You know, the two most vulnerable people in a culture are kids and old people.
They're the most vulnerable. And so that should be a high priority in the church.
When we look at a city, we want to look at a city and dream dreams that God has for that city.
And we have some choice passages in scripture. I want to look at one
in Zechariah 8 that gives us an example of how God looked at Zion, how he wanted Zion to look
in his in his perfect world order. And when we talk about a perfect world order,
we're talking about the kingdom of God coming to a city. So we have a picture here of how God
views a city through the eyes of the prophet Zechariah as he's looking at Jerusalem.
Let me read part of this. I'm zealous for Zion with great zeal, saith the Lord, with great fervor
I'm zealous for her. Thus says the Lord, I'll return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth, the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem,
each one with his staff in his hand because of their great age. The streets of the city shall
be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. Thus says the Lord of hosts, if it is marvelous
in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days, will it also be marvelous in my eyes,
saith the Lord. So really interesting passage, one of which I've, I don't know that I've ever
heard anybody teach this passage, but listen to what he's saying. I'll return to Zion, dwell in
the midst of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth. A kingdom of God revolution is
when the spirit of God moves in a city through churches that are united through Christians that
are bringing righteousness, peace, and joy into that city. And it is called a city of truth.
In other words, the atmosphere of truth pervades that city. And you say, well, I've never heard
of a city like that. Well, that's probably because we haven't seen the kind of kingdom
revolution that God wants to bring yet, but I believe he does want to come and it's going to
be a city of truth. And so God's truth begins to pervade. Now, where does that start? It starts
in the pulpits. It starts in the pulpits in the churches by the pastors speaking truth to the
city, not speaking falsehood, not compromising the good news of the kingdom of God. So it's a city
of truth. It says it's a mountain of the Lord of hosts. Well, mountain in scripture is often
associated with the government. So it is an embassy. The church becomes an embassy of the
kingdom of God. The government of God is flowing through local churches that are churches of truth
and of righteousness. It's a holy mountain, it says. So there's a holiness that pervades a city
because the church is holy. But I love this next part. It's really a beautiful, beautiful picture
of a kingdom of God revolution. Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem,
each one with his staff in his hand because of great age. The streets of the city shall be full
of boys and girls playing in the streets. This is a city of safety. This is a county of safety. And
when I look at Colorado Springs, I often pray that way, Lord, make our city streets safe where
boys and girls can play, where old men can sit on their porch and be safe. You know, the two most
vulnerable people in a culture are kids and old people. They're the most vulnerable. And so that
should be a high priority in the church that we're protecting our kids. We're loving our kids. We have
a police force. We have a sheriff's office that protects our kids and also protects those older
folks, the retirees, those that don't have the physical or maybe even the mental acumen to be
able to protect themselves. So a kingdom of God revolution is making a high priority on old people,
loving them and caring for them, protecting them, and also our kids. That's why human
trafficking is so awful, because that is a group of evil people who are taking
advantage of the innocence and the vulnerability of kids. And this is marvelous in God's eyes.
That's what a kingdom of God revolution is. When I woke up in the morning, I think it was around
April, and began to hear the news about this COVID pandemic and that they were going to shut down our
churches. I was just like all of you, just shocked. That was in the spring of 2020. And
then our governor in Colorado commanded,
did that all businesses close and put out an edict that all churches should close.
And I was obedient in every way because I had no idea what we were dealing with.
I remember Liz, my wife and I talking and we, he was talking about wearing masks, you
know what, we were wearing masks before they told us to wear masks.
And in Liz's case, and in my case, we were wearing gloves.
So we were wearing gloves and masks.
And we were very obedient to what was being said until we started doing our own research.
We started doing research on the virus.
We started listening to different podcasts and different doctors that were out there
and groups of doctors that were out there.
And it took about three weeks for us to figure out, wait, hold on.
Not only is this not a pandemic, this is more of a scare.
This seems to be a fear tactic of someone or something that is trying to control us.
And that actually the measures that they were telling us, that is to stay home, stay inside,
wear a mask are not only not helpful, they're actually hurtful.
So we began to kind of rebel against that.
And so in the process of that, I decided to open up our church.
So this is only four weeks into the pandemic.
We're going to open up our church.
But I didn't want to go to jail by myself.
I thought if I'm going to go to jail, I'm going to go to jail with a bunch of other guys.
So I called a meeting and 87 pastors showed up at our church.
And I announced and myself and three others, we announced we're going to open up our churches
in the next two weeks.
And you know, there was a palatable, almost like gasp in the room, because nobody was
thinking that way except a few of us.
But I said, guys, here's why.
And so I explained why I felt like this was what God wanted, at least the road, our church
to do.
And about 25 other pastors joined us.
We opened up our churches and over the next three months or so, many churches open because
of that.
Now, why do I share that?
I share that because when I speak of a kingdom of God revolution, I'm not speaking of a naive,
obedience to political or even governing authorities.
God's called us to be obedient to the kingdom of God.
He says to us, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things
shall be added unto you.
The context in Matthew 6, 25 through 33 is that of worry, concern and anxiety.
And he goes through a whole list there.
You're anxious about what you wear.
You're anxious about your finances.
You're anxious about your future.
And then he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things,
those things they were worried about shall be added unto us.
And so for us at the road and for me in particular, I felt like if I'm seeking the kingdom first,
if I'm making that the priority of my life and our church, the all these things shall
be added unto us will take care of themselves.
So if I make the primary, the kingdom of make the primary, what God's telling me to
do, he's going to take care of the secondary.
I like to say it this way.
If you look up, God will cause things to line up.
If you'll make your priority to look up, God will make a priority in your life to line
things up.
So he takes care of us.
And that's exactly what he did over that period of the pandemic.
Simultaneously, I felt so strongly that it was wrong because this had never happened
in our country before where they were making businesses shut down.
And you know, for the small business owner, that's like a death knell.
You've got to, you've got to be selling stuff now for Amazon and for Google or even for
Walmart or Costco, these big box stores, they let them stay open.
They considered them to be necessary.
The church wasn't necessary, but they were necessary.
The church wasn't necessary, but bars and strip joints were necessary.
Go figure.
I went to the county commissioners.
I knew some of them, most of them I did not know at the time.
And I had a meeting with them and I challenged them to put out a proclamation.
I said, why don't you guys put out a proclamation to the city that we are a Liberty County and
that we oppose what our governor is saying about shutting down businesses.
And I said, here's what it does.
Number one, it doesn't give me, it doesn't give you any legal power to cause businesses
to open up again, but there's something spiritual.
There's something influential by our five county commissioners.
getting up unanimously saying we oppose these shutdowns and they agreed and they
were already thinking that way and I think by our meeting it gave all of us
more confidence and courage. So they worked up a Declaration of Liberty for
our county and then they came to the road during one of our worship services
and shared it. Two of the county commissioners shared it with
our congregation. There's like five or six standing ovations when they gave it
and then we went down to the municipal hall where we have county commissioner
meetings and pretty much everybody there was from the road and we packed it out.
350 people packed out that auditorium as they made that declaration and it went
out you know all over the state that declaration did and we gave I think 11
standing ovations during that first declaration when they gave the the
challenge basically back to the governor. Well why do I share that? I
share that because you never know men and women the kind of power that God can
give you to make an influential choice that can actually impact in our
case probably around 700,000 people are in our county. We're the largest county
in the state of Colorado and most people I imagine heard about that. It was in our
paper, the Gazette, it was on all the news channels, it went out to the whole state
that we were doing that. It's amazing the power we can have during that time. Well
I didn't feel like that was enough and so I began talking to other pastors and
I wrote an op-ed for the Gazette. I knew the editor of the paper. If I write an
op-ed about being a Liberty County would you print and he said absolutely. So I
got 25 pastors to sign on. We put out an op-ed in the Gazette which is the
largest newspaper in Colorado. 25 pastors or 24 pastors and myself so 25 pastors
we did and wrote this op-ed and put it out there. So again I'm just a single
person who had a vision and every one of you that are listening to this broadcast God
given you a vision. It might be in a different area than anybody else that
you know of. You may feel actually kind of isolated in what you do and I
want to challenge you to get some blood-stained allies and what I mean by
that term is have some other men and women that have a kingdom vision like
you do and you guys start praying together. Start asking God, God what do you
want to do at our job? What do you want us to do in our neighborhood? What do you
want us to do to make an impact here? Because God wants safe cities. God wants
kingdom of God cities. God wants truth cities. God wants holy cities and who's
going to bring that? Not going to be your local Kiwanis club or Lions club. It's
going to be people of the church who stand for the kingdom who start to step
out. That's what a kingdom revolution is. It's stepping out and asking God to
guide you into truth, guide you into righteousness, guide you into peace and
joy. That's what he does. So that's the kingdom of God revolution and I want to
continue in the next message to give a little bit more. I'm going to color this
in these lines a little bit more about some other things that we've done that
have had an impact in our city that you can also have the same impact in your