Cities and Citizens I, Shaking Our City With His Love

The following message was delivered on Sunday morning, October 4th, 1987 by Pastor Jay Passavant of North Way Christian Community. Pray for yourself right now to receive what the Lord might want to say to you, would you? And now would you please pray for me and ask the Lord to give me strength to share this word with you today and to impart this spirit to you this morning. In Jesus' name, Father, Amen. Amen. Could you imagine a more exciting time to be alive than right now? Would you like to trade with anybody in history? I wouldn't. We have more access to more opportunities to do more things than all of history. In fact, more people are alive today than in the first something like 6,000 years of history. God is just allowing us to see more take place now than in most of history combined. More people are going to, 80,000 people are going to find Christ today as their personal Savior. The Bible says the Lord is holding back the second coming of Jesus until the full measure has been brought in. That's what the Lord's doing and we're privileged to be part of it. And you know, interestingly, our lives as Christians, as believers in Christ, is interwoven into everything that's happening in our culture. How many of you know what's going on with regards to Justice Bork has an awful lot to do with spiritual things? The same is true in every area. The whole arena of the Middle East where we see all the activity and all the threats of war. I don't know if that's a spiritual issue. At its root, religion is behind it all. We're the great Satan. You've heard that, of course. And you see, God has shown us that he is the Lord of history. He is not just a God who someday is going to come back after taking a vacation and redeem the earth. He's here and involved right now. He's in the earth today, moving and drawing out a remnant people. And I'm so excited to be alive today because God has said we have a part in the destiny of this world. We have been given a mandate to make a difference. Jesus only lived to be 33 years old. How old are you today? Let's all say it at once. One, two, three. Forty. And Jesus proved, listen, that the significance of your life has nothing to do with the length of it. And God knows that today may be for some of you a day of extreme destiny, a turning point day in your life. You know, Nehemiah had the same experience that I'm going to describe that I've had and maybe some of you are having right now. He was going about his business, as it were, doing his thing. He was a servant of the king. Look, it says here, let's read it. The words of Nehemiah, son of Hakaliah, in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile and also about Jerusalem. Alright, he's here serving a king. His job is to be the cupbearer. What's a cupbearer do? Well, he brings the wine in and says, King, here's your refreshment for today. What was his main job? Just to be sure that no one else had played around with that wine. He always had to taste it first, and if he fell over, then the king said, well, I've got to change brands here, alright? That was his job. His job was to keep the king kind of lighthearted and happy and make sure everything was, and it was a high position because he had the king's ear every day. He could go to the king every single day and say, King, I just want you, let me share this with you. But his job was just a routine job in that every day he had the same thing to do. But one day, something happened to him. Some men came back from Jerusalem. His own people had been destroyed and overcome, overtaken by Nebuchadnezzar and by the Babylonians who had come in and destroyed the people of God and just separated them, cast them all over the face of the earth. And there was a little remnant that stayed in Jerusalem, and Nehemiah said, look, what's happened to them? 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. You see, that one word of revelation changed Nehemiah's destiny in his life. Today might be that day for you. Can you recall a day when everything was kind of going along and suddenly you heard a bit of news and your whole life was changed? I remember those days very well. It may have been good news and it may have been bad news. It may have been news like this that totally shocked... I remember the day very clearly when the draft numbers were announced. Remember that day some of you met in 1969? And that was a day like any other day. I had all my plans and my draft number came down. A lot of you are blanking out because you don't remember it. But my number, it had a lottery system. And if you picked a low number, you were heading out to Vietnam. That was simple as that. My number was not 350 like my roommate's. It was 66. It might as well have been 666 as far as I was concerned, right? It was 66. And I knew, well, that moment my destiny was changed because I had a military obligation to fulfill and I had to make changes. How many of you remember a day like that? A day when you heard the news of losing a loved one? Everything was going along fine. Suddenly, bingo, overnight, one day everything changes. How about the day, the day that you first found Jesus? Remember that day? And your whole life gets changed at that point. Well, Nehemiah had a day like that and his destiny was changed. And his destiny had something to do with a city. And the city was Jerusalem and the people of Jerusalem. And I want to share with you today, dear ones, that God is calling us today to come to terms with a city, a city. You say, well, pastor, I'm not, I mean, I love the city and I'm, you know, I'm all for the stealers and all that stuff. You know, I'm a true Pittsburgher, you know. But I wonder if today you'll listen to what the Holy Spirit might say about your making a difference in the whole city of Pittsburgh. And I've been praying along with a number of you for the last months, Lord, and we faced the south and we'd stand up those mornings and we'd speak to the south and command it to give up its harvest and we'd speak to the city. And God's given us a relationship with the inner city church and many black pastors in the inner city. God's given us a great Christmas banquet in the city. But now God is saying something more bold than we've ever heard before. He's saying, I want my name declared in the city. I want people to know my name in this city. Because you see, whether we want to know it or not, church, the walls of this city are also broken down and the gates are burned. I want you to know that there is not life issuing forth in the spirit realm in our city. There is a prevailing spirit over this city and I'll announce to you right now what that spirit is. There is a spirit that holds multiplied tens of thousands of people in ignorance and darkness toward the living God. And that spirit is the spirit of religion. It is the religious frameworks and structures that people hold on to in lieu of knowing God and his son Jesus. It's what happens when you go to talk to a person about their relationship to God. And their immediate response is, I'm a blank, whatever it is. Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, whatever it is. That's their answer. And somehow it's ingrained in them that because their moms and dads took them to Sunday school 30 years ago, that that's good enough. And they have their name somewhere on a roll. And once or twice a year, they'll show up and they'll be religious. And I want to say to you with all my heart today, religion will not answer to the cry of God in this city. Four years ago, I had breakfast with John Wimber as he stood here in Pittsburgh and was ministering and said, Jay, before anything will ever happen in the Ohio Valley, before there'll ever be a breakthrough, a revival, someone, some church, is going to have to get a hold of the principalities and powers that rule this city and tear them down. Then God will be able to move in fullness. And dear ones, I'm not standing here and saying that we've accomplished it, but I'm saying to you, today, October the 4th, 1987, God is calling this church to move into this city and to take it for the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Nehemiah had three specific unfolding steps of discovering how to do this. And I just want to share these with you. Here's what happened. Number one, Nehemiah perceived God's heart. He perceived what God was seeing. You must see what God sees. You can't see what man sees. You can't just get a hold of something that you hope is right. You've got to see what God sees. Perceiving what God sees. What do you think God sees when he looks at our city? He sees 80% of the people say they belong to churches. But only about 45% of them go with regularity. And only about 15% of that 80% go to churches where they'll hear the gospel presented in some fashion. Most of them go to churches where people just kind of like to be together and they'll hear about the Bible maybe and maybe they won't. They're good people. I don't know, God isn't waiting for you to get better before he receives you. You're already good. I mean, I'm not necessarily talking about people who would shoot you if they saw you in the street. I'm talking about good people. But people who are blind and ignorant toward the way of God. And God looks at our city and he sees the church basically powerless to make a difference. You know, yesterday, and believe me, this is not something I even plan to talk about. But I joined with really a small fraction. I don't think that there was more people that are here in this service today. In fact, I'm sure there aren't. That were there yesterday for the once a year protest march against abortion in our city. I mean, I'm sure the hospital officials were laughing about it. More people go into the hospital today than when we were marching all around the thing. We didn't have enough to circle the building. We can't make a difference. And we say, well, you know, I'm not sure what I think about it. All I can tell you is, church, before anything significant is going to happen, we're going to have to be convinced that we see things God's way. We've got to know it's God speaking and not just some kind of little hype program that man's dreamed up. If we're going to touch a city, we've got to be convinced that God has shown us its condition. And look what happened to Nehemiah. Look what happened to him when he saw the city the way God had seen it. It says here, verse 4, When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. And for some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. I want to ask you a question. When's the last time you wept for the people, your neighbors, this city? When's the last time the heart of God so impacted you that you couldn't help but lay on your face and weep? Because you saw the condition of people, not as just nice folks that come to my store or play golf with me, but you saw them as eternal souls whose condition would separate them from God for eternity. You saw them as broken marriages. You saw them as teenagers already in the scene of degradation, compromising their moral convictions and their bodies for some passing little fancy and mainly for the acceptance of their peers. When have you wept? And I say this to myself before God, Lord, I want to know your vision for the city. I want to see the hurt of the people. I want to see the poverty of the people. I want to know it as you know it, Lord. Because when Nehemiah saw it, he broke down and wept. And it was that, you see, that let God begin to just sweep over him. I think if Nehemiah just would have gone and gotten some more wine for the king, he'd say, oh, tough break, you know. I mean, things are going pretty good here at the old citadel, but down in Jerusalem, not that great. How many of you know, listen, be honest, how many of you know it would be real easy to be comfortable here at North Way? I mean, we have a lovely place and great people. God's not giving us that luxury church. We've got a mission. We need to see the city as the Lord sees it. And then God began to show Nehemiah the vision to win the city, to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We have a vision, and that's to see local churches begin to be spotted all around the city where the same restored fullness of the local church that we read about in the book of Acts is made available to people. We'll never get all the people into one place that God wants to bring in here. Do you know that? I don't care how big we build it. But today there's one of our young men is preaching a candidating sermon down in Washington, PA. He's going to be beginning a church down there, taking over a congregation. There's another one of our men that in another week is going to be also ministering a word. And if he's received, he too is going to be taking over a church. We've already made contact, as you all know, with Lighthouse. And dear ones, I see it just happening. It's going to be a multiplying grace all throughout the city. It's a vision that the Lord's given us. And how many of you just want to see the Lord begin to speckle Christian communities all around the city? How many people drive 45 minutes to an hour just to get here today? Wave your hand. All right, look at that. There's about 15, 20 of you. See, the Lord wants us to be seeing churches established all around the city. So we must perceive it as God sees it. Number two, we've got to believe the word that the Lord speaks. It's one thing to see it. Then we've got to believe. You see, Nehemiah believed that God wanted to change the city of Jerusalem. He believed it. Look how he prays. I'm always impressed with his prayer. If this was a message on intercession, I could spend the next 45 minutes developing this. Look what he says. Oh, Lord God of heaven, verse 5, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him. Dear ones, no matter what you're facing today, God must be praised. No matter how ruined you feel your life is, praise God today because His covenant love, His favor is being extended to you. And Nehemiah started his prayer by saying, Lord, you're the God of covenant. You're the God who promises and keeps His promise. And then Nehemiah begins to say, Lord, look at this. And this is the tough part. I confess, verse 6, the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. There's true intercession. Raising up God, confessing your need. Amen? Hello? Amen? Raising up God, confessing your need. Nehemiah did it. And once he began to pray, the Lord began to show him some things. Now, if I were to say to you today, we are a praying church. Some of you say yes. Pastor, I'm glad I'm part of a praying church. Most of you would say yes. And I have to say, I'm always encouraged. I want to say publicly thank you to all of you who say to me, Jay, I've been praying for you and your family. I know the pressure you're under. I know how the Lord wants to use you and all these things. I need your prayers, and I want to thank you, and particularly you ladies. I'm glad you ladies have a heart to pray. It's a blessing to know that we're being lifted up here in the staff. We really appreciate that. And it's wonderful to know, isn't it, that there's prayer here at 6 a.m. in the mornings. It's wonderful to know that we have round-the-clock prayer vigils from time to time and all that. But dear ones, I really wonder, do we believe, really believe the word of the Lord to us is to win a city, so much so that we also recognize that unless we pray, we won't get foot one in the door. We've got to pray as though our lives depended upon it. And unfortunately, we are at a place right now where because it's no longer a new program, and because I can't stand up here every week and just begin to somehow hype it up, prayer is just beginning to be, well, it's 6 a.m. again, and I'm really tired today, and I'm just beginning to see the first little crack in the conviction level. And let's not be deceived, church. We will move no further than we move on our knees first. That's as simple as that. And I said, well, Lord, what can we do? We can't pray more hours, but the Lord began to say this to my heart. Call the people to bring their energy together to bear on one particular day. And here's what I'm going to ask you to do. In order that we might move into this city and make a difference, I'm going to ask you, would you consider for 90 days, the next three months, October, November, December, would you consider joining with me and all of the elders and the staff as we pray here on Friday morning particularly? Friday is going to become a day when we mark this city in our prayers in a special way, a lengthy time over this city. When I say city, I'm talking about your neighbors and your communities, but we're going to do spiritual warfare over this city on Friday morning. We're going to go out and win in the heavenly places the battles that must be won. And you know, last night I was saying, well, Lord, okay, if that's what you want us to do. And I got my calendar out and I started counting Fridays. And do you know what the 12th Friday is in this year? It's Christmas. And something in my heart just began to rise up, to believe that as we go 12 Fridays in a row to pray together, that something's going to be birthed in this city. Something's going to come alive and it's going to be the spirit of the living Jesus that's going to come alive in this city. And so I challenge you, church. Let's not just perceive what God wants. Let's believe it and let's demonstrate our belief as we pray together. Are we still going to be praying Monday? Yes, we are. And those of you who can be here, come as many days as you can. You say, well, can't I pray in my house? Isn't it just as powerful? No. All right. Doesn't the Bible say one can put a thousand to flight? And two, ten thousand? What can 200 put to flight? Who's got their little calculator? I don't know. I know this, there's great power when we corporately meet. That's all I can tell you. I'm just saying for 90 days, can we commit to that together and believe the Lord? Number three, as we do that, we'll conceive what God wants to bring. You see, we perceive what God sees. We believe what God says. We conceive what God sows into us. And dear ones, there's something in my heart that says that a God is going to impregnate us with his heart for this people. We're teeming with people. You know, Pittsburgh gets a bad rap about being a dying city in some places. Do you see any evidence of that? Or do you see more people than you've ever seen before? It's faster to walk on McKnight Road than drive. Right? I mean, it's... Everywhere you look, there's mud because things are building up. And we have an opportunity that really just doesn't come along that often. And I'm believing that God is going to conceive in you this vision to begin to make an impact in this city. Nehemiah received it, and look what he did. He didn't just say, well, Lord, now I've got this great vision, and you've really lifted my burden. He then, look what he did. He went to the king. Look at chapter 2. He said, I took the wine and gave it to the king, and I've not been sad in his presence before. And the king said, why does your face look so sad when you're not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart. I was very much afraid. But I said to the king, may the king live forever. Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire? You see, Nehemiah knew that he had to go to the king, and he recognized when he went into the king that God had already gone before him because without reading the whole story, look what the king does. The king not only grants him permission, look at verse 8, it says, because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted all my requests, not only permission, but he gave him all the stuff he needed to do it to. Provision came along with it. And I'm saying to you today, if we'll come to God, and we'll believe His promises and His word to us, God is going to supply everything we need to do what He wants to have done. That's what happened with Nehemiah. That's what's going to happen with us. God has already conceived the strategies, but we've got to be the ones that do it. We've got to be the ones that let it come to life in us. And I love what Nehemiah says at the end. He told the other people that he found in the city of Jerusalem, look at verse 18, it says, I told them about the gracious hand of my God upon me, and verse 20, the God of heaven will give us success. Dear ones, I do not want to do what we're going to do without the gracious hand of our God upon us. I do not want to say that we're going to go after a city and really fill it up with the name of Jesus without God's hand. Because every power and principality of darkness is going to resist it. I'm telling you right now. Expect it to happen. But the Lord has put His favor upon us. Now as we conclude today, I want to share with you one of the ways that this is going to happen. How many of you were not here Wednesday night? Put your hand way up. I sure love you folks. Where do the people come from that weren't here Wednesday night? We had a wonderful service and we had a great turnout. So it's exciting. And I wrestled with this. We need to get Scott in to take care of this. We had a wonderful response to what I know the Lord wants to do. And we shared with the congregation that night these two commercial video spots that we have put together. Now church, I risk today you misunderstanding why I'm doing this. I believe that most of you would see these on TV anyhow. But how many of you just want to know what our vision is and see it specifically? All right. We thought that. And even though I know that you could misunderstand this and maybe feel like I'm just trying to get you to watch me on TV, that's not the truth, okay? In fact, I don't remember a time I was more uncomfortable than Wednesday night thinking, my gosh, you know what it would be like to have people say, I don't like that. You are awful. I wondered about that. So as we come to share these spots with you, I pray that you'll see our vision is to get into the homes and the people of the city who may have no interest in us or in God. And our desire and our design was to get to the people who don't really care all that much about what we believe. Now I won't be able to get into any detail about this. I can't recap all of Wednesday night, but we do have a tape. Paul Cole, who the Lord sent to us as sort of our apostle of the media, gave us some of these basic statistics. There are 3 million people who watch television in our viewing area. Do you believe that? We're the 12th largest market in the country. The average TV is on seven hours a day. Isn't that unbelievable? 85% of the people of our area will watch TV in a given day. And we calculate that over a one-month period, 4.6 million people will view these spots. In other words, our viewing time. And we are going to be on all the network affiliates, KDK, TAE, and PXI, along with 50, here you come, along with 53 and 22 and so on. So our goal is not to get on channel 40 and just try to encourage the Christians, as wonderful as that is. Our goal is to go where people are not expecting us. And can't you just see them some day just kicking back and kind of watching the late night movie, and suddenly on comes a message. Pardon me, I'd like to interrupt your reverie. This is a message from the Lord. You say, well, that's ambitious, and it is. And it is something I wouldn't want to begin to do without the hand of our God being upon us. As soon as you are ready, Scott, we will be ready. Okay, ushers, you want to turn all the lights off, please. Now, church, again, if you need to move around, if you need to get out of the back and come and see the bigger screen, you are welcome to do that. I want you to see this as a tool to touch our city with the gospel. All right, are we ready in the sound? We have everything up? Okay. Pray for the anointing on this thing. Amen. Part of the design of this was to fashion these spots in a way that people who don't even go to church would understand the message. And, of course, there's a lot of things that have to be done that please the networks. They wouldn't take it just sort of a, you know, Jesus loves you and wants you to come and have a wonderful plan for your life. There had to be a message that they would receive, and so this is what we came up with. All right. Now, Scott would appreciate your prayers right now. As we rework things. 9356800 Okay, turn it off, Scott. One of the things we've also discovered over the last few weeks is there's no one on our staff with an anointing and video equipment. We keep trying here. Hallelujah. One of the problems is on the cassettes themselves, there's no way to cue them in exactly because they're not right in the beginning of the tapes, and so it makes it a little more difficult. Sit down now. All right. Let's see if the Lord heard. Amen? Let's try it. Praise the Lord. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to be a good football player. To achieve your own personal dreams also takes hard work and dedication. Sure, we'll all lose a game now and then, but remember this. Champions aren't people who never fail. They're people who never quit. An inspirational message from North Way Christian Community, North Hills, Pittsburgh. Call 9356800. If you feel like quitting, we're here to help. Scott wants to play it again just to be sure that he got it right. Actually, what I want you to... We feel like, particularly because of the football strike, most football freaks will be drifting... It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to be a good football player. To achieve your own personal dreams also takes hard work and dedication. Sure, we'll all lose a game now and then, but remember this. Champions aren't people who never fail. They're people who never quit. An inspirational message from North Way Christian Community, North Hills, Pittsburgh. Call 9356800. If you feel like quitting, we're here to help. This next one is with our own children out in North Park. Let's review this other one. Have you ever been left out? It can really hurt. A personal relationship with Jesus can make all the difference. He'll put you right back in the game of life. An inspirational message from North Way Christian Community, North Hills, Pittsburgh. Now, go out and hit a home run. Praise the Lord. The day we did those, it wanted to rain so bad. The Lord just held back the rain and allowed everything to fit together. I hope you understand what our goal is, what our heart is in this. We just want the people of this city to know that Jesus loves them. We're going to get as close to being direct about that as we're able to. In the end, we believe that the Lord is going to use you. The media is not going to change them. You're going to change them by the power of the Holy Spirit. How many of you know these kinds of things open people up? Just to begin to inquire and to look. To begin to search a little bit and wonder. The idea of a church in this generation. People see us as the pot bangers. We're going to send them a message. Wait a minute. We're not banging any pots. But we are breaking down some strongholds and pulling down some powers. That's what the Lord wants us to do. The ushers are going to come right now. There's one specific response we're going to ask of you this morning. Go ahead, brother. We're going to get a yellow and a red sheet. Now, the red sheet is for... They're both identical. The yellow sheet is for you to take home and the red is for you to leave here. We want to ask you for 90 days, will you stand with us? The elders have come into complete agreement that we are for 90 days to take these spots and put them on at least 80 times a month in all the secular stations. We're asking you to stand with us in that. And so I have three specific requests. You can read them on your sheets right now. Number one, I'm asking you to pray. I've already shared with you Friday morning. In that vision, I want you to pray daily and regularly for these things and what the Lord would use you to do with them. Number two, I want you to believe God to release support specifically. Do you know that if just the people here this morning and this service, if just each family unit, each single person could commit only $25 a month to this, we'd more than meet our obligations. Because we're buying time. Someone said, well, just get free time. When do you think you get free time on KDKA? 3 a.m. That's right. And they'd show it twice a month. So we need to buy the time. These are going to be on during Good Morning America. They're going to be on occasionally on the evening news. They're going to be on different programs on through the day, the late night movies. They're going to be on when people need to hear the gospel. And finally, we're going to ask you, dear ones, really, I have to be honest and say, I guess the last one is the one I'm most concerned about. I believe we're going to pray together, and I believe the Lord is going to supply. But I wonder, can we really care? We have no way of knowing how many people are going to come to the church as a result of these things or through your invitation. But we must be committed to caring for them. Home group leaders, we're praying for an anointing on your life. And our home group membership, there's got to be a desire on your part to reach out and enfold these people. And we're standing with you, doing all we can to make a difference, to help support you in that ministry. Let's quietly pray for just a moment. And then we're going to gather these. The pink ones go in the basket. The yellow ones go with you. We're also going to gather this morning's tithes and offerings from all the church. Let's pray quietly together for a minute. Father, we just thank you that it is you that said it's more blessed to give than to receive. And yet we know, Lord, that when we give, we're going to receive pressed down, shaken together, and running over from the abundance of your storehouse to ours. Father, we thank you for the local church and the way that we can make an expression of the life of the kingdom of God on this earth while we're here. We thank you that we can have an impact, that we indeed can change cities, Lord, that could change states, that could change nations, that can change the world, Father. We thank you that in this day, in the 20th century, we are able to, through our giving, and through the releasing, Father, of what we formerly have called our own, we can indeed change this world for Jesus Christ. And, Father, we pray for one another. We pray for the one on our left and the one to our right that you would be preparing our hearts to receive the harvest for you, the Lord of the harvest, are surely sending to us. We want to receive and be indeed Jesus Christ to all those who you would give to our care. Now we just commit this giving and all of our needs to you, O God, for your sake and for your glory and all God's people said, Amen. Amen. Thank you, Father. Alright, ushers, would you come now, please, and let's gather the tithes and offerings, please. And if you're not ready yet to make a commitment, we understand. Go home and pray about it. Bring the slip back another time. But those who are ready, we want to receive them now. Let me mention to you that, once again, tonight is home group night. And when we dismiss in a moment, I'm going to ask you to invite the person that's next to you to come to home group with you. Alright? I'm going to turn around behind you and invite that person. In fact, go ahead and do it right now. Invite someone to home group. Where does your home group meet? Where does your home group meet? If you know everybody, then you can't possibly invite someone. Move around. Good. Hallelujah. Let's all stand as soon as you've been able to put your tithes and offerings in. We need some help in the back here, ushers. On this side, please. We've worked the ushers today, I have to admit. You've been faithful. Let's give the