Inspire

Guest (Female): Aloha and welcome to the Inspire Church Podcast. Whether you're on a walk, driving to work, or just need to hear a fresh word, this is your spot to get inspired, challenged, and equipped to live a faith-filled life. Each episode, you'll hear powerful sermons straight from our weekend services that speak into your life, your leadership, and your legacy.

Before we dive in, do us a favor. Hit that subscribe button, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs a word today. And if you want more resources, like Pastor Mike's newest book, *Blow Your Mind*, head over to MikeKai.tv. All right, let's lean in, open your hearts, and let God speak through this message.

Mike Kai: I'm so excited! If you are new to Hawaii or new to Inspire Church, we want to welcome you. We want to say, welcome home. I would say look no further when it comes to the military mixing with people born and raised here or moved here. I can't think of a better church. I would come here if I wasn't the pastor. That's saying something! I would come here if I wasn't the pastor. But I'm the pastor, so I have to come here. Anyway, let's pray.

Father, we come before you in Jesus' name. I thank you, Lord, for your presence and your power here today. I thank you for the body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. I thank you for the state of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Islands. Thank you for the United States of America. God, I thank you for all that you're doing in our lives, Lord. Help me to preach this message. Help us to lean in and to listen. May we hear your voice beyond my voice, and we give you all the glory, all the honor, and all the praise in the mighty name of Jesus. And everybody said, Amen. Come on, thank the Lord one more time, everybody!

I need some monitor, just a little bit more. Before you have a seat, give somebody a hug and welcome them. I am glad that you're here. Say hi to one another and just introduce yourself. I love our church. I love this church. Thank you, worship team. Can we give the worship team a hand, everybody? So good.

We've been in this—if you're brand new or maybe you missed a month or two because you've been on vacation—we have been in this series called *The Journey Through the Bible*. We have taken 27 of what we think are the most important messages and personalities that we needed to go through in order for us to get an understanding and a greater view of the Word of God.

We want you to fall in love with the Word of God so that you'd bring the Word of God to church with you and you'd read it every single day, because without the Word, we would be nothing. So we picked all of these 27 and we have started off from the book of Genesis. We went from Adam and Eve to Noah to the Tower of Babel. We've gone from David and Saul to Solomon. We've gone from major prophets. We've been all over, and here we are closing it up in the Old Testament today.

We're coming back another time, but we're going to the Old Testament and we're going to close up the Old Testament by looking at what were called the minor prophets. As a matter of fact, Warren Wiersbe says, when you compare them with the books written by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the minor prophets are minor only in size. However, when it comes to their messages, what the minor prophets wrote is major! As we say in Hawaii, major. It was so important.

Have you ever seen one of those artists that get a huge canvas? They get that can of paint and they go, "Boom!" and just throw that can of paint. They grab another can of paint while there's music going on. They grab another can of paint and they throw that can of paint, and all the paint goes up on the canvas. You're wondering, "What is that guy trying to do? What's going to happen? I've seen all these colors coming together."

You cannot see it until he turns it upside down and right side up and you go, "Oh, now I see what he's trying to create." That's this sermon today. Because what we have here are 12 minor prophets, and there is nothing minor about them. In order to distill 12 of them and pick one that you could tell that story that encapsulates the most of these minor prophets into the story that we're going to talk about today.

When Pastor Sean Nepstad was here last week, we talked about Daniel. We talked about how Daniel went through at minimum four different regimes and four different kings. We started off with Nebuchadnezzar. He was the first king to take the people of Israel all the way to Babylon in 586 BC. In 586 BC, we started off with Nebuchadnezzar. Now you have to remember about this Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar was crazy. He considered himself a god, told everybody else that he was a god, and set up a statue for people to worship as god. You remember that we had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but now we remember their Hebrew names. They are Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah. These three Hebrew boys would not bow down to the statue.

Whenever the music would play, you would hear the person say, "You shall bow down to this statue and you will worship him!" and none of the people would worship him. None of the people would bow down—I mean, everybody would except Daniel, Hananiah, and Mishael. They would not bow down and they pushed them into the fire that was heated seven times hotter and they never died. There was a fourth man in the furnace. That was that Nebuchadnezzar.

God sent Nebuchadnezzar into the wilderness. In the wilderness, Nebuchadnezzar lived as a crazy man and he grew long claws and he got hairy and he ate from the earth and he ate grass. That's how crazy he was. God restored his sanity and he came back. Nebuchadnezzar was the first king that Daniel served under. The other king that Daniel served under was a man named Belshazzar.

If you remember Belshazzar, Belshazzar was partying like it was 1999 like Prince and brought out the articles of gold and silver and the chalices and began to drink with them and party with them and mock God. That night, to his horror, a hand showed up on the wall and began to write on the wall and the writing was *Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin*, which means that we have weighed you and found you weightless and your days are numbered.

The very next morning, historians tell us that the Medo-Persian Empire was waiting that day to come into the water system through the aqueducts and through the irrigation canals, and then comes in Darius the Mede. Now no longer are we just the Iraqi area, the Babylonian area. Now the Persian area, the Iranian area, envelops the Iraqi area and it becomes this massive thing called the Persian Empire all the way from Russia all the way to Greece and Macedonia.

So this is it. Now this empire is so huge. Then God calls a man, Cyrus, to be king. Yes, God, Yahweh, calls a man from that area, Cyrus, to be king. In 538 BC, King Cyrus the Great issues a decree called the Decree of Cyrus. As a matter of fact, archaeologists have found this thing called the cylinder, or the Cyrus Cylinder, on which this exact decree that I'm about to read to you in Ezra Chapter 1 was located. They dug it up, they dusted it off, they preserved it, and it's on display at a museum.

It was prophesied 150 years earlier that Cyrus would make this decree and it was prophesied by Isaiah. In Isaiah Chapter 44, verse 28, it says, "Who says of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please.' He will say of Jerusalem, 'Let it be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'Let its foundations be laid.'" In Isaiah Chapter 45, verse 13, it says, "I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness. I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward," says the Lord Almighty.

In Isaiah Chapter 48, he says it again in verse 14, "The Lord has chosen Cyrus as his ally. He will choose him to put an end to the Babylonian Empire and to destroy Babylonian armies. I have said it, I am calling Cyrus. I will send him on this errand and will help him succeed." Cyrus was not even born yet. It was 150 years before he was born that this prophecy came true.

If God already knew Cyrus's name, then God already knows your name. If God already formed Cyrus in the womb of his mother, then God had already known you before you were even born. You are not here by accident; you are here on purpose. God has a calling and a plan for your life and that's why you and I are here and our job is to discover what that is. What are you called to? What are you called for? Exactly, burning bush, you name it. God has you. God called you, God formed you.

When I look at this and I think about the prophetic word 150 years before, Ezra writes and it will be in the Cyrus Cylinder. As a matter of fact, it says in Ezra Chapter 1—come with me in your Bible to Ezra Chapter 1. Ezra dates himself. I date myself a lot. When I talk about this era, I talk about that music, I say this sports team, and you go, "Oh, he is in his 50s." Anyway, Ezra dates himself.

He dates himself by bringing up all of these important events and the seasons and the times in which they occurred. It says, "In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy that he had given through Jeremiah. He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and to send it throughout his kingdom. This is what King Cyrus of Persia says: 'The Lord God of Heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.'"

"'Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this temple of the Lord, the God of Israel who lives in Jerusalem, and may your God be with you. Wherever this Jewish remnant is found, let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey and livestock, as well as voluntary offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.'" Then in verse 5 in my Bible, it says, "Then God stirred the hearts of the priest and the Levites and the leaders of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of the Lord." God stirred up the hearts of the people in order for them to go back.

Now remember, they were only going to be there for 70 years. Somebody say 70. 70 years. Where did we get 70 years from? Jeremiah 29:11. If you've been a Christian or you've been in Hawaii, Jeremiah 29:11 is a favorite verse of Hawaii people. We've heard it for over 25 years. "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They're plans for good, not for evil, to prosper you, to give you a future and a hope." But can I give you the context of Jeremiah 29:11?

Jeremiah, if you remember, was known and considered to be the weeping prophet, the crying prophet. Why? Because the Bible says that Jeremiah was outside of the gates of Jerusalem and he wept while they burned it when Nebuchadnezzar came and ransacked that beautiful city of God. The beautiful city of God of Jerusalem. Let me show you what the temple looked like before. The temple was magnificent. The temple was considered one of the wonders of the world.

As a matter of fact, it was the temple that Solomon built. It was the palace that he built, and it was Solomon's wisdom that put Israel—really Jerusalem—on the map after David. Everybody came, everybody from all over the Middle East. Even the Queen of Sheba traveled for three to four months just to sit at the feet of Solomon to take a site visit with all of her executives so that they could come and copy and bring back to Sheba what they had seen in Jerusalem.

But when the people of God had turned this temple of worship into a nightclub, honestly, or even worse than that, they set up an Asherah pole in the temple. All of these gods that were just detestable and demonic, they worshipped those gods. We're talking about the ones in the north, the northern kingdom. They were really bad. They were the worst. They were the most wicked. The southern kingdom was closer to God, but we had good kings and then we still had bad kings in the southern kingdom.

In Jerusalem, the city of God, this was the city of God. So Nebuchadnezzar allows the people to be exiled and there are four different caravans of people that were exiled to Babylon. All the people were gone. All of this beautiful temple and the gold were stolen; it was all taken. The basins were taken. You could see how beautiful it was and in the back was the Holy of Holies and it was just incredible. On the right-hand side, that's the altar, and the altar is where you would have a big fire and you would bring your sacrifice and sacrifice your offering to Yahweh, burned it on the altar like a barbecue. It was an incredible, beautiful display.

But after 70 years when Jeremiah said you are going to come back, what they were coming back to were ruins. What they were coming back to was a temple that was dismantled stone by stone—it wasn't there anymore—an altar that was demolished and destroyed, and coming back to a city after 70 years that was overgrown with kiawe bush and thorns and wild jackals and animals had made their homes in different parts of Jerusalem.

When the decree comes from Cyrus that if anybody wants to go back, I don't think they were ready for what they were about to see. Like you and I, we have pictures; we know what we're headed for. Some of you are moving to the mainland, you already bought your house, and you already know what it's going to look like. You already rented; you're already on Zillow. But back then, they don't know what that place looks like and when they get there after 70 years, different people are now occupying the land. Not Jewish people, but people from the surrounding regions.

When they go back, they go back with a fervor, with a call of God on their life. God had stirred something in them to go back and build. In Ezra Chapter 3, verse 1 to 3, they start to work. It says in early autumn, when the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people assembled in Jerusalem with a unified purpose. Then Jeshua, the son of Jehozadak, joined his fellow priests and Zerubbabel—who's the governor at that time—the son of Shealtiel with his family in rebuilding the altar of God in Israel.

They started off with the altar, everybody. They didn't build the temple. They start off with the altar. Let's rebuild the altar of sacrifice that was torn down that our family used to worship at. It says they wanted to sacrifice burnt offerings on it, as instructed in the Law of Moses, the man of God, and even though the people were afraid of the local residents—the local residents meaning the new inhabitants of the land who had squatted and taken land—even though the people were afraid of the local residents, they rebuilt the altar at its old site. At the original site.

Then they began to sacrifice burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord each morning and evening. Can you imagine how fulfilling that must have been? They had remembered, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. My heart is in Jerusalem." That was the prayer of every person that looked to the west that was in Babylon or in Persia. They would look to the west, they would kneel down and worship where the temple in Jerusalem was before people bowed down to Mecca.

They worshipped that one day they would return. Now they are actually reinhabiting and repopulating Jerusalem again, establishing a national identity all over again and worshipping the one true God in a country full of demigods. Here they come to worship the one true God. God is using different people. God is using not only these kings but God is also using these prophets. There's going to be a prophet we just read from Ezra. We're going to read about Nehemiah later on.

Remember Esther. Esther was married to King Xerxes who would come in after Cyrus the Great. That was who Esther was married to. Then you're going to hear from Zechariah and Haggai, and Malachi is the last prophet we're going to hear of in the Old Testament. This is all to give us a bigger view of how God works. What God is doing is he's taking paint, he's taking different people and he's using them over a period of 100 years. It's going to take many men and women in order to bring this together to rebuild what is important. What was it? Temple worship all over again. If you're with me, somebody say Amen.

When I look at this and I think about this, look at Chapter 3, verse 10. They started off with the altar. Now go to verse 10. Verse 10 says, "When the builders completed the foundation of the Lord's temple—" the what? The foundation. First you go for the altar, and then you go for the foundation. They built the altar first, then the foundation second. The foundation is important. If anybody's in construction, you all know that the foundation will take the longest.

No matter how high your building goes, you have to build the foundation. The foundation will take the longest. Why? Because you have to level it and you have to make sure that you're building on a sure foundation. Those who build their house upon a rock, though the wind come and the rain come, their house will not fall; that house will stand. When you build on the rock of Jesus Christ, you are good. You have to rebuild your foundation.

When the builders completed the foundation of the Lord's temple, watch this: "the priests put on their robes and took their places to blow their trumpets, and the Levites, descendants of Asaph, clashed their cymbals to praise the Lord, just as King David had prescribed. And with praise and thanks, they sang this song to the Lord: 'He is so good, his faithful love endures forever.' And then all the people gave a great shout, praising the Lord because the foundation of the Lord's temple had been laid." Amen! We built this city on Jesus.

Then verse 12: "But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first temple wept aloud when they saw the new temple's foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. And the joyful shouting and the weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance." Can you imagine what that must have sounded like? Think about it for a moment, the kūpuna who remember the old temple. They started crying and they were melancholy, with mixed emotions. "I remember the first temple. I remember the first temple."

They are old enough, 70 years later, so they have to be 80 years old, about 80 years old, making that journey and that trek all the way back to Jerusalem for four months in the hot sun. They begin to look at this and they see the new foundation laid and there's a little bit of disappointment and a little bit of, "I can't believe I'm actually seeing it." The younger generation, they don't know; they are just happy. They are just stoked. "Wow, we've been hearing all about Jerusalem, all about the temple, and now it's finally being rebuilt."

Here is what I learned: that time and age changes your perspective. The longer you've been away from something, the older that you get, it changes the way that you see things. You know what I'm talking about? I'm from the Big Island. I go home every once in a while and I will drive by my old high school. My high school was big when I was there, but now I get back there and it seems so small. I drive by the house that my mom and dad raised us in. I know exactly where my room is, and I don't like to go all the time because they don't take care of it like my mom and dad did.

I drive by over there and I see that old house and I look at it. When I was a kid, that thing was huge. Now that I'm an adult, it's small. I can't believe they raised four kids in that house. Now I go back and all my high school friends I grew up with look five foot six to me. Time and distance will change your perspective. I love this because they're building on a foundation.

Sometimes you're building your life on a new foundation. It is the same foundation, but God is rebuilding that foundation in your life. Maybe you used to go to church and now you're back in church; God is rebuilding that foundation. Maybe you started off with the foundation that your mom and dad gave you and you're improving upon that foundation. I believe that we need to improve upon each other's foundation and that we're being blessed by one another because of what someone has gone before you and built and you have to honor that.

I am thinking about my kids. The old school thinking was, "I started from the bottom, you start from the bottom." No, I think it's more like, "I did what I've done, now you do what you do with what I've done." That's called building upon the foundation that I've already laid for you. Don't tear it down; build upon it in the name of Jesus. When we build upon the foundation that someone already did, I have to tell you this: even though we're celebrating our 25-year anniversary as a church, come on! 25, praise God! Make sure you get your tickets because they're going to be sold out.

I know there are only 8,000 seats. I say only because our church is three times the size of that if everybody came at one time. If everybody came at one time, it'd be over 24,000. We only have 8,000 seats. We're still going to celebrate the rest of the week on Saturday and Sunday here as well. But I'm telling you this, see what God has done in 25 years. What I don't talk about a lot but I mention is the church was there in Waikele and in Waipahu 13 years before that. There were five pastors in 13 years.

They had their level of fruitfulness and their time and then handed off to somebody else. It started off first by a guy named Chuck Aaron in 1989. Chuck Aaron left Hope Chapel Kaneohe to go start Hope Chapel Waipahu, or the West Side, and that's what he did. It was taken over by a guy named Tim Bunch, then Tim Gruber, then John Haig, and lastly by a guy named Ray Arney, whose son Gabe works on our staff.

Ray Arney led it for almost four years and then God called me and Lisa to come here. It was a step of obedience to come. We didn't see thousands or 25 years; we just saw maybe three years at the most or five years at the most. That's the furthest I could see back then. The longest vision I ever had was five or ten years. Here we are today. But someone laid the foundation. There were already several thousands of dollars in the bank, that's a foundation. There was already an elementary school that they were meeting in, that's a foundation that we built upon.

After that, God builds on the foundation. It was a start! To the people in Jerusalem that were rebuilding the temple, it wasn't ideal conditions, and neither was it for us. But we were obedient and it is a start! When Lisa and I first got married and we lived in Camp 4 Housing Row in Kalihi, anybody from Kalihi, let me hear you? All right, so we lived in Kalihi underneath the Tokudas in a three-bedroom: me, Lisa, and Courtney.

To us, that was the best. It was a start. When I look at the days before I got a better car, a more reliable, newer car, for about 10 to 12 years of our marriage, I was buying used cars. 15 years of our marriage, buying used cars, mostly Volvos. I'd fix them because I could change the oil without having to go underneath the car. I could just do it from the top because it had plenty of room. That's how I did it.

I just couldn't get my hands in the Corolla or an Accord. My hands are too long and too big; I just couldn't do it. So I would just buy cars for $6,000 or $7,000 and we looked at each other and said, "It's a start." My pastor told me, "Save all your money, save your money. Don't buy the brand new car. Your friends are all buying the new Honda Odyssey van, you don't need the new van. You buy the used car because you're going to get the house first."

He said, "All our staff, they are all buying the new van. Good for them, but for you, buy the used car and you buy the house first." Guess what? We got the house. We got the house at $250,000! You can't buy anything for 250 today. My first three-bedroom house was $250,000. It wasn't the nicest house. It was the best house we could afford in the nicest neighborhood we could afford. It was actually the worst house in the best neighborhood. We looked at each other and we just said, "It's a start."

When we got married, we didn't need brand new this and brand new that. People said, "We'll give you our table. We'll give you this, we'll give you that." We said, "Okay, it's a start." God is rebuilding something in your life and it's a start. No matter where you're at, do the most you can with what God gave you. Come on, somebody say Amen! They start rebuilding and there are people like Haggai. Haggai exhorts them, "Hey, you guys stop building. You got comfortable."

Then there's the guy named Zechariah. Zechariah encourages them. He tells them, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit," says the Lord. Zechariah comes along, and all of these different prophets toward the end of the Old Testament come to rebuild Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple. When I look at this and I think about my life and your life, I think about what God is doing. When you start off, you have to start off with the altar.

When you start off with the altar, God is reestablishing sacrifice in your life. He is reestablishing the priority of worship. He is reestablishing a relationship with God. Now that fire is in you and it burns because it's the Holy Spirit. That's why the Bible tells us that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. God rebuilds the temple of your life and you become the temple of the Holy Spirit. God begins to first set the foundation and who's the chief cornerstone?

Jesus is the chief cornerstone. 1 Peter says that we are living stones. We are all living stones being put together building this incredible cathedral that God has. You're a stone, I'm a stone. God is putting together—some of you guys used to get stoned, not anymore. God is putting together—no, I don't smoke that no more. You are full of Jesus now. Come on somebody!

Put away your vape. Throw your vape away when you go home. Living stones. Chief cornerstone Jesus. He is building it together and then you're saved. But then there's one more. God brings in a Nehemiah. Nehemiah gets a holy burden. In the book of Nehemiah, the Bible says that he was the number two man. He was the cupbearer to the king. To be the cupbearer to the king is more than being a sommelier, more than sampling the wine to make sure that the king doesn't die and the king is not dissatisfied with its vintage.

It is more than, "Not too sweet, not too rancid, but just right." The cupbearer was the administrative official that was really one of the right-hand men of the king. He had a burden. His burden was he heard about the walls being torn down. They rebuilt the temple. They have the altar and they have worship going on. But they were a laughingstock because he lives in Persia and he knows what walls, gates, and security mean to a city.

Worship team can come up. He knows what all of that means. He approaches the king and he says to him in Nehemiah Chapter 2, verse 17 to 18: "But you know very well what trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire. And let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and end this disgrace." He told the people how gracious the hand of God had been on him and about his conversation with the king. They replied, "Yes, let's rebuild the wall." So they began the work again.

They begin to repair the wall. There are over 12 gates. The walls were so high and the gates allowed things in and let people out. The gates in ancient cities were like administrative centers. They were like Department of Planning and Permitting. They were like the DMV. The Bible said that they were administrative centers and then people would come in and come out and there was security here. They had TSA agents.

Metal detectors were checking everybody in and out. Then there were walls that had to be repaired. The Bible says that every man had a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other, and they were ready to hear the ram's horn. If they blew it, they would know that the enemies who did not want to see this happen were there. They were ready to defend their families and their city because the enemy did not want this wall built and did not want this gate returned.

Some of us in this room here today have an enemy trying to taunt you and tell you, "Who are you to rebuild your family? Who are you to rebuild your reputation? Who are you? Who do you think you are?" God says, "Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit," says the Lord. That's how he's going to rebuild. This was my life: walls burned and broken. When they dismantle walls, they burn them. Why do you burn the rock? So that you can't use charred stones.

So the painstaking task of washing off years of soot all over a rock so that it will adhere to mortar again is a lot of work. The enemy thinks we don't have it in us. You don't have the patience, the time, or even the wherewithal to clean up all those rocks. But you do, because it's going to be hard work, but it will be worth all of the work. It's going to be worth picking up that big stone and repairing that marriage. It is going to be a lot of work to reestablish a relationship with your children.

It is not going to be easy to put back the pieces of your life, but God will do it. Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. They rebuild it with the Lord's help. This is a picture of our life. What is the wall? If this is the spirit establishing worship all over again in your life—you being the temple of the Holy Spirit, giving your life to Jesus—then this is the soul. Why is it taking so long for him or her? They gave their lives to the Lord but they're still the same in some ways.

Because God needs to repair the wall. God needs to repair their soul. What is the soul? The soul is your intellect, your will, and your emotions and some of your personality. When you let the Lord come in, say, "Lord, heal that part of me." Some people, I know that the enemy came over the wall and you thought your wall was high enough. I know that the gate got burned when you were younger and the enemy came into your gate and into your life. I can tell you right now that God wants to heal that in the name of Jesus. He's been doing it all weekend in Jesus' name.

Come on, stand to your feet. Hallelujah! Come on, praise him right where you are right now. He is worthy of all of our praise. With every eye closed and every head bowed in the room today. How many of you would say, "Mike, the Holy Spirit was talking to me when you were talking about the gates. Stuff came in, I let it in, it snuck in." Or some of you were thinking that when I was talking about the walls, maybe that was you, that vulnerability was part of what was going on in your life.

There was not the vigilance that you were expecting over your life, but I'm here to tell you that that vulnerability is gone. I'm here to tell you that that vigilance is here. God is watching, he is with you, and he is healing you in the name of Jesus. If you receive that today, if you believe that and apprehend that today, I want you to raise your hand right in the room right now at the count of three, and I want you to give him a great shout. One, two, three!

Hallelujah! If you're under 30, I'm just thinking about you right now. You could be 12, 18, 22, or 30. There is a foundation that is being laid right now. You are going to build on this foundation. Don't despise the day of small beginnings, Zephaniah says, for the Lord delights to see the work begin. I want you to know that if you're under 30, we believe in you, and we need you to build.

We need you to build! Stay strong in the Lord and be with Jesus. If that is you and you are under the age of 30, raise your hand right now in this room. Look around, church; this is part of the age of our church. Hallelujah! We want to pray for all of the people under 30. Oh, to be under 30 again! If I knew what I knew now at the age of 30, oh my gosh! Father, we come before you. We thank you for every 30-year-old and under. We thank you for every nine-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old, 19-year-old, 27, 25, 22, every 30-year-old.

God, we pray your hand would be with them. I pray that they would understand foundations: the foundation of the Word of God and the foundation of life and faith. God, I pray that they would see it, they would believe it, they would receive it, and they would experience it in our church. Anything is possible, God. We love you, and we bless you in Jesus' name. Amen! Put your hand down one more time. Last prayer of the service. This one is last for me.

I want to lead you to Jesus. I think you've already been led. I want to seal it with a prayer and a commitment from you saying, "I want that fire in me. I want to be a temple of the Holy Spirit that the Lord can use. Make my life an offering. I put my life on that altar as a sacrifice. I want to give my life to Jesus, to the perfect sinless Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." That's you and me.

Some of you think, "Mike, I am not ready." Ready for what? The devil isn't waiting for you to be ready. You can't fix it without Jesus. Time doesn't heal all wounds; time hides all wounds. Only Jesus can heal wounds. Come on! Time does not heal all wounds; it just hides the wound until something else comes out, and there is the wound. Only Jesus can heal the wound.

Come on! From the front row to the back row, don't hold back. Today is the day of your salvation. Get ready to raise your hand at the count of three. One: he will never let you down. Two: for God so loved the world. One, two, three! Put your hand up if that is you. Put it up high! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 right there. 10, 11 right there. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37. Keep them up!

38, 39, 40, 41, 42. God bless you! 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 right there. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60. At least 60 people so far. Come on! Far in overflow. I want everybody to repeat after me. Say, "Jesus, today I surrender. I give you my life. Thank you for dying on the cross and shedding your blood that washes my sins as white as snow. I'm born again. The old has passed, and the new has begun. I'm a new creation in Christ Jesus created to serve you and to bring you glory with the life you gave me. In Jesus' mighty name I pray." And everybody said, Amen, amen, and amen. Come on, thank the Lord!

Guest (Female): What a powerful word. Come on somebody! If that stirred something in you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, rate it, and let us know how God is speaking to you through these messages. We believe your best days are ahead and we're honored to be part of the journey. For sermon notes, leadership tools, coaching resources, and more, visit MikeKai.tv. Stay inspired, stay planted, and stay ready because God's not done with you yet. Until next time, God bless you and aloha.