You Can Actually Hear God | Jim Laffoon

0:00 He spoke to me very clearly. The enemy is coming to kill your grandson. Hey, right now. Found him not breathing blue, dying in the corner the next day. God will speak to you. My sheep hear my voice. Sometimes when I teach people to hear God, I turn on recordings of firefights, sirens. Because typically, when you need God the most, it's not quiet either around you or in you. If you don't practice hearing God when it doesn't seem to matter, you'll have trouble when it does. So good. This is the crisis people live in. They're in a crisis, but they've never learned to hear God, and they wait till the crisis to try to hear it. The real key in hearing God.

0:46 I want to welcome each and every one of you back to the Lead to Win podcast, and I'm excited about this week's podcast. I'm really bringing to you this week not just some concepts or some information, but I have my pastor with me. And I just love introducing him to you. Obviously, some of our listeners, you have heard Pastor Jim LaFoon before. But uh he and I met, I was in my early 20s, and we uh he he really called me out of a crowd at a conference, and then I went and spent some time at his house, and he and I really made a divine covenantal relationship.

1:28 He's walked with us through every step of our church, and he's we're literally like blood family, and I wanted to have him talk with us a little bit about how to hear from God better, about how to discern God's will. But to be clear, right now you're here this week for a couple of reasons. One, you just spoke with our staff. We're having our annual staff time together, and then we celebrated you and Kathy's 70th birthdays and then your 50 years in ministry anniversary. Yes. We had quite a feast. I mean, it was a it was we had, I'll just tell everybody, we had a Texas barbecue feast.

2:14 Amazing it was. I mean, did you really come for the letters and the prayers or just the barbecue? Listen, we had seven meat, seven meats out there, including hors d'oeuvres. It was honestly a meat eater special. I mean, and I felt like you kept ordering more more meat dishes, and then we decided you probably needed some vegetables. So we we got a couple extra orders of chicken. Well, I never really tried any of the real vegetables that were there, like those old green beans and stuff. Yeah. I just had meat and dessert. And you know, you just turned 70. How have you maintained, I mean, such a model of a picture of health all these years with that kind of diet?

2:59 Well, it's been an uphill battle at times. Well, you know, we had this big meat feast last night. It was great. I ate so much at two in the morning, it was still with me. Two in the morning, I thought I won't be hungry. Well, then I woke up today and I thought I'd have a salad for lunch. Well, I had that salad over here with Pastor Jeff. Now I'm really weak. You had all that kale, all that lettuce, yeah, not much meat on it. So I'm not at my full strength. You're not at your full strength. But I had a stack of chips before I came here to the podcast. I feel better now. Well, I know I had planned because I heard we were having some more meat for lunch, and then when I got there, there was kale, and it really, it really wounded my spirit. Well, I didn't know if I was gonna be your pastor anymore when I did that.

3:41 It was a bad mistake. I was weak within 30 or 40 minutes. You were 30, 40 minutes, you couldn't even carry on. Couldn't even carry on anymore. So, you know, I think I think one of the things, though, that you love to talk about, so so a lot of the listeners are not necessarily ministry leaders. There, there are quite a few that listen that that are are maybe ministry leaders or pastors, but we also have a lot of business people. And then sometimes, I mean, we've been hearing from people that are teachers, uh, people that serve people in the community. And I would say if you have any responsibility for people, you you you have a sense that I need to give them the right advice.

4:23 I gotta have wisdom, I have to have direction. I know as a pastor, one of the top questions that I'm asked, and obviously you yourself ministering to so many people, what's God's will for my life? How do I hear God's voice? And I know you're currently writing a book that we want to promote and and give out at lead to when you and I have talked about it for years, and you've really been working really hard on it. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about what we can take personally into our own lives about how to hear God better? Let me start by saying, first of all, God's primary communication to us is the Bible.

5:03 Yeah, it is the final authority. Like if I thought I had some impression from the Holy Spirit that violated Scripture, it's gone. So that's why it's so important to read your Bible, study your Bible, obviously, hear the Bible preached. Secondly, before I talk about how the Holy Spirit communicates with us, never forget the importance of counsel. Your pastor, a serious Christian in your life, boy, we need other people. That being said, it says in John 10, Jesus said very simply, my sheep hear my voice. They'll never follow the voice of a stranger. And when I was very young, I was a missionary in a in a war zone. And I just had this growing desire to get to know God.

5:47 And I realized, well, I'm reading about you, the Bible's true, but I kept facing the reality of scripture, God talks to people, God communicates to people. And I wasn't satisfied in living in a monologue. I mean, I do all the talking and never hear anything back, where I knew God promised a dialogue. So that brings the question if the Holy Spirit wants to get a hold of you, how does he do that? What that's like. And so there's a few ways that happens. There are times he'll quicken a scripture to me. Let's say I'm in just I'm melancholy, I'm downcast, I begin to pray. Nothing the scripture comes to my mind, the joy of the Lord is my strength.

6:28 Yeah. And so one of the important things of reading the Bible is it gives the Holy Spirit something to work with. You look at Jesus in the wilderness, he's battling the devil. The only answer he had to the devil's attack was the scripture itself. He spoke the word. So there have been many, many times in my life facing a crisis as a parent, as a leader, where at just the right moment, the scripture will come to my mind. That's one of the ways that God can speak to you. It reminds me of Jesus saying that he would send the Holy Spirit would remind us, actually, of what I've I've said to you. It's one of the functions of the Holy Spirit. And that is so important.

7:09 I remember one time I was just feeling condemned, downcast, and all of a sudden, I'm out of the book of Zechariah. This um scripture came to me where the the high priest is before the Lord and he's dressed in kind of bad garments, and Satan was standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said, The Lord rebuke you Satan. This is the brand plucked from the burning. And the minute that scripture came, I realized the devil's trying to condemn me. The devil's attacking me. And that scripture was what God used to get hold of me. So you grew up, just to give everybody a little background, you grew up, your dad, a pastor. So you grew up, you grew up.

7:49 Uh so even you growing and hearing from God, you had some encounters with God. You you had a revival in your area where God just sort of swept the the the Jesus the movie now, the the Jesus revolution. So you you tell us a little bit about your background. Then your your dad had some encounters with God, this sort of this process of how God sort of brought you along. I was very, very fortunate. And so I did grow up in a tremendous Christian home. My mom and dad were had were blessed in their marriage. They lived in the word. We were required to read the Bible every night, but they also had a very living relationship with God.

8:32 Like, even young, you know, I'd find my mom on her knees in prayer. She'd be waiting on God. Pastor Jeff shared the same thing, in fact. My dad was a deep man in the Bible, and I grew up in a Christian home. In about 17, the Jesus Revolution had started a couple years before that. That was about, if you saw the movie Jesus Revolution there, Calvary Chapel and all, that's about 90 minutes from my house. I was South. And in 1971, it's like the Jesus Revolution hit my high school. There's no way to explain it to you. I was in a very progressive high school in California. And next thing I knew, kids were just turning to Christ.

9:13 To turn to Christ became the most popular thing to do. A couple hundred of us would worship. And it was during that time that the Holy Spirit came on me very powerfully, and the gifts of Spirit began to move in my life. That's also where my ears got open more in this desire to hear God, to know God. And that became a real quest with me. My quest was not to hear God, just to hear God. I wanted to know him. Right. I wanted to get close to him. He talks about you can be my friend. I'll speak with you, I'll lead, I'll guide you. And that became a life quest for me to spend the time it took so I could learn to hear God, to know him better.

9:58 So you see, and and you see something happening right now in our culture. Like, I mean, speaking maybe to a parent or a teacher or even a young person, there there is there is something building in our culture. I mean, some talk about we may use the word revival, some may use God's touching people or you know, evangelism or whatever context they're coming from. But there is there is something happening. And why why do you think it is? Do we have this generation that that is just not they're they're hungry not just for church? We're seeing it in our church, thousands of young people and they're being saved, they're bringing their parents to to church.

10:42 What's happening among is it similar to what you experience? What's happening? Well, yeah, I think it's interesting historically, whenever God is doing something fresh in the world, he starts with young people. Yeah. I mean, the disciples of Jesus weren't old. And then, you know, on the day of Pentecost, they talk about this prophecy of Joel, where it says the Holy Spirit will be poured out in all flesh, and your sons and your daughters. Yeah. It starts young. So when you begin to look at uh the history of like God moving, in almost every occasion, older people were praying it in, but it started with young people. So we know now, statistically, for instance, these younger generations are more open to God.

11:28 It's historic right now. Right. Like young men wanting to go to church. And so when you look at some of the great moves that started America, for instance, the Second Great Awakening in Cain Ridge, Kentucky, there were 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 17-year-olds beginning to preach. And so, truly, even as God moved on me at 17, I watched him move on my kids at very early ages. And the whole generations we may have been most concerned about, God is touching them dramatically. Well, I mean, we're seeing, we're seeing actually, though, there were several statistical predictions coming out of COVID that just are not true.

12:09 Like they just sort of writing off an entire generation that said they're going to become atheists, they're going to turn away. And we have seen the exact opposite, just this God sweeping this generation into wanting to hear from God. And I and I think I think that's something that happens with younger people is they they they just don't have the same toleration for religious activity. And so God uses that backdrop to touch them. I remember going into COVID in in prayer, and from time to time the Lord will let me kind of sense and see the future. And over the months, he was I saw this death coming on the world, and God kept telling me, there's gonna be polarization, there's gonna be death, but let me tell you how it's gonna end.

12:54 My spirit is gonna freshly touch the world. And honestly, it's happening in Europe, it's happening in the United States. There, even in Paris, there are people, young people, walking in off the street wanting to be baptized. Yeah. Like God's up to something, which is why, not just for the younger generation, but anyone that knows Christ, learning how to hear him is so important because the Holy Spirit speaks and guides. So, what else are you writing? So, so in in this book, there's the foundation of the word of God, the it's the measurement. If some if someone tells you God told me to do this and it violates his word, then they did not hear from God.

13:36 And then you have wise counsel. So we see that as a pattern. You talked about having this hunger, like, what are some other things you're writing about in there? What are some other some other things? My sheep hear my voice, which is a incredible passage, knowing God is a communicator. There's there's no doubt, um, got the sense of God's presence, like in the whole feeling realm. What's the best way I can say this? There'll be a lot of times I'm sitting at home and all of a sudden the presence of God will come on me very strongly. I'll feel like, well, I'm not in church, I'm not preaching, or I'll be I'll be just in prayer and I'll feel a grief over something.

14:20 And a lot of times what happens is God uses the sense of his presence to position you to hear him. Like typically before he speaks, what's the better word? I feel him. I feel his presence. Maybe I'll be reading a book, looking at my Yankees, and I'll just realize put that down. Put that down. And so typically you'll sense God forgot about the Yankees. It was all bad news, is all I can say this year. Okay. But humor aside, typically you sense God before you hear God. There you go. And you'll feel his presence come on you.

15:01 A lot of people just ignore that. Right. And so when I'm home, I'll feel the presence of God. I'll go, like, what do you want? Yeah. What's on your mind? And so once he's done that, the burden of God's come on you, the presence of God has come on you, all these things. Once God's done that, how does he communicate with you? Like if the Holy Spirit wanted to get hold of you, well, number one, he will talk to you. It's interesting, you know. Elijah the great prophet, like he was in a deep depression. He was in deep brokenness. Like Jezebel was hunting to kill him and had the greatest miracle of his ministry.

15:41 Now he's despondent, wanted to die. And it said, Man, man, there is this big wind, this big wind, big fire, earthquake. So God wouldn't any of them. He heard the whisper. Yeah. And so there's no doubt that there are many times God communicates with us in our conscious mind. Just a soft whisper. You see, that's crazy. No, that's in the Bible. Well, you go, how do I know it's not my imagination? And that is a right question. Um I've heard God many times. One great man said, I know God's voice like I know the voice of my mother. I've just heard it a bunch. Here's what I call it, for lack of a better word, spiritual heartburn.

16:24 Let me explain that for a minute. So the disciples, you remember they're on the road to Emmaus, the two disciples, and Luke chapter 24. Depressed. Man, he's died, he didn't come back. Jesus appears to them, but their unbelief is just blind. He's there, he goes, What's wrong? He goes, That Jesus never came back, he never appeared. Like, what's wrong with him? I mean, it's laughable. They finally sit down, they're breaking bread, it disappears, and one goes, We should have known because our hearts burned. What they're saying is we felt that when he used to preach and do miracles, we'd feel this sense in our heart. That's what he felt.

17:04 So all I can explain when God speaks, there's a sense that comes with it. Yes, you judge it by the word, but I cannot tell you how many times, thousands of times at this point, that's happened to me, where God's led me, guided me. I'll tell you one story. My wife and I, we've been met, we've been, we're working on, I guess we've been married 46 years, and we determined we pray together every night over our grandkids, whoever's president. We were praying, and all of a sudden we're praying over, we have triplet grandkids, we're praying, and I got to one of them, I just felt a grief. Didn't make sense. And the minute I feel like something like that, I don't just go on, I pause.

17:48 I feel, I say, Lord, what do you need? And he spoke to me very clearly. The enemy is coming to kill your grandson. Pray right now. This is a true story. We begin to cry out in prayer. They found him not breathing blue, dying in the corner the next day. There were missionaries in another country. By the mercy of God, they revived him on the way of the hospital he lived. God will speak to you. God will guide you. And listen, you say, Well, it's because you're a pastor. No, it's not because I'm a pastor. My sheep hear my voice. And so God will yes, speak softly. At times he'll give you impressions on the screen of your mind.

18:31 Yeah. The Bible calls that visions. That's just a big word for you might see something imprinting on your mind. I'll share one story, Pastor Jeff. I was praying, and one of my one of my dearest friend's sons is like my own son, and he was leading uh as a lieutenant in an elite military unit in a very serious fire base in Afghanistan. He told me before he left, he goes, Uncle Jam, he goes, please promise to pray for me. This is a true story. I was in prayer, his name was Jeremy. Jeremy came to my mind. I began to pray, and I looked, it was day here, night there, and I saw him walking at night with his men, and he was getting ready to step down on an IED.

19:18 Telling you the true story. I said, I said, I just cried, spare him, Lord. Don't let him do it. Stop him. Came back months later and he said, I don't know if you're praying for me. He said, one night, walking on a trail, I looked down right before I stepped. Never underestimate what God can do with you. But let me say this it doesn't start that way. The real key in hearing God is learning to pause and wait and quiet your soul. You people go, well, man, God, I this is the revelation of hearing God. How do I realize it? Quite honestly, repetition.

19:59 I quiet my soul every day. What do you mean by that? I want to get so quiet. I know that's not easy. A lot of you have noise all around you, but noise in you, busyness. I'll take a deep breath. I'll say, Lord, anything on your mind. I taught all my kids that when they were children. And I've learned to quiet my soul. It's a reflex now. So when I hit crisis, maybe you're a businessman. I work with key business leaders and government. You face major decisions all day long. Let me encourage you. Study's great, but quietness is critical. There you go. Always give, whether you are a teacher, a business person, a pastor, a parent with your kid, you know what to do, quiet yourself.

20:47 And what the Lord taught me is in every situation, I always give him a chance to lead me, to guide me, to give me a scripture. Which has has always been be still and know that I'm God, or we see Jesus go away to a quiet place. We see these patterns in the Bible, but even more so today. Yes. In the world we live in today, the noise is way louder than it was when you were growing up. Much easier to quiet your soul then than today. Well, I mean, Moses said all you have to do is be still. But stillness is hard. Sometimes when I teach people to hear God, I turn on, I turn on recordings of firefights, sirens, because typically when you need God the most, it's not quiet either around you or in you.

21:32 Like you're facing, and I face this, we think your wife has brain cancer. Right. We don't think your son will live again. And here's the problem. And pausing there, these are real experiences. You almost you almost died in, you know, went to the mission field and got a bigger. I live dying. Your your wife had Oh, I thought cancer was in her brain. She cancer had spread to her brain. I had a son dying of a of a disease, 107 pounds dying in my arm. But here's the problem. This is the crisis people live in. They're in a crisis, right? But they've never learned to hear God and they wait till the crisis to try to hear him. Yeah. He's merciful, thank God, for good pastors like Jeff.

22:13 That is why, if you don't practice hearing God when it doesn't seem to matter, you'll have trouble when it does. So good. I I I that I beg you. Like quiet your soul. It's your birthright. You will feel him typically before you hear him, but many times you ignore the feelings that are positioning you to hear him. And like when my wife they told me, Go home and be with your kids. We think she's got brain cancer. I had four small kids. I was driving back, praying up a storm for her, scared to death. I mean, we you know, with the first, you know, we're early 30s, and I thought the Holy Spirit speak to me.

22:56 Stop praying. I go, I rebuke you, devil. He goes, Stop. Well, how'd you know? I'd heard it thousands of times. And I said, Why should I stop? He said, She's fine. Peace flooded my soul. I couldn't make it up. And I prayed for missions, and she was fine the next morning. Maybe she never had it, maybe she did, but but that doesn't come naturally. And I was in the military, I jumped out of airplanes and all kinds of things. You practice until it's reflex. Right. It's the same with God. Waiting on God for me is reflex. Not because I'm a pastor, but because I'm a child of God, and I spent hours of my life.

23:42 You go, well, it's your job. No, I spent hours before I start pastoring. I spent hours before I go to bed. Yes. Don't settle for a monologue. Dialogue your birthright. So good. I want to, I wanna I want to talk just for a moment about context, culture, and leadership too. Because to the individual, what you're communicating, and I can't wait for your book to come out because it's just getting that personal equipping that we can hear from God. God wants to speak to us. But I want to talk for a minute because a lot of people listening are also people who create environments. Leaders create, there's there's there's there's people listening, they they're gonna lead that young adult service or that youth team or that church or that ministry, or maybe they're a Christian business guy and they want a certain climate within their leadership team, or a lot of parents.

24:37 I mean, I think cultivating, so we're not just talking about as an individual now, as a leader cultivating this atmosphere of being with God and being close to God because of our longtime relationship. I I believe there's also impartation of if you're around people. So I found myself traveling with you and you praying for people, and then myself being like, well, I feel like God's giving me an impression because there is interesting about spiritual gifts, and and and we we are continuationists, meaning the Spirit of God's still working in us, he's still available to us, and then also his gifts are still available.

25:22 I think, you know, prophetically speaking, or the word prophecy is more forthelling, meaning speaking God's truth in a present-day language. It isn't a lot of times people think it's foretelling. There are gifts of the Spirit that that I've seen you operate in where God gives us insight and wisdom, but at the end of the day, it's it's the human, it's a it's God using us, no different than evangelism. He'll use an evangelistic moment where you share Christ. You don't save the person, but God used you as a conduit. And I've I've seen him use you in that.

26:04 But I guess where I'm going to is I I think why a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast is, you know, I've not been doing it as long as you, but I've been doing it 30 years, and I think we kind of go through seasons, and and there's no doubt today, or at least the last season of time is really pragmatism has won the day. I think we're just we're better at, we have a lot more tools for leadership. We talk about leadership, tools for church. But I would I would talk to a leader listening to talk about, I'll talk a lot about breath and bones. Like you need the bones, you need the breath.

26:45 You being connected with builders, you you wrote a book years ago talking about the divine alliance. I'm still encouraging, I think we should reprint it. The breath, the bones, the wineskin, the wine. But what would you say to some leaders out there who would say, Well, I think I'm really good at building structure and teams and systems? How do you bring this dimension? You you just you just prayed with our staff, and there was this impartation, and I think our staff felt closer to God. They they were hungry to spend time with God. Talk about that. How do we foster that as leaders? I'll say a couple things. Number one, um, I'm a big church man.

27:27 I love the church, I'm under authority, and I've always worked with church builders. I've pastored myself. I'm not a great church builder, but I am deeply loving people and pastoring people. The Lord told me the more you love, the more I'll tell you. So I think it's so, so important that you know, the apostolic gift of sending, building, and God said he's placed first in the church apostles, followed by prophets. And that's I'm talking about the gift of prophecy, although that's very important. And so I want to encourage you as a leader to find some trusted voice that's prophetic, that I mean they're they're they're fluent in hearing God, God speaks, God talks with them, they're under authority, they're part of a local church.

28:12 Like that's very important. And there's a and personally, there's a lot of strange things that are in the prophetic movement because a lot of times they're working outside, honestly, the authority and the pastor of a local church. And so finding a person like that um is plays an important role in your life, but it's not always easy to find them. Yeah. Like, and that's why it's so important that you learn to hear. If you're if you're you know, you're out there and you're pastoring and um you know, you can find other pastors, you may ask them about that. That's very, very important.

28:52 And so within your own church, how do you create a culture? I guarantee you, there are people in your church praying for you. You don't even know them. There are people in your church praying who get revelation. They're praying, they're praying, they're probably praying for your sermons. And I mean really, really good people like. How do you find them and cultivate them? Like in a in a life-giving church, maybe your church is has one service, maybe multiple services, but you've got unbelievers there, and you, as we should be very sensitive to that, where does all this fit in? Well, I think some of the best places for this, one would be your prayer core.

29:33 And once you identify intercessors, you'll find many of your prayer words are fairly gifted this way. Like Jeff's mom, like my mom, who's just passed at 93, incredible. She hears words from me, hears thoughts that are truly God. Yeah. And so when you get a good intercessor team that's under the covering of the church, that is a great place for this to flow. You love pastors, you minister to them, you've you've ministered to so many pastors and leaders with, you know, their families, their kids praying for health. One of the greatest gifts that a lot of people don't know is you have helped pastors assemble this prayer army around them, this group of intercessory people who, you know, can't can hear the things to be prayed for.

30:20 They have to have a level of maturity, there's a confidentiality. But pulling them together and building that prayer shield has been probably one of the greatest gifts you've given so many pastors. I think it's it's so important. Look in the Bible. How many times does Paul talk about your prayers? I need your prayers, your prayers save me. Yeah here's Jesus at the crucible moment of his life, gets Peter, James, and John and says, Please come pray with me. Yeah. And so identifying people, and you know, there's you you already know some automatically who pray, but I've I've gone to great leaders, you'd know their names. I asked, Who prays for you? Well, three couples in my church and my mom or my wife.

31:01 And so once you identify these people, um then you then they can be trained and they can help you. Um, you know, there's proactive intercession, reactive. Proactive is you pray for something you see coming, not reacting to it. So that's a great place for it in your freedom groups. Like we have groups here where we're praying for people, maybe they're bitter, maybe they're broken, to find some prophetic gifted people, especially with a word of knowledge and things, that is a great environment for it. And some of you, like your staff, for them to know how to hear God is very important, especially if they're on the altar. People are coming up to learn to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, can guide your questions, you can feel things, it can guide you.

31:48 So these are all places from the altar to intercessors to freedom groups where these gifts can really flower. And in every church, there will be trusted people you have that they know if you if you ever feel something for me, they're trusted, they're under covering, that they can get to you. Yeah. And there in every church, there's at least two or three people like that. So it's building, it's it's building some of these ways in which that can be fostered and and be developed within the church. And and I think, I think when when you go into an atmosphere, this would be the thing I would say to someone who's building the environment.

32:35 I think when you go into an atmosphere and the people coming see that as an atmosphere where God used to do stuff, God used to speak, or God's talking now, God's speaking now. And that's what's happening in this younger generation is you're seeing this hunger of God has something to say to me where I am now. And that that hunger is is resulting in um God showing up in powerful ways. And what do you what do you see coming? I want to finish up just what do you, I know you've been praying a lot, but like what are we, what what do what do you think is is is coming, what's happening as we're seeing this stirring, and we're gonna see we're gonna see God moving in unique ways in our culture.

33:22 We're already seeing, I mean, they're they're calling it the the silent revival or the in the UK. Like there's this these these things happening that you were speaking of, but you know, from time to time the Lord shows me things, and in my opinion, um as we came, 2023 was a really, really critical year. And um I remember sitting in front of my world map praying, and the Holy Spirit said, you know, the first drops of revival have been in America, but there's a storm coming of power. Then the Asbury thing kicked off five days later. That was really young people.

34:02 They came by the thousands. Simultaneously, that's probably where the quiet revival was beginning in the UK. Some months after the Asbury, I think the Asbury was in February and August. I was in prayer. I talked about visions, I saw the Union Jacket, half mass, people crying, weeping, but I saw the Lord really moving in a week. I said, What does it mean? He said, When the Queen of England dies, watch what I do. So I think God's answering prayers. What we're seeing in the United States is being seen in the UK. Young people are asking for Bibles, coming to church, walking off the streets. And I think it's only going to grow.

34:45 Yeah. And I think we're coming into a season of not days or weeks or months, um, but years. Now, here's what's important. A lot of times in historic revivals, there's kind of this one place to go to get it. Cain Ridge, you know, maybe Finney, okay, maybe Azusa Street, maybe whatever it might be. Not this time. I believe God's fresh outpouring of the Spirit is coming to your church, where you are. Yeah. And that's why it's so important now that we spend time in God's presence, that we offer ourselves to Him, that we wait for Him to speak to us and guide us.

35:27 I think you were just offering to everybody here with this, what God's doing, what you just shared with our staff, was just really equipping our team to have a posture of humility, to, to one of the marks of God moving is uh an atmosphere of repentance and holiness and willingness to let God move in our lives. I think it's a time for us to re-up, resurrender, God. What what is it that you want to do in me? I think that's a that's a mark of it as well. Um, and prayer. I mean, if you were to say one of the most quote unquote prophetic things we can do with our youth ministry, our young adults, our churches is prayer.

36:12 I think, I think what we've seen in the church as of recent years is there's been a a lot more churches fasting and praying to start the year. No doubt. And and I think God's God's meeting them um in those places as well. You know, the book of Isaiah says, you know, I'm the I'm a God, I live on high, I'm high and holy, but I also live with the contrite and the humble to revive them. So I'm personally positioning myself. You know, I've I've been saved since I was eight years old, called to preach at 17. But I I feel there's been I feel a whole new sense.

36:52 What do you want with me? I'll be 71 soon. What do you want with me at 70? What's next? God, is there anything I mean, I'm really earnest right now. What do you what do you need? Is there some sin I've missed blocking? I think we're that's how we need to position ourselves. Yeah. As individuals, but we also need among your young adults, your teens, they need moments where they can get corporately helped to do that. There's a deep moment of worship. You might want to say, maybe you you feel to give yourself more freshly to Christ. Yeah. Maybe you feel like there's some sin you're wrestling with. Please come up. Moments where we're not, I'm not talking about Sunday morning, multiple services, but we have to create worship moments.

37:37 We have to create environments. Now, God be God. His presence falls and a bunch of people run weeping to the altar on Sunday morning, so be it. But God's coming to touch us and it starts with leaders. Whether you're corporate leader, school leader, spiritual leader, it starts with you. Yeah. I am I encourage you. Jeff and I are positioning ourselves. I need more of you. What do you want from me? Is there anything blocking it? Yes. I mean, we we put ourselves, God's moving, but He He responds to us positioning ourselves in that way. And so Well, Pastor Jim, thank you for for being on here.

38:18 Thank you for being my pastor. And uh thank you for, I mean, Brandy and I, we we so love celebrating you last night. And it was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. It was quite an honor to have. We had a lot of our friends and years over of ministry coming together, and uh, we had just such a great time celebrating you. And I know you're working on this uh hearing God material. I think everyone really so many people, what's God's will? What decisions should I make? Leaders especially, because they they feel the weight of responsibility to be making decisions for other people. So we're praying that you get that book and those resources and you can continue to encourage us in that way.

39:02 Thank you very much. I want to say thank you for checking out this episode of the Lead to Win podcast. I want you to know that I love and my team loves getting this kind of content into your life so it can help you lead and win at what matters most. So I'd love you to do me a favor like, comment, especially, subscribe if you would, so that we can make sure that we're able to get to you some of the things that are gonna help you lead and win.