The First Step to Revival

All right, Porch. How are we doing? Are we doing okay? It's so great to see you. If this is your first time at The Porch, welcome. We're really glad you're in the space. Normally, this is the moment where I would shift really hard and we would go straight to this. We're going to do that in a moment.

I think God might not be done with the moment we just came out of. I felt the presence of God moving in a really powerful and palpable way here amongst us, and I'm a firm believer… We're not the weekly entertainment. You're not coming here so you can listen to me preach and watch us worship. No, God is the reason we show up in this space every single week. His worship is the object of our affection, his Word is the object of our attention, and the wonder of God is the object of our enchantment.

So, I want to give you a moment right now just to pray for yourself. I don't even know what to prompt you to pray. You just need to pray. I feel a deep sense from the Lord that you're supposed to take a moment and just bow your head and say, "God, I sense you near. Would you meet with me now? Would you unlock what you might already be opening up here this evening?" So, can we do that together? Would you be willing?

Again, we believe God meets with us here. He can meet with anybody, anytime, anyplace, but we want to give you a space right now to meet with him, even if you haven't clicked into the reality that he's here and he's wanting to meet with you. So, take a moment and pray for yourself in whatever way you feel led, in whatever way you're wanting for. Ask God to give you more of himself.

[Pause]

O God, the silence is so good. It's good to sit in the stillness of a moment like this and to know that while it might feel so empty, it could not be more full. It is full of you. God, we desperately want to meet with you, and we're grateful that that desperate longing is not unmet by you. You feel the same way. So, God, would you meet with us now? I don't know what you want to do, but, God, I want you to do whatever it is. We love you, and it's in Christ's name we pray these things, amen.

Well, hey, it's great to be with you. I'm really excited for tonight. I want to give a special shout-out to all of our friends who are tuning in online. We have not forgotten about you, all of our Porch.Live locations that are tuning in from all over the place. I mean, it's amazing what God is doing in this room, but he is doing similar things in rooms just like this all across the country. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Greater Lafayette, Fort Worth, and Dayton. Would you put your hands together for all of our friends who are tuning in online right now? We love you, we see you, and if you're ever in Dallas, come and spend a little bit of time with us.

Well, I don't know if there's something in your life that you've sworn to yourself you would never, ever do, but there is one thing in my life that I've said, "Man, there's no way I would be caught dead doing that." Do you want to know what it is? I have sworn to myself that I will never, ever run through an airport. Not that there's something wrong with that. I'm sure people who are doing it have a really good reason to do so. I just can't think of one.

I think there is plenty of reason to make your way out of that type of situation if you would just prepare in advance. You know, buy your tickets early. Make sure your parking is booked. Download your mobile boarding pass. Show up, and if you're checking bags, give time for that, and just know TSA is probably going to be a little bit tricky. Something is going to go wrong. Someone's hair product or shampoo or body wash is going to signal something because they didn't get the right size liquid container, and it's going to stymie the rest of your progress through that space.

It's not that difficult, yet, as luck would have it, my wife and I, when we were in Frankfurt, Germany, in the middle of a layover between one flight to the next, found ourselves in a situation the likes of which I never would have invited upon myself. You see, we landed, and in the midst of our layover we knew, "Okay, we have 45 minutes," which is brief, but it's also convenient, because we know exactly where we're going. We've prepared very well. We know the gate we're moving to.

So, we check one more time. We exit our plane. We start walking our way. Right as we get to the gate that we thought we were going to be leaving from, I look up, and I do not see the name of the city to which we are flying. Cue the appropriate airport panic that I've never wanted to feel in my life. You see, somewhere between us landing, checking our boarding pass, and then deboarding the plane, our gate got updated, yet we did not know about it, so we had made our way to the wrong place.

In this moment, having casually strolled our way to where we originally thought we were going, we realized, "There is nothing casual about the situation we're in now. We have, not 45 minutes…10 minutes to get from one terminal to the next, lest we miss our flight altogether." What do you think we did in that moment? We ran. One thousand percent we ran, but we tried to do that thing where you sort of run/walk because you don't want to draw attention to yourself or be considered as odd to the rest of the surrounding people.

We realized as we did that it wasn't exactly working. People were looking at us, and we stood out. Then we realized, "We're not getting where we need to go in the time that we need to get there," so what we decided to do… We shifted gears. We went into high drive, and we picked up our luggage. It was no longer working to roll it.

We were pushing through crowds. "Excuse me. Pardon me. I'm so sorry." And we were racing through the airport, yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" like paratroopers deployed into a drop zone. I mean, this was our situation, because though our destination had not changed, our situation had changed, and because our situation changed, everything about the way we moved in that moment changed as well.

Why do I tell you that? Because I think we're living in a very special time in history where God is moving in a uniquely different way, yet the window to be a part of it is slowly closing, and that should change everything about the way we move. "What are you talking about, Kylen?" Well, I don't know if you're aware, but there is something genuinely amazing happening all across not just our country but the globe, and it goes by the name of revival.

Maybe you don't like that name. People have a variety of responses when they hear the word revival. Some are very hopeful. Others are very gullible. Some are very skeptical. Some are very cynical. I don't know what your response is or what other word you would prefer…an outpouring, an awakening. What we can agree to is something is happening right now in our modern moment.

If you don't believe me, just listen to this. The Barna Group recently reported that 66 percent of Americans have made personal commitments to Jesus that are important in their lives today. The reason that's so meaningful is because that is up 12 percent in just three years from when it was at its lowest mark over the course of Barna's 30-year tracking history of the same statistic. In three years, it rose to 66 percent.

According to their estimation, this is the clearest indication of a meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States, which is amazing. What's even more amazing is it's young adults who are leading the way on this particular movement, and even more amazing is it's young men. Crazy to think that that's true. But it's not just happening here in America. This is also happening all over the globe. In the UK, church attendance has quadrupled amongst young adults, but catch this: it has quintupled amongst young men, continuing the trend we're seeing here in the States.

In Australia, more than 800,000 people have moved from identifying as irreligious to Christian according to the national census that they took last year…800,000 people…with 70 percent of the Millennials and Gen Zed that were associated within that group saying their Christianity is now paired with monthly church attendance, that they don't just believe in God; they want to belong to his people.

In France, the total number of baptisms has increased by 45 percent in just one year, the vast majority of which are young adults. In Finland, 62 percent of young boys, which is the youngest faction of Gen Z, but will be young adults soon… They agreed to believing in the existence of God, doubling that number from where it was five years ago. And according to the Wall Street Journal, there has been a 50 percent increase in Bible sales since 2019.

What does all of that mean? We are in the midst of what experts are calling a quiet revival. Perhaps you prefer that term instead. It's not just sweeping the nation. It's not just sweeping the globe. It's also sweeping into Hollywood, because we have seen people… The likes of Hulk Hogan, Gwen Stefani, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Kat Von D, and Denzel Washington have all been baptized in just the last couple of years, and still others… People like Andrew Huberman affirming his faith in God to Jelly Roll openly claiming a heart for Jesus. All this has led us to this one irrefutable fact: that God is moving.

He's moving. He's actually making a meaningful move. He has been doing this all over the course of history, yet what's significant about the moment we find right now is we can see it, not just here and not just within ourselves but out there amongst them as well. So, we need to ask ourselves…How does this change the way we move in response? If God is moving, how then does that change the way I move through my life? Because I think it should.

I think Jesus has a far bigger vision for the life he has come to give you than you may well know, and it doesn't matter where you fall on the spectrum of spirituality. I think this is true for Christians and non-Christians alike. I think, for many Christians, we fear we'll go too far spiritually so we actually don't go far enough spiritually. For non-Christians, I think we look at our lives and say, "Man, it's good as is." Yet how much better might it be if you actually know Jesus?

Think about what he has done. He left heaven, he came to earth, he lived the perfect life, he resisted every inch and ounce of temptation imaginable, and then he moved to the cross, he died a horrific death, a death you deserve, yet he decided to take up his own life by way of resurrection, and then he sent power from on high to fill those who might believe in him.

Why do you think he did all that? Just so you might be a little bit more moral? Just so you might be a little bit better person than the average human being out there? No! That's not why he has done it. Jesus has done this because he wants more for you. The question you need to answer is if you want more for yourself. Do you want more for yourself? If you do, then I want to show you where to begin tonight, and the place we're going to do it is in the book of Hosea.

We're starting a brand-new series tonight that, truthfully, has been a long time in the making for me. If you were around at the beginning of our year, the very first Porch even, I stood on this stage, and I walked in fully anticipating that God was going to let me preach something completely different, yet he sidelined that something for a moment that would come later on. What is that something? It's this series. And when is that time? It's right now.

We firmly believe God is wanting us to engage in the current cultural moment and the spiritual surge we're seeing in the lives of people all over, but particularly our generation, yet in order to do it adequately, we can't just give a single week. That would not be enough. We want to give multiple weeks, week after week, talking into this idea, because we believe true revival doesn't just happen through a powerful moment; true revival happens through persistent movement.

Let me explain it to you like this. We've all gotten motivated and up in arms about something we want to learn. Right? "I want to learn to play the guitar. I want to get in shape. I want to learn to knit." Like, that's a thing right now. Crocheting is kind of in. We can get motivated for a moment, and maybe we even act on that motivation, yet often, it doesn't stand the test of time.

I remember when I was a young boy, I was a horrible reader, yet I thought the idea of reading was so very noble. I wasn't great at it. Whenever it came to our AR points (if you know, you know), I chose to read every picture book and not any literary classics, yet I realized leaders are readers, so if you want to be a leader, you'd better become a reader. I decided, "You know what? I'm in. I will do this."

So, I would go to the book fair. I would peruse the books. I would pick those which looked to be the most sophisticated and savvy for my development, and I would work through them until I grew disinterested and they started to collect dust on the shelf. What finally made the difference? The difference was I moved from motivation to dedication. I stopped worrying about the moment where I cared to make a move, and I started thinking about the movement that needed to happen in me if I actually wanted to develop as a reader.

I started setting time aside. I started making sure my calendar was cleared. I started giving up other hobbies so I could grow in this area. I didn't need more motivation; I needed more dedication. Revival, an outpouring of the Spirit, an awakening work of God, requires the same thing. Sure, it can begin through a powerful moment in a room like this, but it lasts through a persistent movement in hearts like yours. It can't just happen like a spectacle; it needs to be deeply spiritual. That's what I want to help you learn.

I love the way Mark Sayers says this. He says, "Personal renewals begin in the hidden places… Eventually, this inner change of the heart will overflow out into our external lives, creating a potential for renewal in the social world around us." To put that very simply, widespread revival begins with internal renewal. Meaning, you don't find revival by searching for it, by banging the emotional drum, or by guilting people into engagement. You find revival by seeking renewal, a vibrant faith, an intimacy with Jesus, a greater delight in the gospel, the deepening of your personal dependence on him for what only he can do.

So, how do we do that? How do we actually invest in our personal, individual renewal? Well, it's going to take some time to teach you, but that's what this series is, and that's what the next coming weeks are. I want to help you take step by step by step in your personal renewal that you might experience more of God in your life, but before we can get where you want to be, we need to assess where you are. We need to talk about what is happening before we consider what will happen, which means we need to talk about your heart.

I don't know how you feel about that idea, yet this is the appropriate place to begin, and it's exactly what Hosea starts talking about in Hosea 10:12. Look at verse 12 with me. One verse is all we're working tonight. "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you."

Hosea is saying to the nation of Israel exactly what God is saying to us tonight. "Now is the time. It's time to make a move. It's time to take a stand. It's time to deepen down in your depth." The place we begin is by farming, which probably caught you a little bit off guard. "It's not exactly the most helpful, relevant reference point for us, Hosea. Something that would have been better is 'Refresh your feed, share your story, and then accept the followers that come in kind.'"

That would have been a more modern translation of what's happening here, yet what he is saying is not out of touch but very in touch with the people he's speaking to, because the nation of Israel was an agrarian society. They were great at working the land and harvesting a crop and taking up its yield. They were familiar with all the work it took to bear fruit from the earth.

As any good farmer knows, and these people would have known as well, it does you no good to plant seed unless you have first plowed soil. That's what Hosea means when he says, "Break up your fallow ground." Fallow ground is dormant ground. It's ground that has gone undisturbed. It's filled with weeds, thistles, rocks, and debris. It has been untouched. And there's a good reason for it.

The nation of Israel would do this because they would want their soil to replenish in terms of its nutrients to prevent disease. You learned this in grade school science or social studies. It's called crop rotation, people. What do you do with fallow ground? You have to break it up, because though it is nutrient rich, it is hard as a rock. It has to be loosened. It's not accommodating for planting. It will not give you any growth because it is already overgrown.

When my wife and I lived in Houston, we had an amazing front yard in our very first home. Amazing front yard. When it was freshly cut, this thing looked like a green pillow-top mattress. I loved it…that is, until we had a very harsh winter, and by way of the season change, our yard got wrecked. Disease, decay, and death just gripped it and started choking the life out of it.

So what did I do? When springtime rolled around, at the appropriate moment, just as Hosea is saying, I decided to break up that hardened ground, to till up our soil, so I could lay new sod, the closest thing to farming we get in a big city. If the soil was not soft, the sod would not take. In the same way, you have to break up your hardness of heart if you want renewal to take root.

1. Hard-heartedness must be broken up. If you want to be spiritually renewed, if you want more of God, then your hard-heartedness has to be broken up. Let me ask you… Why do our hearts grow hard? For one of three reasons. They either grow cold, calloused, or cluttered. What does it mean to have a cold heart? A cold heart looks like apathy to the things of God or indifference to the things of Jesus. We just don't care anymore. We don't care.

We might not admit that out loud, but if your quiet times feel more like you're paying Christian membership fees or if it feels like your prayers are bottomed out of any of their emotion or if you're showing up to church and it feels more synonymous with an inconvenience to deal with the parking than a blessing to walk in and experience the worship, then you might have a cold heart. Your heart might be hard in the coldest of ways.

So, how do you get yourself warm again? You come close to the source of heat. That's how you do it. If you're out in the cold, what's the right thing for you to do? It's to move out from the cold and into the warmth, yet it's not an instantaneous process. It takes time. So let's just talk. What is the source of warmth you need to near yourself to? The Scriptures are abundantly clear. It's the Word of God.

When Jesus approaches two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, they say, in Luke 24:32, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?" If you want your heart to get hot, the way that works is you sit in his Word. You don't just do it casually; you do it consistently. You make an effort, every effort, to spend time near this book where you not only read but he actually speaks. That's going to warm your heart up.

If I can just make a recommendation… If it feels like, "Kylen, every time I pick this thing up, there's nothing in it for me," then I would encourage you to go and sit in the Psalms. Now, my spiritual elites in the room are like, "Of course you would recommend the Psalms. That's what everybody wants to read." Including Jesus. Jesus did not quote any other book more than the book of Psalms, and Jesus also had the hottest heart of all. He was boiling inside for the glory of God to a point where he never faced a coldness of heart, because he sat in the Word of God as the Word of God himself. That's the first thing.

The second thing is your heart might be calloused, which looks like a cynical or suspicious heart. Why are you cynical or suspicious? More than likely because you've been hurt. I like the way John Ortberg says this in his book Faith and Doubt. "Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath."

Some of you have endured some pain. You have suffered some hardship that just does not agree with this fact that God is a good and loving God. You've had something done to you. You've had something taken from you. You've lost something dear or someone dear. You've wanted to fit in, yet you've felt totally left out. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it has left your heart hard in the most calloused of ways.

So, how do you break up the callousness? You remind yourself of the gospel. You preach yourself the gospel every single day. I remember being a young man and someone saying, "You should preach the gospel to yourself every day," and it never resonated with me. I was like, "Dude, what do you mean by that? Like, just repeat this thing over and over and over?"

What I realized is the gospel is the central element, the core component to everything I do as I walk with God and move through life. So, when I read the Word, I'm looking for Jesus. I want to connect this to Jesus. When I'm engaging with people, I want to see them the way Jesus sees them. Whenever I'm by myself, I want to think the thoughts of Jesus. I'm bringing the gospel into my life and, better, I'm bringing my life into the gospel.

You think about the gospel, and it breaks up your callousness. Ezekiel 36:26. It says, as it's reporting the new covenant, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." If that's what he did in Christ, shouldn't we think more often about Christ?

The last one is your heart can get cluttered. Everyone has a junk drawer at home. Yeah? Show of hands. Who has a junk drawer? Yes. I don't know where we adopted this as a national interest, yet everybody has one, because everybody has things they don't know where to put. Anything and everything finds its way into this junk drawer.

Let me just tell you, your heart is not a junk drawer. It should not be cluttered with anything and everything. Instead, it should be set aside very specifically for something, that thing being Jesus. We often give the space within our hearts away to other things, and we need to take that space back.

Some of you have given your hearts away to success. You desperately want to make it in life. You want to make a difference. You want to make yourself matter, so what you have chosen to do is give your heart away to success, yet what success is doing is taking your heart from you. It's not giving you any life whatsoever.

The same thing happens in relationships. You're giving yourself over to a relationship. You think that relationship is going to give back to you, that it's going to benefit you in some sort of blessed way, yet it often doesn't if it's not rooted in Christ and if it's not pointing toward the covenant he has designed for his people to embody. I could keep going. What you know is what Proverbs 4:23 says: "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."

If you feel that your heart is hard, then empty it of what it does not deserve to be filled with and fill it with what it deserves. Stop taking your phone to bed. It's getting you into too much trouble every time you take it there. Refuse to talk to your boyfriend or girlfriend until you talk first to God in the mornings. He's your first love, so visit with him first and foremost. Try planning your day from your knees. I promise you'll realize you're not as in control as you think.

Don't drink just because it's how you unwind. Go for a walk. Don't call your friend because you need to complain about that person. Why don't you call someone to encourage them instead. Be willing to remove that which is making your heart hard, that which is making your heart cluttered. Instead, fill it with what will make it right. We must break up our hard-heartedness.

As one of my former pastors would always say, "Kylen, the hard work is the heart work." Some of you need to do the heart work tonight. Some of you do not need to leave this room. You need to sit as long as it takes, not to finish the job but just to break the ground. Not to scratch the surface but to actually impact it for a difference and begin to till up the soil of your soul, because until you do, you will not be able to sow into your satisfaction, which is where Hosea goes next.

He says, "Sow righteousness. Reap steadfast love." Something I think we could all agree we want in life is to be approved of. We want to be accepted by others. We want to be loved in this world. And listen. We're not wrong for wanting that. That's not a bad desire. You're not wrong for wanting for it; you're wrong in light of where you might be searching for it, which was the case for the nation of Israel in this moment.

At the time that Hosea is prophesying here, the nation of Israel was being led by King Jeroboam II. On the surface, Jeroboam's reign was marked by prosperity and national security. He expanded the borders of Israel to a place that had not reached the same extent until the time of Solomon himself. He had great political prowess. He had successful military campaigns, but underneath it all, Jeroboam II did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He led the nation into idolatry for 40-plus years.

What was the result of that? The people of Israel were searching for satisfaction in all of the wrong places. They were looking for love, acceptance, and approval in all of the wrong places. They were worshiping at the feet of false gods instead of the one true God. They were gratifying their sinful desire as opposed to the desire of the Spirit, and what they found was instead of investing in the renewal of their spirit, they were investing in the rejection of God's Spirit. What's the point Hosea is making? It's our second point.

2. You reap in life what you sow in the soul. Let me explain what I mean. Several years ago, I was at the gym, and I was training legs. (Fellows, don't skip leg day.) As I was doing it, I felt my back tweak, so, being a wise and responsible adult, I put the weights down, picked up a yoga mat, and I said, "I'm going to stretch this thing out." So, I make my way over and start to stretch everything out, and I feel fine by the end of it. I get up, get in my car, and go home.

I had a couple of boxes to unload at the house, and as I was putting those boxes down, I bent over to set one to the ground, and I went with it. My knees buckled. I found myself face down on the ground, and I genuinely could not move. I had fallen, and I could not get back up, yet I had no Life Alert to save me. I army crawled my way into the house where I laid on the couch immobile for three days. It was at that time that my wife, being the voice of wisdom, looked at me and said, "We should do something about this."

"No, baby. It's going to be fine. Just let me sleep it off."

"No, really. We should do something about this. I can't keep changing your clothes for you because you can't bend over to pull your pants up."

It was a moment of great humility. So we went to the local urgent care. I walked in. They gave me a steroid shot. They also recommended physical therapy. I was back to 100 percent, so I went back. Ten months later, I found myself back on the ground. Why? Because I did not sow into my health. I didn't go to physical therapy. I didn't do my stretches. I didn't work on my mobility. I sowed into my hurt. I went right back to doing what I had always done.

Listen. You cannot sow the same seed and expect a different result. That's not how this works. If you want to experience more of God in your life, then you need to make different decisions in your life. So, let me ask you. Do the hard work of evaluating where you sit. I won't ask you to speak it out loud, but I do want you to speak it into yourself. What are you sowing into right now?

Are you sowing into following that person's account and all it's doing is reaping envy? Are you sowing into your success and all it's doing is reaping exhaustion? Are you sowing into that guy and all it's reaping is shame? Are you sowing into those friends and all it's reaping is regret? Are you sowing into control of your life and all it's reaping is anxiety? There are better things to sow into. There are better things, things that may not produce what you want right now.

Let's just get real. Some of the things we call spiritual disciplines are not immediately gratifying. They don't give you what you want right now, but they will give you what you want most, so sow into those things. That's how the author of Hebrews talks about it. He says in Hebrews 12:11, "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

Porch, there is a better seed to sow. Sow into your holiness. Let there be no concealed sin but only confessed sin, and then repent of it, that thing which you walked toward because you thought, "Man, it's going to give me life. This is the source of joy." You realize it's not actually giving you any joy. Turn back and move toward that which will give you joy. Sow into your humility.

Pray to God, and not just prayers like, "God, it'd be nice if you showed up," but prayers like, "God, if you don't show up, then there's going to be no plausible explanation for how I'm going to make it through this thing. I'm totally dependent. I'm lost without you, God. I'm fully and utterly hopeless unless you show up." He will show up. Invest. Sow into your happiness, not happiness from God but the happiness of God.

Pursue purity, not just in a dating relationship. I don't know where it got sidetracked that purity is only synonymous with dating. Purity is living a guiltless life. Give yourself a reason to live in such a way where you're above reproach. Don't just pursue personal purity; walk in obedience. Believe that it's not just bad things that feel good. Good things feel good, and they leave you well rewarded. Celebrate life, not life as the world knows it but life as Christ has come to give it. Then, sow into your hunger.

God, I pray that this room would be characterized by that word most of all: hunger. God, we're hungry for you. We want for you. God, we have tasted and seen that you're good, and we want more. Give us more, please.

Treasure his Word. Sit in his presence. Find that he is as delightful as his Word tells you he is. The decisions you make have the power to make you, but they also have the power to make us. That's what this is communicating in Hosea 10:12. It says, "…for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you."

According to Hosea, the call to break up your hard-heartedness and sow into the soil of your soul not only reaps the reward of your increasing nearness to God, but it also brings about his increasing nearness to us. That's what it's saying. It's saying, "Do all these things. Break up, sow, reap, for it is time to seek the Lord, that he might rain righteousness upon [y'all, us]."

James 4:8 says, "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you." You may hear that and be like, "Yes, I know." But do you grasp the promise of that? Draw near to him, and he will. He will draw near to you. You want for him, and guess what? He's already wanting for you. He will come near. Hebrews 11:6 says, "…whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him."

Isn't that amazing? As God sees you and you and you and you and you and you all pursue personal spiritual renewal, he actually brings about widespread revival. As you come to him, he not only comes to you; he comes to us, and he produces that which we cannot produce, that which we can't awaken on our own, which we can't birth through some kind of technique or some entrepreneurial strategy.

We can't stand up here and be so amazing enough that you're actually going to repent and revive, not just in a moment but over the course of time, generating a movement which the halls of history will remember. We can't do that. I can't do that. Nor can I be expected to do it. God alone can do that, and the way he does it is he works through you in your individual renewal.

3. It's time to seek the Lord, not settle for less. It's time to seek him, not casually, like we were when we walked to the wrong gate at the airport when we had all the time in the world, but urgently, when we realized we were at the wrong gate and there was a different gate that if we didn't make it there quickly, we were going to miss our opportunity, because the right time to respond with urgency isn't after it's too late.

I learned this lesson the hard way. When Brooke and I were dating, I was horrible at managing my time. I was awful at it. I often underestimated how long it would take to get to her place, and I would underestimate how long it would take me to drive there. It produced a high frequency of apology. I found myself constantly looking at her, saying, "I'm so sorry. I'm horrible at managing my time." You see, the issue there is I was acting in urgency, driving as fast as I could to get to her house, after it was too late.

The solution is acting with urgency before it's too late, realizing that the time is now and you should respond appropriately. The time to seek God isn't after our present moment has passed, because God is moving right now. We have to seek him right now. Porch, seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

Friends, haven't we settled for less long enough? There's more on the table. Don't you want that? Don't you want a relationship with God that's more, that's more than just a faith of fact but actually a faith of feeling? Don't you want a relationship with God that's not just intellectually impressive or emotionally charged but experientially powerful? Don't you want that? I want that. That's why I'm doing this, why we're preaching this.

I remember when Brooke and I made our way to Dallas, Texas, to consider, "God, would you even bring us here? Is this where you want us to go? You're doing a good thing where we are, God. I'm not just ready to up and leave. I love where we're at. You're doing a good work. You're already moving there, God. Why would you bring us here instead? You must prove to me that it's here you're moving as well."

As I preached on this stage for the very first time, and I came back and preached on this stage for the second time, I found that God was moving here. As I was processing that reality, "God, you're moving," in that soft, still voice that the Spirit only speaks, I sensed him say, "Kylen, you haven't begun to see me move. You have not begun to see me move. There is more in this room than you realize, but only I can unlock it. Call these people to me. Tell them it's time to seek after me and remind them I have already sought after them first."

We're convinced that we seek a God who has sought after us, for he sent Jesus Christ himself. We break up our hard-heartedness, for Christ has come to give you a new heart, one that is worthy of protecting. We reap in life what we sow in the soul, for Jesus has reaped in death to save your soul, and we seek the Lord, not settling for less, for Christ sought you because he wouldn't settle for anything less himself. He wanted you.

"But I'm not worthy, Kylen." You are correct. You are not worthy, but he is, and by saving people who face the very worst of odds, he gets greater glory. He moves toward the people who do not deserve him that we might be affirmed.

Yes, God, we need you. We cannot save ourselves. And, God, we want you. We want you because you would come for us. Let us be a people here at The Porch that call out our need and call out our desire, that you, God, and you alone are worthy of seeking, and we're willing to seek right now.

It's time, Porch, to take these things as seriously as they are. It's time to believe beyond where we've been. It's time to make a change in our own lives. I will boldly ask you, if you will not make a change in your own life, then make some space instead, because I want this to be a room filled with people who are desiring after God, taking Christ's claims seriously, and walking in hot pursuit after him, believing that, yes, life everlasting will be amazing, but life everlasting has come crashing into our present moment, and we can be a part of it.

I don't want to simply look back and realize, "Man, the window was open"; I want to realize that window was one I lived within. I don't want to look back with hindsight and say, "Man, God really moved there"; I want to live into this moment and realize, "God and I were both there together." This is what's on the table.

God, please, would you work in these people and bring them to a place where they take you seriously. This message is imperfect. We, God, on this stage are imperfect, but you are so perfect. They do not need us; they need you. We are not worthy of wanting, but you are worthy of wanting.

God, I pray you would know here in this place we hunger for you. We want for you, God. We see what you're doing across the globe, and we want it right here. We don't want to just look back and see what you did; we want to live now and experience it ourselves. At the right time, Christ, you died for the ungodly. It is our time to live for the only God worthy. It's to your glory we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

Hey, Porch, you can stand to your feet. We're going to go back into a little bit of worship, but some of you really need to work through and process whatever it is God is stirring up in you. Now is the right time to do it. Now is the time to break up the hard soil. We're here to help you do the work. We would love to pray with you if we can. Let this not be a moment where we feel awkward about making a move. He is on the move. Let us respond in kind.