Hello and welcome to Vineyard Cincinnati Church, where we believe that small things done with great love will change the world. We're glad you have decided to worship with us and because you matter to God, you matter to us. We pray you are encouraged today and invite you to worship and study God's word with a hopeful heart.
Hi, I'm Julia Mourer and I've been attending Vineyard Cincinnati Church for almost six years. We are so glad you're with us today. It's such a blessing to be a part of a church that prays for people. And even though we're all on our stay at home routines, I want to make you aware that the Vineyard staff still gets together online each and every week to pray over your prayer requests. Here's how Beth Guckenberger prepared our staff to pray over all of your prayer requests just last week.
Well, Vineyard staff, it is such an honor to be able to lift up the needs of our church family in prayer. And so now as we go into our small groups, I want you to read through the list of requests that we've been given and really imagine yourself in the throne room of God petitioning and interceding on behalf of the particular person with which we're praying. We take these kinds of things really seriously, and we believe that prayer moves the hand of God. So join with me as we do that.
So in James 5 we see how important prayer is where it says, "Make this your common practice, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together, whole and healed." I invite you today to share your prayer needs with us. You can go to the website on your screen or send an email to prayer@vineyardcincinnati.com and please help the Vineyard. Continue to be a resource for God's work by giving online at vineyardcincinnati.com/give or text the number on your screen and enter the amount you want to give. Thank you for your ongoing faithful giving. It really does matter and empowers us to serve this great city of Cincinnati. Hey, let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that you give seed to the sower. I ask, Lord, that you would bless this offering, that it would be used to glorify your kingdom in Jesus name. Amen.
Hello, I'm Adrian Wiley from the Healing Center at Vineyard Cincinnati Church. You have countless opportunities to engage with other churches and ministries online. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you've been encouraged. Right now, the Healing Center is serving over 400 families each week in our drive-thru pantry, 25% of those families are here for the very first time. The need is great and with your support we can continue this important ministry. You can help by signing up for the Memorial Day virtual Hunger Walk. The money raised through the Hunger Walk will fill our food pantry all year long. Visit this website and register to take part in this year's virtual Hunger Walk. For just $25 you can make a difference by running, walking, or skipping a 5K in your own neighborhood. You can even participate from your couch. Either way, your $25 registration provides 75 meals for Healing Center guests.
Now more than ever, we need your help. Register today and let's be the church together; a generous church serving our neighbors in need. For so many reasons. Mothers' Day 2020 is going to be unique and unforgettable. Not only will we be encouraged by a special message from Beth Guckenberger, We need you to spread the word to friends and neighbors that the Vineyard will broadcast the weekend service on Mothers' Day at 1:00 PM on WLWT, channel 5. You can also hear the service at 11 in the morning on the radio at 93.7 The Light. This is in addition to our website, Facebook and YouTube. Moms and dads help us on our moms on Mothers' Day by sending in your favorite mom pictures and video to mom@vineyardcincinnati.com . Do it today! Email unforgettable pics and video to mom@vineyardcincinnati.com. As our church has moved completely online, there's a chance that you've just found us and you're brand new to the Vineyard Cincinnati family. If that's the case, Welcome! We're glad you're here! We'd love to get to know you better and we'd also love to share what makes this community so unique. So we've created a digital connect card, especially with you in mind. Visit vineyardcincinnati.com/connect to share your details and someone will be in touch real soon. It's that easy. Again, that's vineyardcincinnati.com/connect. If you would like to know more about the heart of Vineyard Cincinnati Church, visit our website@vineyardcincinnati.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Hey, Vineyard Cincinnati. I am so excited! We made it to May, right? Everything is changing. The weather's changing, the flowers are changing. Our world is changing at a rapid rate and it feels like everyone is taking the opportunity to reevaluate and prioritize and think through their lives, restructure their lives, and our Church is mo different. I've been asking the staff and I'm asking you that together we would listen to the Lord and hear from him on what it is that he has for us. I am listening to the Lord. I've been asking the Lord, what do you have for me? What do you have for our household? What do you have for this ministry? And here's some of the things I've heard the Lord say to me recently. He's been saying every one has a part to play in this kingdom. There are no professional Christians.
We get this opportunity to give and love, love, and show and serve and be and a in a world that we as believers have been asked to be a part of the Great Commission and the Great Commandment that we're going to love other people like we love ourselves and go out into the world. Have you felt prompted lately to go out into your world, to talk to your neighbor, to talk to someone in your extended family, to show love in practical ways to the people that are in your work life or in your community life? Everyone has a part to play , and the Lord has been impressing that upon my heart. The second thing he's been saying to me is that we are to be risk takers. I wrote a book called Reckless Fait,h and the premise of that book is that you take faith, however small it is, and you give it to the Lord and in the middle of that offering to the Lord, he uses it and does incredible things.
That's what we can't even ask or imagine: what he wants to do with the faith when we hand it over to him. It says in the Bible that we are a part of something called the kingdom of priests. That means that we are to represent the God that we love, that when someone interacts with us, they should know more about the God that we represent. So when we're generous, they get the impression God is generous. When we're loving, they get the impression that God is loving. When we're joyful or patient or peaceful, they get that impression that that's who God is. So as we all take part in this kingdom and we give the measure of faith, whatever size it is to the Lord, he's going to ask things of us and that response to the ask is the risk we need to take as we grow in our faith during this time.
The third thing is what we're going to talk about today. That's the third thing I've been hearing over and over again in my heart and my mind is that revival's coming, and some people don't like that word, revival, because they think it's an, it's a statement about the way that things were or are; like, that it's judgmental or that it, that it implies that something was not okay or stagnant. That's not what revival means at all. Revival literally means a fresh outpouring of the spirit on God's people and I want more of a fresh outpouring of God's spirit. I want his revival in my life. I want his revival in my marriage, in my house. I want his revival in our church, in our city, in our country. I want revival around the world. I want revival and I can feel it coming and he's stirring my heart for it, and that's the Psalm that we're going to land in today.
Thanks for being with us here during the Psalm series. Today we're going to talk about Psalm 85. Psalm 85 starts out like this:. "You Lord show favor to your land. You restore the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the inequity of your people. You covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath. You turned away from your fierce anger." Do you notice that it's all on Him? He's the one that's doing the work. He's the one that shows favor. He's the one that restores. He's the one that forgives. He's the one that covers. Since it's all on Him, we can ask it of Him. It's not anything that we bring to the table. It's that which He has already promised to do. It goes on in verse 4 to say, "Restore us again, God our savior and put away your displeasure towards us." God can use us.
That idea, we can ask him to restore us again. He wants to use us no matter what we've done and no matter where we've been. There's no place and nothing we've done that He can't bring us, restore us, revive us into life again with Him. When I was a missionary in Mexico, we had a church that was coming to check us out to see if we were a place maybe they would want to bring their students. And it was a very large church in the Southwest, kind of one of those churches that has a lot of campuses. So the central senior youth pastor came to check us out. And one night over tacos, I was asking him, I said, "tell me a little bit about your story." And he's like, "Well, do you want the real one?" I said, "Real ones are the only stories I like."
And he said, "Well, here's my story. I used to be involved really at the leadership level and a large pair of church organization. And then I made a decision that cost me my job and it cost me my marriage and custody of my children. And I was broken in the aftermath", He said I started to sell insurance, and I was just clawing my way back to that throne room of God and I was feeling heartsick about all that I lost and all that I had forgotten. And as God began to breathe life into me and restore me and redeem me and forgive me and call me back into home. I was missing, I was missing serving, I was missing the church and so eventually I put together my resume with my experience and a cover letter that just walked through what my restoration process had looked like. And I put it on one of those job boards, those Christian job boards, because I hoped somewhere, somebody would let me do some job at their church
I missed it. I missed the church." He's like, "Imagine my surprise when this giant church calls me for this really important position that I currently hold." He's like, "I went through the application process, thinking, "Sure, at some point someone's going to read this cover letter and recognize I've been disqualified." He said, "So I got finally to the very last interview. I was in the office of the senior pastor, and when he offered me the job, I said 'Before I can say yes, I just need to confirm with you. Did you read everything that I wrote in that cover letter? Do you understand everywhere I've been and everything I've done? Do you know what it is that you're hiring?' And this pastor said, "I have found in life that most people have a broken season and I like to hire people on the other side of their broken season because I find it makes them better ministers of the gospel of grace.' "
And when he told me that, I looked across the table at MRR tacos and I said, "That's why your church is so big, because who wouldn't want to spend a Sunday morning with someone like that that understands that no matter where you've been and what decisions you've made,?"God wants to do what he promises here in Psalm 85. He wants to restore us. He wants to forgive us. He wants to set aside any kind of wrath and He wants to revive us again. It goes on in verse 6 to say, "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?, Show us your unfailing love, Lord and grant us your salvation." The reason we ask God to do that, ' Will you not revive us again? Will you not revive us again?" The reason we ask him is because He loves us and He wants to give us good gifts.
He wants to give us the gifts of his love and his restoration and his forgiveness. That word "revive" in Hebrew, you say 'iihya". It means to live or to be alive. The Psalmist is asking, will you restore life to me? Will you put an end to my suffering? Will you make me whole? He is telling us that He is the source of our revival, not a new economy, not a new body, not a new job, not a new relationship, not a new anything else you can fill in the blank with as you reevaluate and restructure your lives. The way we're going to get new life is because God is going to give it to us. And what is the secret of revival? Why? Why can we ask it? Why can we expect it to come right now? Why can we have our hands open for it?
The secret to revival is prayer, right in that verse 6, "will you not?" Yes, I'm asking you, Lord, passionate, believing, urgent prayer. There is no revival that hasn't been preceeded by that kind of prior life. Second Chronicles 7:14 ,you might be familiar with it. It says," if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and they seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land" It's His promise to us. It's our, it's our right as a child of God to ask our Father for these good gifts. Sometimes in the church we talk about this idea that we can have, you might have heard it before that a believer, someone who understands Christ's teaching and has accepted him in their heart to be in relationship with them, that even people who are in God's family can have something that's called an "orphan spirit" and an orphan spirit is basically you.
You have God as your heavenly father, but you still live like you're outside. You still don't understand what it is he wants to give and do and be there for you. I have taught and I have a large family. And a couple of years ago we adopted a 12 year old boy. We brought him to the U S to be in our family in the summer before his seventh grade school year. He started seventh grade. And the one place he felt most at home was on the soccer field. That was something that he took from his old life into his new life. He loved playing soccer for Kings junior high. And I can remember, it was a fall game day. Like maybe he'd only been home with us two months maybe? And the way game days were structured as they would have school and then they would have this mandatory study hour and they would go warm up and then they would play their game.
And during that mandatory study hour, I got a text from Tyler's friend who said "Hi, you know, this is who I am and I'm on Tyler's team. And he's saying he can't play today because he doesn't have his soccer shoes. He left them at home, can you bring them up to school?" And so I was like, "ah, yeah, I'll go find them, and I'll be right up. When I came into the study hall to deliver Tyler his shoes, he looked at me and he's like," I cannot believe you do it. They told me moms bring soccer shoes. I didn't think that's what moms did. You bring soccer shoes when I forget them?!", I'm, "Oh, mamas do a whole bunch of things more than just bring soccer shoes. Let me tell ya." But he literally didn't understand that there was somebody who would do something like bring it to school
something that he had forgotten. He was a son, but he did not even understand what all of that meant. I think some of us walk around like sons and daughters of the King most High and we don't even understand all that that means. We don't understand that He wants to do things like revive and bring life into and fill the hands that we have that are open. It goes on in verse 8 of Psalm 85 to say this, " I will listen to what God, the Lord says; He promises peace to his people, his faithful servants, but let them not turn to folly. Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. Love and faithfulness, they meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from the heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.
"Righteousness gives before him and prepares the way for his steps." I've seen revival like that once before. This idea that love and faithfulness meet together, that righteousness and peace kiss each other, that faithfulness springs literally forth from the earth. In 2011 I had been living in Mexico, I mean more than a decade. At that point I was living in a state called Nueva Leon in a city called Monterrey. It's about 6 million people like the size of Chicago, and in 2011 that year we had 1,782 assassinations as a result of a cartel uprising that would have happened in the city and everything that year was different than it had ever been before. I mean, people were not playing soccer at night. We were not eating tacos out at night. It was a very unnerving time. You could be somewhere at like a restaurant or a shopping center and there might be an incident outside and everybody would go on lock down for an indefinite amount of time until whatever had sprung up was resolved.
It was a crazy time. During that time period, a friend of mine who was a pastor had a dream and in his dream he was praying with a bunch of police officers. They were just on their knees down on the ground and he, he woke up until his wife about the dream and his wife was like, "I don't even think we know any police officers. I can't even imagine a scenario like you're picturing." And he said, "Oh, I think the Lord gave me that dream." A little bit later he was eating at a restaurant and he saw some police officers at another table and he offered to pick up their check, hoping that would be a bridge for him to get a chance to meet them. But those officers came storming over and said, "We cannot be bought." They thought he was trying to bribe him and he said, "okay Lord, you're going to have to bring the police officers to me because I don't know how to go to them."
He was preaching that fall in his church in October of 2011 and in the middle of his sermon, an elder passed him a note that said, the building outside is surrounded by police. Just go through your sermon again. And not too many pastors need to be told they get the opportunity to talk longer than they were planning on it. So he started all over again to preach his sermon for the second time. And then he got a note in the middle of that where it said, there's somebody, the chief of police, is here visiting and it's just a security detail that's outside. At that point, my friend asked everybody who was new to Califord so he could pray a blessing over them and he went down the line to the dozen or so people who were new that Sunday and he got halfway through that line and he reached down and he said these words to this person, "I know the Lord has saved your life two times and he saved you for the time you're in right now."
Afterwards he introduced himself to this chief of police and said, "Could we get a coffee sometime? I've had a dream about police officers and I'd like to run it by you." And the policeman like, "Well, you know, I'm new here. Your former police chief was just killed, so I'm new in town. But I'd be happy to get some coffee with you." During that coffee. He told him what his dream was and asked if he might be able to come to the station and pray with them and the policeman was like, "Well, I don't really know anybody that well, but I haven't really met anybody that would be interested in that kind of prayer." But my pastor friends Altial was very insistent and eventually he said, "Okay, you can come, you can come at six 30 on a Saturday morning for five minutes when the night shift and the day shift exchange, there's like a roll call time and everyone's present.
Why don't you, I'll give you five minutes. You can say whatever you want to say." So the fall of 2011 so Satello began to go to the local police station in his community. So his community was called Guadalupe, would be like a major subdivision of that large city, about a million people represented in that town. And he took, for the first five minutes, everybody stood at attention and he just went through the basics of the Gospel and told them that they were God's justice on earth. Nobody really responded. They just stood at attention. But he was so excited that he had stepped into what God had asked him, that he asked if he could come back the next week to do it. And the police chief, he's like, yeah, you can. So throughout that fall, he began to go every Saturday morning for five minutes and build a message upon message teaching the basics of the Gospel, almost to the end of that year.
It wasn't a prior time that Satello. I felt like the Lord was asking him to bring a worship pastor with him to share that five minutes. And it wasn't like anybody would know the songs or had even sung in unison like we do in a church setting. But he went ahead and was obedient to that prompting and they began to have a few minutes of worship and a few minutes of teaching. And that continued all through the end of 2011 into January of 2012 and January of 2012 on one of those Saturday mornings in the middle of that worship song that the worship leader was singing by himself (in front of everyone who was standing at attention), one of those officers fell over. And the room was full of first responders. So everybody went rushing over to where he was. But the pastor recognized right away that the person who fell on the ground was overwhelmed by the spirit of God.
And that police chief looked over at Satello and said, "Something is happening in this room even if we can't see it. And I'm very excited." He asked in February of 2012 if Satello would take the entire month and spend 30 minutes teaching on the person of David out of the old Testament and make it a leadership course . He said maybe there's things that are happening inside of them and they just don't have the leadership skills to express what's happening. But during this time frame, officers are losing their lives about 25 a month. And the city at large,, they had, the national government had sent in the national guard. There was a lot of policing happening in our city. Throughout the month of February, as the Guadalupe police force continued to learn about the person of David, on the last day of the month when they were giving certificates for the completion of the course on leadership that month.
So Satello announced what everybody already knew was true, and that month in that city, not one officer's life had been lost. So not everybody understood all the basics of the Gospel. Not everybody understood and bleed everything that Satello I was teaching. But absolutely everybody thought that he had something to do with what was getting turned around in the city. And so they asked him if he could come every day at roll call and just give five or 10 minutes of basic Jesus information. They wanted, that they believed it would be a covering for them and Saltello would tell you that March 1st of 2012 is when he recognized the anointing had begun in the city because he knew he couldn't sustain that pace. He couldn't go there every day. He had a church and other responsibilities. So he called lots of other area pastors together and he said to them all together, "We split up the calendar with me.
I want you to go to that police station and share the Gospel for a few minutes every morning. And I don't want you to invite them to your church. I don't want you to tell them about your church. We're bringing church to them." And so March, April, May, June, things began to turn around first in Guadalupe, they had unprecedented arrests, way more than the rest of the city was starting to experience. People were beginning to play soccer again at night, eating tacos at night. Things were changing in the city of Guadalupe all throughout the summer of 2012. In the fall of 2012 there was a new mayor elected to that municipal and he gathered all the key community leaders in his office is one of his first acts, and he said, "One of the first things I'm supposed to do is give the keys of the city to somebody. "
And he said, "There's clearly,someone in this room is the key person responsible for what's happening in Guadalupe. Everybody can see it. So I want you all to talk amongst yourselves and elect who amongst you who would like to represent the work that you've been doing among the police force and in the community. Who do you think should get the credit for what's happening in Guadalupe?" And Satello looked at everybody else and he looked at the mayor and he's like," if you want to know who gets credit for what's been happening in the city, that's Jesus Christ. That's who, that's who's responsible." And the mayor said, "You'd like one of my first political acts be that I give the keys of our city to Jesus Christ?" And he's like, "Well, if you want to give it to who's responsible for this? Yeah." So December of 2012 the mayor of Guadalupe presented the keys of the city to Jesus Christ. And just in case you didn't, you don't believe me, I brought a video with me of what it looked like that night when it happened.
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The best part of that video actually is what got cut off at the end. The people of Guadalupe went crazy. They cheered and cheered and cheered and cheered and cheered. And you know how those political events go in the front row, roped off where all the other major mayors of all the other municipals in the city so that the, it would be like if we were in Cincinnati and this was happening in Springdale, it'd be like the mayor of Mason and of Madeira and of Indian Hill and of Deer Park and of all the other communities were in the front row and when they watched the city of Guadalupe go crazy for Jesus Christ, they're like, "Hey, my key things next week I'm going to get my kids to Jesus Christ." My key thing is next week I'm giving my keys to Jesus Christ." And by the end of 2012 all the surrounding municipalities had given the keys of their city over to Jesus Christ.
But there was one, one that hadn't even responded and that was Monterrey proper. And so now we're into the beginning of 2013. And Satello got called in the beginning of 2013 to go to the roll call on a Saturday morning in front of the Monterrey police force and share the basics of the Gospel for five minutes. And afterwards I asked him "How did it go?" He's like, "Well, there were 1400 people standing at attention and they didn't blink and they didn't move and they didn't respond", and I'm like, "Oh, I'm so sorry." He's like, "That's okay. I'm going to wait a few weeks and bring a guitar player." A couple of weeks later, he brought a worship leader with him and as the two of them began to minister to that very distinctly unique culture in the middle of our city of 6 million people week after week, sharing the basics of the Gospel,
in July of 2013 the mayor of Monterrey, Mexico stood on the steps of our city Capitol, read a chapter out of the book of Isaiah and dedicated the entire city into the hands of Jesus Christ, and it's not even like everybody understood it. If you looked at our headlines the next day, the headline said, "If you turn on your water this morning and it tasted like wine, you can thank the mayor." It was confusing to people who don't, but you couldn't deny that something was happening. That's what revival looks like. It brings dead things to life. It brings loss things back home. It takes things that have been pulled apart and broken and restores them. It redeems and reconciles. This is what revival is. It is a fresh outpouring of God's spirit on his people and it is exactly what I'm praying for today.
I'm praying for it for my house and I want you to too, I'm praying for it for my marriage. I don't want you to too, I'm praying for it for our church and I want you to too, I'm praying for it for the city of Cincinnati and I want you to, too, I want us to, but in this country there's a revival and it's not an anybody's name except for the name of Jesus and you know how it's going to happen? It's going to happen when we humble ourselves and pray when we do exactly what it says in the scriptures for us to do. When we, when we open our heart and we say, "Lord, will you not revive us? Restore us. Make things like faithfulness, spring forth from the earth. Bring love and faithfulness together and let them meet or righteousness and peace can kiss" and then a harvest will get yielded.
A harvest that will be greater than anything that we could ever imagine. That's what God does when he decides to bring a fresh outpouring of his spirit. It is bigger than anything we could have ever imagined on our own. This is what I want to ask of you. Find yourselves in the book of Psalms and pray all the way through it. Pray through the book of Psalms. Find Psalm 85 and say, Lord, would you restore us again? Would you revive us again? Would you show us your unfailing love? Would you grant us your salvation? Would your glory dwell in our land? Would you bring faithfulness and love and righteousness and peace into our homes, into our families, into our marriages, into the city? Pray through this. He loves you. You are his favorite kids. There is nothing about this request that doesn't delight him. He's been waiting for us to ask it.
It is not an indictment on how things have been. It is an anticipation of what we think is coming and revival starts with us. It starts with us. Everybody has their hands open. In this season, it makes sense that our hands are open and lifted up. You offer your faith no matter what size it is, up to him, be risky, trust him, play a part in this kingdom. Get engaged in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. This, this is his call for us. Let's pray. "Oh Jesus, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that you as our father love us, that you see us wherever we are and you make a way for us to come home, but there's nothing anything we have ever done that doesn't make us now better ministers of the gospel of grace. May we testify to the grace that we have received from you. May we offer it back to you? We trust you. We love you. We want all that you have Lord Jesus. We ask for revival to come. Would you bring it? Good, good. Father, would you bring this into our life and into our hands? We are available and we'll be faithful to it and we pray these things in the Holy and precious and risen and redeemed name of your Son Jesus. Amen." Thanks for joining us for Vineyard Cincinnati Church online where for over 30 years. We have believed that small things
done with great love will change the world. Vineyard Cincinnati is open to everyone no matter what your thoughts are about God or church. Whether you're new to church or have been around it your whole life. You're in good company with those of us who are exploring who God is or rediscovering what church can be. If you've enjoyed this service and want to know more about us, visit vineyardcincinnati.com we hope you join us again soon.