Charlie Kirk and Luke Barnett on The Rise of the Citizen and How Prayer and Fasting Can Save America

welcome to freedom square are you ready to kick this year off good 2022. it's good to see you in the house of the lord uh my name is adam rennie and i'm the worship pastor here at dream city church this is our awesome dream city church worship team and we count it an honor to constantly have the opportunity to serve in this capacity along with you in our state it's our pastor's dream it's his vision it's something that god has given him that arizona would be known as a christian state which means it would be known to have the values that i think most of us in this room carry and that's what god thinks about things and so because of that we love to honor him up front and just jump into a few songs of praise and worship if you've never been into a church before if you want to clap do you want to sing if you want us there if you want to watch the lyrics will be up we're just here to just join in and create an atmosphere where god's uh god's presence will be honored and his word would go forth why don't you greet a few people real quick just tell them i'm good i'm good and i'm glad to see you in the house [Music] so [Music] [Music] hear the [Music] [Music] feel the fire fill the ground [Music] [Music] everything is crazy [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] the feeling of joy [Music] [Music] i don't really care [Music] is is [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] when all i see is [Music] is [Music] [Music] there's nothing to fear foreign foreign [Music] [Music] oh [Music] who can be against me [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh [Music] the battle belongs [Music] nothing can stand against [Music] nothing can stand against the power of [Music] you shine [Music] oh [Music] you win everybody nothing can stand against [Music] i see oh [Music] oh i believe that to my core the battle belongs to you god you're the keeper of it all right i am [Music] crashing over everything god of mercy please come rescue me [Music] i am longing [Music] everything's [Music] your power your presence [Music] [Music] there will be [Music] we believe [Music] peace [Music] you're the key [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] defender [Music] [Music] heaven [Music] oh [Music] heaven and earth king jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] mountains [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] every word oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] who will be [Music] well welcome to freedom night are you glad to be here tonight come on push your hands together if you're glad to be here tonight my name is luke barnett this is my wife angel we're the pastors here at dream city we're so glad you're with us tonight i know this is kind of an in-between uh week and uh we we called charles he said you want to do it this week because everyone's traveling back and forth he said no let's do it let's put our foot on the accelerator and go forward so we're gonna have a great time here tonight and uh just before you're seated you know one of the things that we do because this is our state is when we come together we always take an offering to help the hurting people of arizona and uh none of this offering goes to our church this specifically goes to help people through the ministries that are they're helping people all throughout arizona angel there's a lot of exciting things happening talk about what's happening to our state right the dream center network is really expanding and the program that wraps itself around the dream center is just an impactful program that is making measurable results for so many people and each dream center has its own dna we're really excited to be opening a house for women who've decided to not have an abortion and keep their baby but they don't have a place to go that house is opening this saturday we're having an open house we have our first resident that's going to come in we're so excited to serve the people of the white mountain community in that way and we get to serve people in a very very specific way up in colorado city with that dream center that was a part of a polygamist community and warren jeffs is locked up in federal prison but through the court awarding brielle decker his 65th wife that compound she came in contact with the phoenix dream center and said this was the place that i needed when i escaped and had no one to have my back so we've turned that beautiful place now into a god purposeful place we're pouring back into women and children healing together some of the lost boys that have been cast out are now finding vocation and education and independence through through that confidence that we're able to give them there's a really unique opportunity because of what we've done in colorado city there is a branch of that community that has been awarded by the court south dakota watchtower compound so we are in the very beginning stages of investigating an opportunity of 140 acres we could house 285 hurting families women and children in crisis i believe that this property could cultivate a place for veterans to participate indigenous women of the surrounding reservations of south dakota we're in conversation with many of the legislators and the leaders of that state you know the watchtower was a place to keep people out and keep people away but i believe this watch tower could be turned into the lighthouse for families to find themselves again and find purpose so this is just another one of those uh polygamists that opened up in south dakota as well 140 acres and and now we have the opportunity to grab a hold of that the attorney general of texas and south dakota they're all behind trying to get this location open so we can get young ladies who are caught in polygamy and human trafficking to a safe place to be recovered so a lot of great things are happening and we just thank you so much for all your your help and support as you give so you can be seated right now and our usher is going to come by right now and there's going to pass the the buckets by and we just ask you to help us and support us in what we're doing to reach so many hurting people can i just pray for our offering right now lord we thank you that we have the opportunity to to to give tonight and that we can make a difference in people's lives we ask you lord just make this offering what it should be so we can keep reaching out to the forgotten hurt and hurting people of arizona we ask this in jesus name amen thank you so much for getting making check shots tonight you can make them out to dream city church and this offering will be collected and gathered specifically for those needs well it's a wonderful time to be here tonight i want you to put your hands together and welcome charlie kirk as he comes tonight and shares what's happening in arizona [Applause] hey everybody thank you guys so efficient thank you happy new year everybody it's great to be here yeah luke and joe and i were talking we said man are we going to do this one on january 4th i said you know what we had not missed a gathering since we started last may and we wanted to go straight to it and i i'm blown away by how many of you have come so god bless you guys it's great so i'm going to talk a little bit about what's going on locally but i do want to kind of do the proverbial kind of year in review from the last year and talk about how i think things change in an unexpected and very positive way about halfway through the year and you know you look back in 2021 the number one thing that we heard on our radio show and our podcast was that people were so glad for the year to be over i mean i kind of totally agree it was a horror show um besides the fact i got married that was awesome the best part of the whole year um besides that it was was pretty awful um for a lot of different reasons and i think that we look at one of the main reasons why we thought 2021 was kind of one that we don't want to go back to is that we felt as citizens of our country so helpless as we saw the unraveling of a nation we loved and i think that was one of the main reasons why in 2021 we were just kind of just so increasingly angry and unsettled and for those of you that are new here to freedom square uh and freedom night in america as we're calling it as we're branching out to more campuses we exist here to create biblical citizens inspired for local change that's that's why we're here we're trying to get you to be informed to be motivated and encouraged to have to understand what it means to be a biblical citizen it's not about a political party it's not about even certain politicians about empowering you to know what it means what the bible says about being an informed citizen so we're actually branching this out to another new church i'm going to be going out quarterly to steve smotherman's church in albuquerque new mexico and some other churches are going to be announcing this as well and so you look at this idea of what a citizen is i think we need to take a step back and kind of appreciate how rare it is to live in a nation where you're considered to be a citizen for now citizenship is incredibly rare most human beings existed under a government as a serf or as a subject or as a slave to be a citizen means that you're a co-owner it literally is what the greek word means in whatever national or state or local project that you're in it is it's a blessing from the lord that you're able to be born into a country or you even have some form of a say now if you kind of look at what's happening in the country over the last year it really is the dying citizen as victor davis hanson would say and the best attempts by the american ruling class in the year 2021 is they wanted to try and turn a nation that was once a nation of citizens into a nation of subjects and that really was the tension point and so things started pretty bleak in january of last year there is the the morale of those of us that love freedom and love the country it was understandably low and in kind of february and march of last year you might think back to some of the big news stories as they unfolded it seemed as if the people that were in charge the rulers were largely untouchable now you know we met here and we had our first gathering back in may of last year which coincided with what i believe was one of the great stories of 2021 which was moms and dads starting to rise up and go to school board meetings across the country including all throughout arizona and what was so special about this was that this was this was the only place where many of you felt that you could actually make a meaningful and measurable difference with the chaos the calamity and the catastrophe that was happening around you and in some ways the school boards had many years if not decades of complaints piling up that seems like i'm not going to go to school board meeting but in 2020 i was like you know what i'm so angry things are more expensive supply chain crisis they're teaching crt to my kids i'm going to show up to school board meeting and it kind of became this kind of almost pressure release valve for so much so so many of us that were like you know what i'm angry at a lot of different things understandably but i'm really upset with the fact that these school boards are putting masks on our children and mandating vaccines all the while that you know we know that the virus is not going to be a substantial risk to young people in any way shape or form and so what happened in last year was and it's really kind of interesting because you didn't feel the effects of what was actually happening in real time till months afterwards and as you started to see citizenship start to become renewed last calendar year in august september and october especially when you saw the department of justice issue their memo against moms and dads calling parents that show up to school board meetings domestic terrorists all of a sudden the the game changed in a very serious way and this could best be explained historians will look back at this honest historians as the unexpected and the great inversion so you look at what an inversion means in the dictionary it means almost like a 180 turn right when things go in a way that they aren't expected to be so you look back at this last year it started as one where the people that were in charge the rulers they thought that they were going to be able to make you sue for peace basically surrender you're going to stop showing up at events for it like this you're gonna stop caring about the education of your kids and the exact opposite happened it was the ultimate kind of um slow-motion picture of newtonian physics which was for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction which was that for every time that they raided some journalists apartment like james o'keefe or they called a mom a domestic terrorist there was gonna be another hundred people that showed up in that person's place to actually advocate for what was righteous true beautiful and good and this is one of the reasons why in 2021 and this is a great sign if you want to see a sign of a country that wants to save itself this is a sign if you want to see a country that doesn't care it'll go the opposite direction when things get smaller it's a sign that citizens want their country back now what does that mean that means that when a country like the united kingdom wants to leave the european union and want to get out of kind of this internationalist organization that's a good sign when parents are more concerned about what happens at the local city council than congress that's actually a really good sign when things get more local all of a sudden that is the strength that's always been the strength of our nation by the way make no make no qualms about it congress has always should have always been an afterthought but we've always been kind of so propagandized to believe what's happening in dc mattered more than what's happening in chandler or gilbert or peoria and so when things start to get in these smaller concentric circles that's a sign of regular normal people you saying i might not be able to control what chuck schumer does or whatever but i can't have a say here and that's why in 2021 and you've all played a major role in this you saw the rebirth and the re-emphasis of family focused issues when it comes in political conversations and debates which i thought was a really healthy reinvigoration you saw the church matter more than ever before and i just want to thank dream city for what you guys did for the arizona community this last year was so unbelievable it truly was incredible and deserves applause and [Applause] and you saw you saw the city matter more so you have the family the church and the city and you take a step back and you say isn't that what government is actually always supposed to be now just so just so we're all clear the founding fathers were very skeptical that a republic could be as big as it is a small r republic republican not republican party it really is hard to work when it starts to get 330 million people it's very difficult and in some ways i think one of the lessons of this last year and this is a positive sign this is the momentum that no one's going to stop by the way and it's only going to continue is that i am going to now focus on the place i drive by every single day and then we're going to build up from that one kind of area from there and that's what a republic always was supposed to be and again many young people in this audience you know and i'm being 28 i still remember the last gasp of like when america was this way but it's been inverted the last 10 years and we're we're changing it back which is i remember in america where the states were always given preference over the federal government not the federal government over the states and we must remember the states created the federal government not the other way around and now why is that would the founding fathers have some sort of weird fascination with states no they understood that when things fall apart which they inevitably do it's the second law of thermodynamics that it's better to have people take responsibility for places they can recognize and hold accountability for them not some far distant land of some person that runs some regulatory agency that you've never heard of and so there is a tension point right now and i i believe that truth is going to win and i believe the church is going to win and we already know that jesus has won we know how the book ends right but i believe in this moment we know how this is going to end which is the tension right now is that the rulers are increasingly paranoid with the ruled they're kind of like why do you guys care so much why are you why are you speaking out and you're starting to see what we call this massive hedge when you start to see people like anthony fauci go on television not a big fan of his if you haven't noticed um and i do pray for his soul i hope he finds jesus it really i mean that every person should and i actually think it would make him a lot happier and a lot less fear driven actually i really do um that's a separate speech for a different time actually uh why everyone needs jesus including the director of the the nih um cdc and it's true and but the one of the things that you all of a sudden see him on television he says hey you know what we've been over counting coveted numbers like wait a second really that used to be considered to be conspiracy theory now it's mainline television why would he say that he'd say that because he's seen the same thing so many other people are seeing which is all of a sudden in the last 30 days something profound has happened and i want to thank all of you that showed up to america fest by the way that was awesome and that played a big role in really expanding the conversation and make no mistake he might be an atheist team i don't know what he believes but joe rogan is someone who um is an unusual character i guess that's fair to say um i have a lot of respect for him he had the most downloaded episode he's ever had he's like 10 times bigger than even the top-watched cable show where he had dr peter mccullough dr robert malone on a show in the last month and 60 million downloads i mean that's like a civilization right of people that are now pursuing a separate narrative against everything that they've been told the last year and a half and it's reflected in public opinion polling where a majority of americans do not feel that lockdowns mass mandates or vaccine mandates are necessary in response to omicron yet they're doing it anyway in certain states and so what you're living through and you're gonna be we're gonna be able to tell this story in a very i think victorious way is and this is exactly what we strive to do here at freedom square freedom night in america and with dream city and with turning point usa is the rise of the citizen that's what happened in 2021 is that the regime started to fall and the citizens started to rise up and if you look at where we as christians and the church need to focus it's the empowerment of you as a co-owner of the national project right and and by the way that doesn't mean that they're they're not they're not going to stop obviously and by they i mean all the different mega you know um kind of organizations right cdc amazon google and all that but there is an increasing unease that that every ounce of energy they put into this is all of a sudden going to be used against them in a very serious way and that's the tension it's a tension between the ruled and the rulers and so many of you have asked well what can we do about it well let's go back to what is the sign of a healthy country a sign of a healthy country is someone who first focused on their individual salvation with their creator then on the health of their family then on their church and then their city and their community and i'm starting to see the rebirth of that in a way that in 10 years of doing this i've never seen before more parents are homeschooling than ever before the homeschooling population doubled in 2021 everybody it doubled in 2021 and i'll close with this and j and i thought it'd be a really fun way to kick off the year with our host luke barnett and i just to kind of explore his amazing sermon he did over this last weekend um and talk about this further and also the the kind of the blessing of fasting which i think would be particularly fun as luke is fasting right now so i um i'm not you're not supposed to tease people as they fast so i'm not i'm not gonna i promise i know a lot of you are fasting as well but if i i'm gonna have a direct ask that i think we should fast monthly every year uh every month this year uh as we head into this very important year for our country we're gonna talk about that in a second but i'm going to close with this which is that the founders believed and this was explicitly written in alexander hamilton john jay's james madison's private journals that only god should be able to have the executive legislative and judicial authority this is why they intentionally separated everybody they separated it because they believe that no person on this planet should have that much authority but they realize that the true immediate authority needs to be invested in all of you this is one of the great dangers of these independent regulatory agencies of people that are largely untouchable that run these bureaucracies in dc of which you've never met them they're unelected unknown and have almost unaccountable power but the trajectory of 2020 that we're on if we keep it up if you keep on praying fasting showing up to events showing up the school board meetings running for office if you feel so compelled consuming news and information knowing what's happening around you even though it could be slightly depressing at times is that you're about to live through the greatest most unexpected citizen movement in a generation let me say that again you're about to live through one of the greatest citizens when all of a sudden they're gonna look back and they're gonna say when it seemed bleak and it seemed so negative and so dark and it was led by the church i really believe that's where it all comes down to and i remember the first thing that we said at this you know at this gathering was that it's always been the church that has been the one like a trust fall that has caught america and brought it back into posture right at every single awakening and you're seeing that you're seeing that in a very special way but and here's here's the takeaway though is that in no way whatsoever is it time to disengage because you think you got everything all figured out now here's the time for us to put the proverbial foot on the accelerator for liberty and for righteousness because we are in a much better stronger position a year from a year ago a year i don't know about you guys a year ago on the calendar year it was pretty dark for me personally i was not really sure i thought people were going to give up and we tried to do everything we could to try to keep the stamina going and keep the velocity moving and and you're all playing such a a phenomenal part and and big role in that so just remember that you're living through what it truly means as it says in the bible to be a citizen that is so rare if you look right now in austria spain greece and italy they do not have citizens they have if you leave your house in austria without a vaccine card you're in violation of the law that's not a citizen that's something else you can fill it in that's a subject that's whatever it is and to reclaim your rightful role as someone who as god wants you to be a citizen this great nation it's going to take action it's going to take prudence and it's going to take faith and that's the role the church needs to continue to play no better segue than to invite great way to kick off this calendar year your pastor and my friend luke barnett luke come on [Applause] so luke um first i just want to thank you again for hosting this this is inspired just so everyone knows this has inspired dozens and soon to be hundreds of others pastors and churches across the country to do this very same type of forum we're talking about pastors in north carolina new mexico florida where they look at the success of this and if they're just blown away and we just tallied the numbers conor is around here somewhere where if you count the podcast downloads the youtube views the facebook views well over 10 million people have consumed the content of what has happened here in this room in the calendar year 2021 10 million people and so it and you're all playing a role in that so luke you had a beautiful message this weekend how to save a nation yeah well you know first of all i want to say thank you to charlie we're going back and forth here but i truly believe that god has used this young man to inspire churches all across america to let know they're not alone that they have a voice in the public court and we're so grateful for you and your love for the lord i when i first met you i really didn't know you too well but i just thought as i've come to know you you are the real deal you love the lord you love the church and we're just so grateful for all you're doing to to help the cause and to spread the cause of jesus christ you know when charlie called me today to ask me to share uh with him tonight i said you want me to share about my message on sunday he said yeah you're talk you talked about how to save a nation and uh i began preparation for my message thinking can one person really save a nation can one man can one woman really save a nation so i begin to look in in the bible about people who have saved a nation of course there's esther she shaped a nation there's a obscure guy in the old testament book of judges and his name was shamgar anybody here ever heard of shamgar of course those who were here sonny hiroshima but shamgar the bible says about him he was a judge of israel but he killed 600 philistines with his ox goad okay so i thought about that he's a judge of israel but he killed 600 of these enemies of god with an ox goad and so if you if you know the book of judges during this time people wouldn't even travel on the main highways and streets because there was such fear in the land and the bible tells us the reason why there is such fear and chaos in the land is because in judges 21 it says that every man did that which was right in his own eyes so there was no absolute standard of truth there was no governing uh uh power that was you know keeping everybody in line so people just did they wanted to do made up their own rules and in that chaos the bible says that the philistines saw the weakness of that nation and they invaded and that's why there was no people walking on the streets they were scared the bible says that the sham guard saved that nation how did he do it well the bible says he took he took an ox code how many know where oxycode is in oxygen you know it is okay well i finally teach you something that you don't know an ox goad was made for farming it was an eight foot pole on one side was a very sharp tip like a like a spear and that was made to kind of prick or goad the ox to push him along as he was tilling the soil okay the other side the other end of it was like a chisel-like tool that they would dig up the rocks or roots that would obstruct the tilling of the soil so that wasn't an oxygen it was a farming tool now why do you need to know what a farming tool is what oxycode is because the bible says that he killed 600 philistines with his ox code so here's a guy who was not yet a judge but he was making a difference in his nation by starting where he was he was a man of vision so in order to really make a difference you have to start where you are but have a vision for where you want to go in the future a vision for your family a vision for your business a vision how for how god wants to use you uh in your church you know um back in 2013 my dad was a pastor of this church and he was a great visionary and he had a heart valve repair and i became the pastor and during that time i had really no vision for the future of our church so i went on a 40-day daniel fast a daniel fass is when you eat nothing but bird seeds and twigs for 40 days you know it's you know only things from the ground that grow and in the meantime during that fast i climbed the mountain behind the church every day for 40 days and i just began to seek god and ask god would you give me a vision for the future of our church would you show me what we're supposed to be doing in the next 20 years and how we can impact our our city and help people and rescue hurting people and rescue people from human trafficking and all these different things after 40 days on the mountain god began to download something in my spirit i know that sounds mystical to some of you here tonight because maybe you're not you don't have a church background but he just began to impress upon my spirit he began to whisper through his voice and i came down from that mountain to 40 days of fasting i had very clear vision for the future it changed the trajectory of our church we went from one campus to nine campuses in just seven short years we went from no human trafficking program to america's largest human sex trafficking relief organization all that came from receiving a god-sized vision on the side of that mountain i want to ask you do you do you have that kind of a vision what is a vision a vision is simply this it's a picture of your future that creates passion in you i'm going to say it again a vision is a picture of your future that creates passion in you it gets you up out of bed in the morning it gives you life and energy because you see something out there that's so exciting to you that it makes life worth living and the bible tells us that god will give us a vision if we seek the kind of vision and that's what shamgar had he wasn't a judge yet he was a farmer but he said i have a vision of being a judge one day but he started where he was it's a great story of how a god used this man he didn't really start where he was but he also used what he had all he had was an ox code right but he said that i had this in my hand right now and this will make a pretty good tomahawk missile right here wouldn't it and i i can take people i can take the enemy out with this ox guild and he knew how to use it and it says in the bible without a vision the people perish and to find what the vision is so incredibly important so you're fasting right now is that right and your whole church is fasting for 24 hours now i'm gonna really make you upset with pastor luke you guys are doing the fast um in a very uncomfortable way let's put it that way we call it committed way yeah that's right um i used the word i used a different word previously i'm not going to say that so when i fast you're not supposed to talk about when you fast but i guess this is a safe space for that um it does say that in the bible not to you know kind of make a point of when you fast in like a way where you're a better person than somebody else however you always end with dinner luke okay you don't go to bed hungry like i don't know what sort of wacky thing i i this right where is that in the bible well it's it's not okay and so the question is so first let's talk about you guys fasting right and no but i i'm of course kidding the when i fast i try to make dinner the last you go to sleep at least full and then you get through a full day right because you're gonna be like wrestling and turning tonight right yeah no just no wow sleep like i couldn't i couldn't go to bed hungry that that that dog won't hunt so um so you guys are fasting as a church tell us about that okay so we we challenged our church at the beginning of the year to from every tuesday till wednesday we it's called the john wesley fast it was the longest it's a fast that that held the longest revival in history and so uh it's a 24-hour fast and we've asked our people starting today at lunch eat breakfast eat lunch then after lunch don't eat dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow morning but pick up eating again at lunchtime tomorrow it's 24 hour fast but just two meals and uh that was the john wesley fast and then come tomorrow night for our midweek church experience where we are going to we've gathered hundreds thousands of prayer requests for people who need breakthrough in some area of their life maybe they need healing for their body maybe they need a financial breakthrough for their business maybe their kids are far from god and they're praying for their kids to come back home but they're going to have thousands of prayer requests so we're going to meet here at 6 30 tomorrow night you're all invited to come be part of this and for 15 minutes we're going to sing some some songs of worship then we're going to teach you for 15 minutes what prayer is how to pray principles of prayer and then we're going to turn the playlist on and hundreds of people are going to just walk around the the auditorium here and pick up these prayer cards or be in stacks of three or four and you're going to pray for other people's kids who need the lord other people who need healing for their body you're going to pray for them and call their names on just say god would you touch their lives and hundreds of people are going to be doing this to the people and their prayer requests and by the way if you need a prayer request please don't leave tonight if you have a need in your life fill out one of those cards we'll pray for you tomorrow night as well but we're going to walk around this place for about 20 minutes on our own just praying and calling out those names and then at the end we're all going to come together we call it ripple prayer and corporate prayer where we gather at the front and we just pray for our nation we pray for our city we pray for our schools we pray for our families we're doing this every wednesday in the month of january and if you want to be a part of something that truly changes your life our leader jesus christ said the difficult things in life only come through prayer and fasting fasting so if you want a vision from god we're talking about vision earlier how bad do you want it how bad do you want a god-sized dream in your life do you want it bad enough to go on a mountain for 40 days i need nothing but bird seed and twig i want it that bad i needed it for our church so this is what prayer and fasting does for us it gets the breakthrough and and fasting is is so special uh for me personally and you know in the bible it says you know fasting uh is a way to deny your flesh and a way to reorient yourself to god and in a world where everything is so fleshly focused it is an intentional way to all of a sudden say no to an immediate need that your flesh is saying like hey let's eat like hey that sounds good and i mean good luck even watching a football game without 10 12 15 20 commercials you know that try to make food just look like you know so alluring and that you need it immediately right in some ways it's almost like a hyper sexualization of food it's it's it's unbelievable and but what fasting does i say this to young people a lot students you know especially students that feel as if they're going through maybe a bout of darkness or uncertainty or anxiety or depression i always ask i say when was the last time you fasted they never even thought of it that's okay because you live in a country that would never even think about fasting right it's the opposite like go order another meal or go indulge even further but fasting slows you down and the the neuroscience behind fasting is really interesting so you know this luke that when you're on hour 20 21 23 24 you're probably thinking the most clearly that you have and there's a reason for this which is going back to when our ancestors in the wilderness and they didn't have food all the time that god gave our bodies the ability to adjust that when you really need food your body's going to redirect any remaining calories to mental clarity because you're like you got to go get food right now right and so at that moment all of a sudden instead of worrying about digestion because there's not much action happening there right all of a sudden your body's like okay we are now going to put our energy output towards seeing hearing and thinking the world around you for me you know i just fast last week the mental breakthroughs that happened at hour 21 22 23 24 are incredible and i know for at least um from my own personal perspective it's some of the greatest prayers that a person can have um talk a little bit about that talk about how it could also just help a person individually that might be going through a tough time right well first of all the the hunger pains that charlie says he tries to avoid there's a there's a reason for those at night okay a very big difference i want to be awake when i suffer it's a very it's totally separate there's supposed to be a trigger so when you feel hungry it reminds you oh yeah why am i doing this why am i fasting oh yeah i'm praying for something i'm believing for something in in this in the bible there's a story where the disciples they're trying to cast a demon out of a man and they got their laying hands on him and they just can't cast the demon out of the man jesus comes down and he lays his hands on the man and he casted him out immediately and the disciples said jesus we've been trying to do this for for hours how were you able to do this and that's when jesus said the hard things the difficult things in life the breakthroughs that the healing you know for our body the the breakthrough with our family that the marriage coming back together again the hard things come through prayer and fasting so that's why we encourage you to be a part of tomorrow night just try it out i promise you if you come one week tomorrow night you'll be hooked the rest of the month and we have so much really to pray for think about this we have our dream conference coming up in just about three weeks first week of february what is dream conference well charlie is speaking at our dream conference and we are thousands of pastors from all over america are going to be gathered in this place learning how to grow their church ideas from ministries but this year we're calling it stand and we're trying to challenge encourage fire up even you know prod them a little bit to take a stand in their city because we really do believe that the hope of america is strong churches in cities you know two-fisted men and women of god who will stand up without apology and preach the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the word of god and so that's something we're gonna be praying about is that we we would see you know new churches rise up and do what we're doing here create a spark in their city challenge their young people to think outside the box and and uh really dedicate their lives to the word of god do we have a promo yeah go ahead and show that right now if you want to come to dream conference you can register for this we have some of the greatest speakers in america and jensen franklin you're talking about fasting he fasts for 30 days uh i think 30 40 days he does that every year so you could ask him about that take a look at this listen do you not perceive it do you not see it for i am doing a new thing i am making a way through the wilderness a kingdom not of this world built upon the foundations of the apostles prophets christ as the [Music] shifting cornerstone or culture but on the bedrock of christ if you build jesus life on the shifting sands of human speculation that your life is going to crumble jesus says but if you will build your life on the rock solid foundation of my work that your life's going to hold up so you're all invited to come to dream conference 2022. so in in closing before we take some questions luke you and i were talking backstage we said you know we really just want to kind of for anyone here that's watching online or listening on the residual podcast or here to kind of just make the case for christ to talk about in this new year every you know a lot of people make new year's resolutions but there is one resolution you can make that will last forever that really is the most important and everyone has a different way um to come to jesus some people it's through a transformational experience uh so you know says in romans one um that at times god's not going to erupt your sin if that's what you want in that direction there's a long way that you can fall um only by the mercy of god because sometimes you know does jesus intercede in that however when we look at you know so many different personal lives some people it's through music that they find jesus some people it's through the mind right and that's definitely for for me kind of thinking deeply about things uh it only fastened and strengthened my faith and so you know i go to a lot of college campuses so you don't have to you're welcome um and i get a question every so often which is charlie how can someone who seems intelligent you see how they word that believe in jesus they're talking about me how could you believe in this you know metaphysical reality and the answer could go on for two hours but the short version is do you believe that there are laws of nature and it's impossible to say no i mean you just open up a physics textbook you know there's three very basic laws in newtonian physics or the law of thermodynamics i mentioned earlier there are laws that make the world go around and we live by them every day whether we like it or not you know you have to live under the truth that force equals mass times acceleration even the most ardent atheist agrees that the universe began at a specific moment well then if there was a moment was there not something that created that moment to begin and so by using reason which god gave us as it says in isaiah 1 we can come to this very very understandable conclusion that if there is a natural law then there must be a natural law giver and there must be someone that designed all of this you know cs lewis famously said he said you go look at this beautiful building as we're in you don't doubt that what there isn't an architect because you've never met the architect you look at the building you say wow this must have been thoughtfully put together the same can be for our universe and then you look at just the pattern of human nature you look how people operate rather predictable and the bible tells us about that there is no book there is no piece of literature ever in the history of the planet that will tell you more about what you're dealing with and where you're headed than the bible it's very simple that we're sinful broken uh people that have a soul that need to get back into communion with our lord and savior only through christ jesus and then you just look at the irrefutable unmistakable evidence of the actual resurrection itself and even and this is something we can go into at different you know at the deeper level if anyone's interested but i encourage any skeptic any atheist any agnostic to go through a legitimate historical analysis of what we know about the resurrection and jesus's life and tell me that without a greater a greater chance than not that jesus christ rose from the dead from from reading matthew mark luke and john acts the acts of the apostles from their travels across um the mediterranean to their ministry to the price that they were willing to pay to the empty tomb to female witnesses to the 400 plus people that saw jesus after he was resurrected you all of a sudden build this case and you say there's something here and you're right it is the way the truth and the life and for a lot of people they try to wrestle with you know kind of what happens in acts and is there a creator well that gift is waiting for you and um it is christ jesus and we have to accept it into our life that's really good amen you know i've always i've always said if you want to put your ultimate hope in something you never want to put your ultimate hope into something that can change or be taken away from you and there's an old song that we've seen when i was a kid we don't sing it too often anymore in church it goes this way on christ the solid rock i stand all other ground is sinking sand and i would just say to you that you know if you put your ultimate hope in anything other than jesus christ it's going to shift it's going to shift beneath your feet at some point if you put your ultimate hope in the stock market and the stock market goes south well there goes your hope if you put your ultimate hope in your spouse and your spouse passes away or leaves well there goes your ultimate hope you don't want to put your ultimate hope in anything in something that can change or be taken away from you christ is the solid rock i promise you if you stand on that rock it won't shift it won't move you'll find the hope you're looking for i just want to pray for you right now would you just bow your heads for just a moment with me and close your eyes if you say look you know that's what i need in my life i tried to plant my feet on so many different types of stones in my life relational stones uh vocational stones emotional stones and they've all just been shifting sand to me and i need the kind of rock you're talking about here today and i just tonight i just want to give my life to christ i just want to put my ultimate faith and hope in in that unshifting rock of jesus christ tonight if you just say these words right from your heart to god the bible declares that he will hear you god will hear your prayer he will forgive you you will be adopted into his family and your life will change so if that's you would you say these words after me i'll lead you in this little prayer just say heavenly father today i give you my life you said in your bible if i would ask you that you would forgive me and so i ask you now to be the leader of my life and the lord of my life to direct my life to show me how to live and to make me more like your son jesus thank you for hearing my prayer thank you for making me born again in jesus name amen the bible says when you prayed that prayer he heard you he forgave you and you just just now you've got a brand new birthday today you were born again the bible says so congratulations happy birthday so i want to get to some questions and um what's so amazing is that when you're born again you know it says in philippians 4 6 a lot of young people and this is a very serious thing it says that well over 65 percent of people under the age of 25 say they have serious anxiety issues and it says in philippians 4 6 do not be anxious about anything but instead through prayer thanksgiving and supplication let your requests be known to god and it says for the peace of god that which transcends all understanding will guard your heart and mind through christ jesus and then obviously philippians 3 4 8 for whatever is good true beautiful noble um you know think on these things or dwell on these things those three verses for those of you that are born again or if you're in that 65 percent of young people that are experiencing that anxiety i encourage you really pray over those verses i think they could really bless you okay let's go to some questions uh and students you guys get preference as always okay hi charlie i go to colorado christian and my name is kayla i'm just a freshman but i'm curious what do you think with the big homelessness crisis happening that we see in denver and like lakewood i see that every day and it breaks my heart but what do you think is the biblical role of the church and the government and the individual that's a great question luke do you want to start with that you guys do so much work with homeless the homeless population in a loving and empowering way and then i can kind of piggyback i did not hear the question i'm trying to get some more money she's she goes to colorado christian university and she asked what would the biblical response be to the homelessness uh issue which is plaguing colorado and increasingly hurting arizona um which you exit at flank frank lloyd wright um it's kind of stunning yeah and you see that all over so uh luke i'll let you think about it it's very simple if the church would be the church we wouldn't have a homeless problem in america today and the church in so many ways it has failed to be the church it's become a bureaucracy of people who come and they sit in seats and they sing music and go home but we believe if jesus christ were walking on the planet today he would be out there helping the hurting feeding the hungry clothing the naked and so we here at dream city we just said we're going to be a blue collar church we're going to be out there on the streets we're going to buy hotels and open them up and recover people we're going to try to get people off of drugs and alcohol and so i really believe if the church would be the church that's that's our role in uh in making a difference in our cities and i have i have a view that um i believe the church should adopt which is i do not think we should tolerate um the uh open-air homelessness meaning that i don't think that it's good for the society i don't think it's good for children to be raised in a city that has panhandlers or homeless individuals and it's not good for a variety of reasons i think it's just i think it actually demoralizes the population i think that it creates a messiness to the local city and community which you can see easily in los angeles and san francisco um i think it allows for communicable diseases that very well you know could have been thwarted so those are kind of the you know kind of the very obvious ones but then also i also think i think it creates kind of this kind of um apathetic posture towards people suffering i mean in a way that we as a very sophisticated and wealthy society can't get our act together with this i think is rather ridiculous now let that now for those of you that have worked in homeless ministries you know this a lot better than i have i've done my a fair share of it not i'm by no means an expert but uh you know i grew up helping in a local church in this there's many different categories of people that are homeless those are people that are legitimately you know they've lost their job they're dealing almost 95 percent of people are dealing with addiction issues that are in that category there's some people that have very serious mental health issues and need treatment and they need counseling and they need to be you know in a place where they can be hopefully um in an environment that can get them towards healing and then there's a different you know portion that are that are people that um unfortunately they don't want to stop being homeless um and that is a problem um i think we should have the new york mayor rudy giuliani position which is look we're going to love on you we're going to empower you you don't get to be at the corner frank frank lloyd wright and just kind of you know that's not the way it works right um that is not your home it's not going to be like your open-air living room um it's not good for that person by the way it makes them prone to especially if they're a female homeless person prone to rapes prone to be taken advantage of and other things and so but i think that the dream city deserves so much credit for this but it's a big issue for me you know i was just meeting today with someone that was running for governor uh of this state and i told her i said you know i i really need the leadership of the state to take homelessness more seriously because i think that it it's this open-air acceptance of the citizenry not caring and i don't want to live in that type of country at all and i don't think it's the biblical approach at all so god bless you and ccu is a great school so thank you so much appreciate it thank you hello my name is maverick courtney and i go to paradise valley community college i notice a photo in turning point instagram that of when you started the organization and at american fest when it was so big and i was wondering as like follower christ and the future owner in the business um any concerns thoughts during it yeah uh so quite a lot um so what you're talking about and you're very kind uh at america fest we had over ten 000 attendees from all 50 states um we had a guy come up to me from japan um which was just awesome and he's giving his life to the lord it's so cool um which is japan is not a very christian country korea is japan is not a very christian country it's a very taoist eastern secular society which was really cool listen to our podcast and literally travel all the way from tokyo to come here and so what you're talking about is a picture we posted on our instagram where we had our first ever winter retreat with like 55 students uh six years ago and then we get to ten thousand right just amazing um it's all thanks to the lord first and foremost and uh and i'll say a couple things that when i first when we first started turning point usa i was wrongly encouraged by secular people to not talk about god publicly now as soon as i started talking about god and jesus two things happened the attacks increased and the persecution was ramped up and the blessing also increased dramatically it was this amazing thing it was like wow i'm gonna bless you with more but also you're gonna get attacked from every single direction and so that that was a lesson um yeah but if you're trying to start a business and luke you had this beautiful statement earlier which what a passion is what how'd you word that vision vision thank you first time doing this vision that's okay luke you'll you'll catch up the vision is a picture of your future that creates passion in you and uh it's it's just it's just a way that uh when you get in the morning if you see something it almost pulls you into your future it almost uh it causes you to cast off restraint the bible says without a vision the people perish one translation says that they cast off restraint which means they just start living like every other tom dick and harry out in the world and and there's just there's nothing god in their life and so i would really encourage you to seek god to give you a real fresh vision yeah and and aim for things that matter right and if you're doing it for the right reasons and you prioritize the correct things your life will start to naturally order itself um this is a lesson that i try to impart on our students as much as possible um it's obviously difficult because you're dealing with a very a highly pressurized society when it comes to this so you're kind of fighting gravity in some sense but the earlier that you realize that self-control as a fruit of the spirit is something that you're going to want to try to desire it's an incredibly important thing and so i imagine you gave your life to christ already but you also must understand that the spiritual attacks do not stop as soon as you give your life to christ satan does not stop attack sometimes it intensifies especially if you're a leader in a church if you're an elder in a church tells us that in titus especially but satan would love nothing more than even though you gave your life to christ try to take you kind of out of the equation like try to de-emphasize you right to try to make you question what you're doing i encourage you to lean in and understand the spiritual weapons that the bible gives you to deal with that but then also um at young at a young age if you're trying to grow a business you're you're given the ability this is why i'm a big believer in young people you know delaying going to college is take the biggest risk you possibly can because you literally have very little to you lose now by risk i mean if try to start a business or you know like obviously reasonable and virtuous risk right not like you know i'm going to see if i can fly like not exactly smart right um but you understand what i mean that's the perfect age to do that um but i i love hearing that and we need more this is my call to action always we need more young people to want to start businesses we need more christian pro-american young people that want to start businesses we really do so god bless you thank you hey so um as somebody that is coming up in the conservative movement i mean charlie i think you know this i'm 18 years old and so i've been speaking around the state now for the last probably six months or so and i have to say that one of the most annoying things about the conservative movement is the amount of rhetoric is the what this is the amount of rhetoric it's like the same stuff over and over again so one of the things that i've been trying to focus on is like fact stats in history which is something that you have done phenomenal job at by the way you're kind of the guy that i look to when i'm looking for that stuff so what is the way that we can i guess shape the conservative movement in that way because sometimes i feel like i'm alone in that sense where it's like i'm the only one trying to like explain and talk about the things that people aren't talking about right yeah first i want to compliment you about something what's your name again i'm sorry i should know eric eric um so eric lives out a principle by a movie artist that i'm not going to name because he's a bad guy but he said that 95 of life is just showing up and you guys and um yeah i'm not gonna say who he's a bad guy but it's totally true you're you're like every single one of our events and you always dress in a suit and tie and i tell young people all the time if you show up people will notice it's it's not easy to show up at every one of our events and you travel the country i say it's that so much of life is just proximity to show up to the events right like it's so and i it's hard not to notice you show up at every one of our events um and it's great and you have energy and you want to do something with your life and it's hunger and i just want to compliment you don't lose that it's very important andy shows up at all of our services too really yeah he's a faithful guy amazing praise god so i i want to caution you on one thing um i want to caution you because i can understand what you're saying that you go to a lot of these events and that you're a little bit bored with some of the rhetoric and all that not everyone's going to be as as deep into this as you are and when i was 18 i had the same sort of belief and i the advice i'd give to a younger self is like hey it's okay if the 45 year old plumber who's trying to keep pay rent it's okay if he doesn't know as much about economics as you is that you know what i mean it don't think less of that person don't like try to be um condescending to you know the the police officer it's okay however you're not wrong that certain people in leadership of the conservative movement need to take learning more seriously you're totally right with that where it's that we and i i am again one of the things i meant to mention in my opening remarks is that i have seen a new desire and a thirst to go deeper in the citizenry than any other time you know we talk about our partnership uh with hillsdale and obviously you know lakewood which does an amazing job and all these different types of you know places to to learn and to dive into which i just want to encourage everyone here to try to prioritize to dive deep into the books and the issues and the ideas that really matter um and to know the road ahead just ask those coming back and if some of you are like charlie where do i start you know there's there's a phenom i mean obviously the bible's a great thing to study um pretty obvious uh hillsdale online courses we've plugged many times charlie for hillsdale.com but and if you're if you have a commute let me just kind of tell you if you have a commute try to pick an audio book a month that you're going to spend 10 minutes every single day to listen to and there's some phenomenal books that i think that would really bless you about a variety of different topics um and i could tell i i went through a whole list of ones that i read or listened to i'm a big listener of books right um so you're not wrong in that way but i just encourage you to keep that balance right um and i could say this is someone that used to be that person um and i pray that i never will is don't be the guy that's 20 years old that walks into the room that thinks you know more than everybody else right um instead be like okay i might know more facts but i want to try to find the wisdom of you you know what i'm saying and i'm not saying you were imparting that in your question at all um but at least that's something i would tell my 18 year old self right because you know you have a high iq obviously and you have a desire to learn and you're like uploading all this information and you kind of go to these you know tea party meetings like what do you mean you don't know federalist 51. you're like okay um but but be a leader in that you know what i'm saying and you're in the right organization and the right people around you so god bless you so thank you for being here okay so i've been reading a book called lawless and in the first few chapters it talks about the one world government that will be present in the end in those chapters it talks about the un the eu in the former league of nations it also talks about the globalist and climate change coven and how each of those are being used in order to twist their minds to put together this one world government the scripture tells us that this will happen so there's we can't really change it what are your opinions on that yeah that's a great question and luke i'd love to get you commented did you hear did you hear it okay yeah okay so i haven't read that look what what's the book called uh lawless okay i haven't read that book but i what i do believe is that what we're see what we've seen this year and last year and the year before is kind of setting us up for that you know it's uh the control of the government it's uh pretty amazing how uh the entire nation and even churches and pastors they kind of went with you know the government control they went with the lockdowns and uh it was a real wake-up call to us here because you know we thought to ourselves we could see that the the spirit of the antichrist even though he may not be alive now is operative you know in in the world today and of course we know what the bible says there will be a day when one man will rule the world that's what the bible says when i was a kid i thought how in the world could one man ever rule the world well now through technology you know every kid on the planet has one of these phones and they're hypnotized by it almost all throughout the day and we can see how an electric handsome charismatic personality could rise up and turn the minds of millions billions of people all across the planet so we we're set up now when i was a kid i thought there's way too much technology that needs to happen for this it could happen today and we could be in a cashless society many places won't even take cash well in revelations it does make an allusion to money only being transferred via numbers um i might be misquoting it but there is something of that of that sense um and our friend jack kibbs has a phenomenal sermon on that um i just want to say one thing about this though and i i i always have a little bit of a different take i love learning about bible prophecy it's not my uh focus but i sometimes i find that people that are very focused on bible prophecy it ends up in a place of almost an inevitability of decline and therefore let's do nothing right i don't like that it says occupy till he comes right we must be salt and light in every way so we must look at the signs of the times jesus did emphasize more than once more than twice more than three times that the hour and the day is unknown right we do know that but i think it's very clear that things are obviously falling into place it's unmistakable obviously with the the one world type drum that constantly get beat but we still need to look at ourselves we look and say hey i'm not going to just run to the hills and you know wait for this to be over we have to lean in and that's a harder call right not all times are created equal the bible tells us that too uh and the time for us is going to be the great question yeah so i just want to answer your question this way as well you know the jesus said that only the father knows the time of the return he that the son himself doesn't know the time so we don't know and we're not even supposed to speculate about the return of jesus christ we we can see the seasons around us but i want to encourage you read the book of revelation keep keep keep digging into that because john the writer of revelation says in opening verses blessed are you who read the words of this book and you don't want to get to heaven one day and run into john and john tell you ask you how'd you like my foot and he s