor. "He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, "to preach deliverance to the captives, "and recovery of sight to the blind, "to set at liberty them that are bruised, "and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." And then he sat down. This word, Jesus, read that passage, and he's reading a poem from Isaiah in front of his hometown, and he stops mid-pome. And it says he's sat down. The way that synagogues were designed at the time is they left a chair behind the pulpit, specifically for when the Messiah was coming. And Jesus said, I'm him. I've come here and I am stopping mid-pome because this poem then begins to talk about this suffering servant will even, he'll bring judgment and he'll bring destruction and he'll bring the wrath of God on his enemies. And he said, I'm coming, I'm here, but I'm not here for that part yet. This is the part that I'm here for. I'm here to set people free. And his work was completed on the cross, and because of that, there was a new word that was being celebrated, and that means there has to be a new kind of harvest. This harvest is no longer going to be just of grain, but it will be of souls from every nation, and every one say nation under heaven. So now that I've explained that, we can go into what exactly do I mean by nation. You can look at the story of Acts and it begins to almost immediately they have a problem. And immediately there are the Greek speaking, widows and orphans and those who speak Hebrew, and they have immediately tensions between the two of them. Those who don't speak Hebrew feel like they're not being treated the same as those who do. And so eventually they begin to figure out that this is a problem and the apostles call for everybody together and they say, okay, we need to have a plan and you need to elect, and we're gonna elect people who are full of the Holy Spirit specifically to deal with this problem, and we call them deacons. And so these deacons are designed to deal with this ethnic tension that's going on right here. One of these deacons, his name is Philip. And Philip, filled with the Holy Spirit, goes out into the Samaritans, and he begins to preach the gospel to the Samaritans who are a different ethnic group from the Jews. Their Jews mixed with a lot of other local Canaanites and they have slightly different views on the, they actually have their own version of the Torah that's slightly changed in certain spots. And he begins to preach to them and lead these people to the gospel that leads them to Christ. And immediately when these people get saved, they begin to speak in tongues at the same sign that was on the day of Pentecost. So he said, obviously, this is God saying that the gospel is for the Samaritans just as much as it's for the Hebrews. As he's coming back from talking to the Samaritans, he suddenly begins to hear hoof beats and he looks around and he sees this giant black man on a chariot and he's reading from the scroll of Isaiah and he's trying to read about Isaiah and he can tell that this man is confused about what he's reading in Isaiah and Philip who is ordained by God and filled with the Holy Spirit specifically to deal with these intercultural problems says, let me explain to you what you're reading and what you're confused about. And he begins to show him that Isaiah is prophesying about Jesus who came. And that man gets so moved by what Philip says that he gets baptized in the river right there. A man is probably most likely from the Sudan. And we know this talks about his queen, Candace, the queen of Sudan at the time was Candace. Your Bible is probably gonna say he was an Ethiopian. At the time in Greek, anyone who had black skin was an Ethiopian, that's what it meant. So it's not talking about a specific place in Africa. He's probably from Sudan and we know from history that he goes back and he plants churches in Sudan and those churches were still opened when we finally were able to get missionaries in the late 1800s to go back into Sudan. There were still churches that traced their lineage all the way back to this man who came and brought the gospel. See each one of these people though, they have some kind of connection back into Judaism. And so in Acts chapter 10, things start to begin to change a little bit because Peter is called to a Roman centurion's house. And this Roman, it says he feared God, so he believed that God existed, but he needed to understand how to serve him. And so he calls in Peter and once again Cornelius and his entire household immediately when they get filled with the Holy Spirit, they speak in tongues with the same sign as on the day of Pentecost. So there's no way that they can deny that this is the same thing and that God is calling them to reach out to other nations. Peter in Acts chapter 10, verse 34, it says, then Peter opened up his mouth. Peter does that a lot in the Bible. Peter opened his mouth and he said of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation, everyone say nation, he that fearth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. Let's talk a little bit about that word nations. In Greek it's ethnic, it's where we get the word ethnic group. And it means specifically a group of people who have a shared culture and language. How many of you have ever driven through Oklahoma? Okay, and you drive through the Choctaw Nation, the Cherokee Nation, that's what it's talking about. It's not saying that there will be Christians from Nigeria and there will be Christians from Russia and there will be Christians from the United States. It's a smaller group of people. He is calling us to every nation. Which means that it's a bigger task and it's something that we have to work on a little bit harder. In the late 1700s there was a shoe repairman who would get bored while he was repairing shoes and he began to teach himself languages and he was a very gifted linguist and he taught himself French and he taught himself German and Dutch and he got so good at those that he decided to switch over and do some of the dead languages so he taught himself Latin and he taught himself Greek and Hebrew, he got so good at the biblical languages that he became a pastor because he could read the Bible in the original language and he got captivated by that word ethne. He stood up in front of his denominational leadership and as he began to preach he had a map of the world behind him and he said look, I believe that God is calling me to the heathen in India and he needs you to send me to India so that we can reach them for the gospel. And the man leading the meeting, the presbyter, kind of stood up and he said, young man, sit down. If it pleases God to reach the heathen he will do so without your aid or my own. Thankfully William Carey did not listen. He continued to preach about reaching the ethne. He continued to write books about reaching the ethne and the very man who told him to sit down and shut up at that meeting five years later paid to send William Carey and paid to send his own son to go with William Carey to reach the heathen in India. We have been called together and it is a harvest out of every nation. Here's the problem. There are 7,000 languages in the world and only 23% have a complete translation of the Bible. In all denominations there is only one Christian missionary for every one million Muslims. 41.8% of the nations of the world remained statistically unreached or even worse, completely unengaged. Statistics show us that 40% of the world does not have a Christian friend. I want to focus a little bit more on the Gambia, these people right here. This lady right here is a Mandinka. There's over a million Mandinka in the Gambia that don't know Christ. This man is a Fulani. There's almost half a million Fulani. The Fulani are the same people group that kicked my family out of Nigeria when I was a kid. They're very violent, they're very aggressive about spreading Islam. There's very few Fulani churches, very few Fulani Christians in the Gambia. This man up here is a Wolof. The Wolof have no complete translation of the Bible. This man is a Sonique. They haven't even started on a translation of the Bible for the Sonique. There's 22,000 Moors in the Gambia. This man is a Moore. Moors refuse all contact with Christians. If I walk into a Moorish, sorry, 38,000 Moors. If I walk into a Moorish-owned business in the Gambia, the Moor will not talk to me because he can tell usually by the way I act and the way I address that I'm a Christian, so he won't talk to me. He'll make his employees talk to me for him. There's 22,000 death in the Gambia who have no adequate witness of the gospel. The Gambia is approximately 93% the population of the state of Arkansas. We have 13 assemblies of God churches. Arkansas has 392. I used to be a youth pastor in this area of Arkansas, and I can tell you that we need more churches in Arkansas. And if we desperately need more churches in Arkansas, how much more do we need more churches in the Gambia? Statistically, there are around 140, maybe even a little less than that, total churches in the Gambia in all denominations. According to Google, which has never been wrong before, there's over 6,000 churches in Arkansas. I think it's a hard over. That seems like a very low number to me. As someone who drives through Arkansas for a living right now, there are churches everywhere, but they are not full and they are not always being used. Most of the churches in the Gambia are Catholic. They're also almost all heavily mixed with Juju or West African witchcraft. There's a village where we have a church and in the Catholic church in that same village, the priest will go and he'll give mass and he'll give communion. And then as soon as communion's over, everybody follows him out behind the church and he slaughters a chicken at a shrine and he blesses the people there because he's both the Catholic priest and the witch doctor. Want to focus, again, on this Monday. You can go to the next slide. The Mandinka are about the same population as Dallas, Texas and they have no churches. There are approximately 2,400 churches in Dallas alone, according to Google again, so that's never been wrong. It costs us about $8,500 to build a church in the Gambia. How many of you have ever read the book or watched the TV series Roots with Kunta Kinte? That happens in the Gambia, Kunta Kinte is a Mandinka. In fact, it's about 64 kilometers from my house, which I think is like 42 in American units. So 42 miles from my house is where Roots starts. And in one of these Mandinka villages, actually let me explain this first. I want to explain how much the Mandinka, their culture is wrapped in Islam. The year 1066 is the earliest writings we have of the Mandinka. And in Arab historian in the year 1066 calls these people, these are the people who are Muslims. He says that's their cultural identity. For those of you who like history like me, 1066 is the same year that the Normans invade England, so we could not have this conversation because English is not a language yet. And yet, for a thousand years, their cultural identity has been that they are Muslims. In one of these Mandinka villages, there was in a mom, a Muslim cleric, and he sat in his chair and he was holding his young son and he tells his family, "Make sure you name my son after me. "Make sure you name him Muhammad, Lameen Sise." And make sure he becomes in a mom just like me. And then he died holding his son. So young Lameen, he grew up and he went to Arabic school and he was studying about the Quran, and he had so many questions about a person in the Quran named Isa almasy. And he was beginning to be told the story of Isa in the Quran and he realized that Isa was born of a virgin. Isa was loved by God, Isa was a great prophet. He spoke only the truth. He even could raise the dead. He was beloved by God. He's coming back at the end times to bring judgment for God. But he felt like there was something that the Quran was leaving out about the story of Isa. And he asked more and more questions about Isa until finally they kicked him out from studying the Quran 'cause they said he cared more about Isa than he cared about Muhammad. So he went to an English-speaking school. And eventually at that English-speaking school, he met some missionaries who began to fill in the rest of the story of Isa almasy, or as we say in English, Jesus, the Messiah. They begin to explain that there were three things that the Quran leaves out of the story of Jesus. We believe because of the Bible that Jesus is the son of God. The Quran specifically says that God has no son and he will never have a son. The second thing it leaves out is that we believe that Jesus is the Lord of our life. And we owe all of our submission to Jesus. According to the Quran, you owe all of your submission to Allah through Muhammad. The last thing that they leave out about the story is they say that Jesus did not die on the cross, that there was a trick and he was taken up. But we believe that Jesus died on the cross and he was raised from the dead. So those three things are very important. In fact, if you read the writings of Paul, those are the three things you have to believe in order to be a Christian. So the Quran is demonically inspired to give you just enough truth to leave you trapped in darkness. But thankfully for young Lamine, he had found the whole truth. He and several of his friends got so radically excited by this truth that they began to follow Isa almasy. And they decided even a Samuel changed, Lamine changed his name to Samuel because he wanted a Christian first name. So when people could hear his Christian first name with a Mandinka surname, that there could be Mandinkas who serve Isa and not just Muhammad. So he changed his name to make it evident who he served. Him and several of his friends got so excited about serving Isa that they translated the entire Bible into the Mandinka language. And today there is a Bible in the Mandinka language because of Samuel and his friends. However, one by one by one, each of these friends returned to Islam. This right here is, that's Samuel, by the way. And this right here is how we eat in West Africa a lot of times. Everybody eats out of the same bowl and the patriarch has the biggest spoon. So you get too far into someone else's food, the patriarchal wacky with the spoon. It's a lot of fun, sometimes we get new people come in and I get the big spoon. Samuel and his friends, when they became Christians, they were kicked out of the bowl. They were kicked out of their houses. They were kicked out of the safety of a compound. They were kicked out of being able to farm the community gardens. They were told by their families that when they got sick, they wouldn't gather the money together to take them to the hospital. So they had to just stay sick. They could never go get to the hospital. When they wanted to get married, their uncles refused to negotiate a bride price on their behalf. West African society is designed to destroy you if you do not have a community. And these boys, by choosing Jesus, they had to give up their community. So one by one by one, each of these boys chose the community over Jesus. Samuel set in my office as he was trying to teach me a Mandinka and he said, Pastor Douta, they called me Pastor Douta, it means David. Pastor Douta, the two bobs, the white people have been here for years. You have told us the gospel. You said the words, but no one has brought my people a church. My people will not leave Islam without a church. That is why we are planting churches in the Gambia because we believe that we as a church are called together. Matthew 24, 14 says, in this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations and then the end shall come. We love as Pentecostals to sing about Jesus coming back. We love to talk about the rapture and how excited we are for the rapture. And here is the simple truth. The reason Jesus has not come back is because we as his church have not done what he told us to do. 41.8% of the nations in this world are still unreached. That means we as a church have to do our job because God is not going to lie. He is holding off until we fulfill our end of the bargain. The last thing I want to talk about is that signs and wonders will precede the harvest. If you'll go to the next slide, this man I'm praying for right here is Pastor Dominique. Pastor Dominique is an excellent storyteller and an excellent gatherer of people. And he is someone who spent the last 30 years walking up and down the dirt roads of the Gambia as he's began to lead from one family in one village to the Lord and he'd lead another family in the next village. There was a church that had been started on a farm by an American missionary and they had to retire and go back to the States. And when that happened, Pastor Dominique took over this church under this tree on the banks of the river. And in the middle of him preaching, all of a sudden everybody begins to scream at him. Pastor, you have to run. Pastor, you have to run. This man, he's coming to kill you. And then his entire congregation stands up and scatters different directions out into the watermelon fields. I don't know about you, but that'd be a little distracting to preach to him. And he's looking around and sure enough, there's a man coming up to him. He's dressed in all red. He's got shells tied to his shirt. He realizes this is a witch doctor. And sure enough, the witch doctor comes up to him and he says, you cannot preach in this village. Pastor Dominique says, I am going to preach the word of God. The witch doctor said, if you keep preaching here, I'm gonna put a curse on you and I'm gonna kill you. Pastor Dominique said, I am not afraid of your curses. My God is more powerful than your spirits. The witch doctor then said, well, I am the alkalu. I'm the chief of this village. If my curses don't work, I will kill you the regular way. So we begin to fast and we begin to pray. And sure enough, the next Sunday as Pastor Dominique gets out of his taxi waiting for him under his tree as the witch doctor, the chief of the village. And as Pastor Dominique walks up, the chief knelt down in front of Pastor Dominique and he said, your isa, your Jesus will not let me sleep. What must I do to serve him? For the rest of that chief's life, the church never met under the tree again. They met in his house and he was the one who would set up the chairs and he was the one who would tear down the chairs. And when that chief lay dying on his bed, he said to his family, make sure that the church still meets in my house because the gospel radically redeems and transforms communities. I believe that signs and wonders are not something that we have to specifically pray for. I don't see that in the Bible where they specifically pray for this gift of the spirit to be active in our church and we need to also this gift and we haven't had enough prophecies lately. I don't see that in the Bible. I see people obeying this Holy Spirit and him moving before them with signs and wonders. This generation is desperate for the supernatural. I'll talk to you guys. Every book, every TV series, every comic book, every video game, every movie is all about some aspect of the supernatural, right? You see the Avengers, you've got, you know, literally the show, supernatural. All these things are specifically about the supernatural because your generation is desperately seeking for something and we as the church have the answers that they are seeking for. There was a movement back in the last couple of generations in America called the seeker sensitive movement and we wanted to be careful that we wouldn't run people off. Well, it is not seeker sensitive to hide what the seekers are seeking for. We have to show them the supernatural because that is what this generation is looking for. I think that sometimes we as a church get a little to worried specifically about speaking in tongues and we either focus not enough on it or too much on it. Speaking in tongues is the initial physical evidence. It's the first outward proof. It's a receipt. It's not the item itself. A lot of times we get kids who, I would have kids in my youth group who were desperately wanting to speak in tongues but they weren't seeking after the Holy Spirit. They were seeking after the tongues, not the spirit. It's a receipt. I didn't go and buy my iPad and then come home and show my wife the receipt for the iPad. I showed her the iPad. At the Azusa Street Revival William Seymour, he said, "Ain't nobody ever gone to a cobbler "in ordered a pair of tongues. "You order shoes and you expect the tongues to be there." He said, "Seek after the Holy Spirit "and he'll take care of the rest." So as I'm heading towards my conclusion, the experience of Pentecost demands action. There's a famous missionary explorer, Dr. David Livingston, who said, "Sympathy is no substitute for action. "God is calling his church to action." Another missionary named Hudson Taylor, boldly proclaimed, "The Great Commission "is not an option to be considered. "It's a command to be obeyed." There's another famous missionary named Scott Ennis. That's my dad. Scott Ennis says that Christ's blood never retreats, it only pursues. We as a church are called together. I'm not asking that everybody here go and pack up right now and leave and go to the Gambia and spend the rest of their life in the Gambia. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking that you live for the gospel here in your community. There are, I guarantee you people in this community who are still lost and do not know God. And you are a church that is called together. You are not called to just meet in a church building and just have a few good services and maybe we'll do a little bit of, I don't want to say that it's great that you give out the food. But the giving out the food is not the only thing that you are called to do. There is a purpose behind the giving out the food. You are giving them food but you are also giving them spiritual food. You are called to gather. You are being made holy by God for a purpose. Of Wolof and West Africa, they have a proverb. If you'll go to the next slide. (speaking in foreign language) For those of you who don't speak Wolof, that means slowly, slowly, the man chases the monkey through the grass. Some things are difficult. They're hard to do. And if you don't do them slowly and deliberately and with a purpose, then the monkey is going to either get away up the trees out of the grass or if it's like that one, it will bite you. I have been bitten by those monkeys. I do not recommend the experience. Also don't recommend having monkeys as pets. It does not go well. Some things are difficult. They're hard to do. And if you don't do them with a plan, they won't get done. What we are trying to do in the Gambia is what a Gambian theologian said that the gospel creates renewed Africans not remade Europeans. We don't want everybody in the Gambia to dress exactly like us and to sit in the exact same kind of church buildings that we have and seeing the same kind of songs and only read out of the King James version. That's not what we're trying to do. We are trying to have people to be fully Gambians but also fully servants of Isa almasy. Jude 123 says, "And others save with fear while pulling them out of the fire." That's what we do. Yes, there are difficulties. The devil has ripped apart the church as it's tried to make a foundation in the Gambia. He's used slavery, disunity, corruption, abuse of power, demonic attacks. But as veteran missionary Beth Grant once said, God is not intimidated by the darkness in this world. Don't show me how Pentecostal you are in a church. Show me how Pentecostal you are in the darkness. This is what we are called to do. We believe that every tribe in Africa deserves to hear the gospel, but we need your help to reach those on the banks of the Gambia River. This is my last scripture is John 4.35. Jesus is talking to his disciples and he's talking specifically about this harvest that is to come. And he says, "Say ye not, there are four months then comeeth harvest, but behold I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they are white already to harvest." Now, I'm not a farmer and I'm not a son of a farmer, but every farmer I've ever talked to has told me that grain does not turn white when it is ripe. Grain turns white when it is rotting and it's about to spoil. Jesus is not saying, hey, it's harvest time already. Like, it's time for you to get to work. He's saying that the harvest is ruining and whatever you don't rescue now will be lost forever. So I am begging for you to partner with us in reaching the people we love in the Gambia to help them say and truly mean, (speaking in foreign language) Jesus Christ is Lord. If everyone will stand, I'm gonna pray over you and then hand the service back to your pastor. But first, I wanna pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit just like on the first day of Pentecost. I wanna pray that we would be baptized in the Holy Spirit. That means to be literally submerged in the Holy Spirit until it changes the very fabric of who we arch. It's the word baptized was used in dying fabrics or pickling foods because when you come in and you come back out, you're different than what went in. I wanna pray that we will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Next, I wanna pray for a harvest right here in this community in Viola. And then I wanna pray for a harvest amongst the nations. And the last thing we're going to do is we're going to believe that the Holy Spirit will move before us with signs and wonders as we follow His will. So Heavenly Father, right now I pray that your Holy Spirit would move on this church that you would begin to fill them with your Holy Spirit, that you would begin to change them completely, that you would show them who you are. God, I pray right now that you would begin to call people and to draw them unto you and God, draw them into your service, that you would make them holy, that you would make them a church who is called together. I pray right now that this community here in Viola, that we would see a difference, that God by the next time I come to Viola, there will have been a great revival, that people will have been saved, people will have been pulled out of their condition and you will move and move and make a difference here. But I pray, God, that you would do the same to the uttermost parts of the earth. God, that you would go to all nations, that we would make disciples that would follow you and they would make disciples in every nation, in every ethnic group. I pray right now that you would move on this church, that you would call them for a harvest amongst the nations. And God, we believe that as we obey you, you will go before us with signs and wonders. God, we believe that you will begin to rebuke cancer. We believe that you will open wombs. God, we believe that you will set people free. You will set people's blinded eyes free. You will open people's deaf ears. God, we believe that you will make the lame to walk. We believe that you will make the dumb to talk. We believe that you can move in this place. God, we believe that you will set people free from the bondages of addiction, from pornography, from drugs, from alcohol, from sexual afflictions. We believe, God, that you will restore marriages. God, we believe that you can move before us. Set people free from poverty and poor financial decisions. We believe that you can heal people and bring them into greater health because you said you will radically redeem and transform communities. We believe this in your name and the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. [ Silence ]