1. Call to a Solemn Assembly
Blow the trumpet in Zion…

2. Things that Defile the Land
The shedding of innocent blood.
The breakdown of the family through the proliferation of divorce. With it sexual infidelity.
Sexual deviation, specifically, homosexuality (speaks to identity confusion, brings social disorder)
Idolatry, idolatrous altars, worship sites, paganism and its priests.

3. What is a Solemn Assembly?
The urgent call of a leader to all the people he or she leads to come together:
to repent – something has gone wrong, and change begins with us.
to humble themselves, to be broken.
to seek God's face – not merely his hand (openness, transparency, to allow him to see us, to allow us to see him. Moves us to our face.)
to fast and pray, to demonstrate that our greatest hunger is spiritual.
to turn from wicked ways, to change the way we live.

4. What is a Solemn Assembly? Continued
to go back to the pattern of Scripture – often meant hearing God's Word read aloud to the group.
to remove all things and practices from lives that might be displeasing to God and frustrating his purposes in our lives, our homes, our church, our nation.
to worship God with ALL our hearts.
All - to renew the solemn covenant with God that has in some way been broken;
To facilitate the group’s desire to be a more effective instrument in God’s hand;
And to fulfill their specific institutional mission.

5. WHY hold a solemn assembly?
Because -
Of a sense that the city or nation is reaping what it has sown, judgment is looming over the land, and we his people want to fulfill our mission to stand in the gap.
Of a sense that judgment is immanent or already present, the crisis might deepen. And even among God’s people, there is compromise and it is critical that they redirect their lives.
Of fresh revelation. Truth from His word has been ignored. Now rediscovered, we must change.
Of the sense that our change, will make a difference far beyond us.

6. Israel Scheduled Regular Solemn Assemblies:
WEEKLY - Every Sabbath had a Solemn Assembly dimension to it.
MONTHLY - Every New Moon was a call to Assembly.
SEASONALLY - The Feast Days were the events in which Israel gathered to consider their mission in behalf of Yahweh.
ANNUALLY - The Day of Atonement was the most “solemn” of all feast days. It was actually a “fast” day.
SPECIAL - Then, there were “special” Solemn Assemblies called for specific reasons. Moments in which the whole nation gathered to stand before a holy God and repent.

7. The Call to Solemn Assembly by the Prophet Joel:
"Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that still nurse … the bridegroom … out of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers … weep between the porch and the altar … Let them say, Spare your people, O Lord, give not your heritage to reproach that the nations should rule over them: saying … Where is their God?" (Joel 2:15-17).

8. Israel Had A Number of Specially Called Solemn Assemblies:
II Chronicles 12: Rehoboam King
II Chronicles 15: Asa King
II Chronicles 20: Jehoshaphat King
II Chronicles Hezekiah King
II Chronicles Josiah King
Ezra 10: Ezra Priest
Nehemiah Nehemiah-Civil Leader
Joel Joel Prophet

9. Revival True revival is not God’s response to a plan or program.
True revival is God’s response to man’s hunger that in turn produces complete obedience to His Word, consistent prayer, honest confession, sincere repentance, and holy living.
Bishop Tim Hill
Beyond the Mist pg. 22

10. Josiah’s Revival Reason for the need of revival:
The evil reign of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-16)
Reinstituted pagan worship (v. 3-5)
Sacrificed his children & practiced the occult (v. 6)
Desecrated the temple (v. 7)
National spiritual decline (v. 16)
Judgment pronounced (v )

11. Josiah’s Revival Restoration of the Temple.
Rediscovery of the Word of God.
Repentance by the king, leaders, and nation.
Removal of idolatrous practices.
Return of God’s favor and blessing.

12. 7 Critical Elements in a Solemn Assembly
Precipitating Event: calamity / crisis
2. Discovery of Limitations –
Eternal Realities break into the here and now.
Human frailty is again in view.
3. Shared Sense of Desperation –
Not exasperation, but a deep yearning for God’s intervention, renewal, something lost.

13. Critical Elements (cont.)
4. New Discovery of the Word of God –
What went wrong?
Why did this happen?
Internal search.
What does the Bible say? Find ourselves coming up short.
Willingness to accept responsibility.
Deep Contrition (humility and sorrow) –
Not only over the calamity, but any personal contribution to it. And especially over sin.
There is brokenness. Tears. Reverence for God. Respect for his moral laws.
Acceptance of our share of responsibility with repentance and change.

14. 7 Elements Direction – 7. Destiny -
This is the watchword of the prophets: “Turn”. We must change.
Symbolic action - fasting, acts of obedience, sacrifice, sackcloth and ashes, vows, rededications, reconciliation – is all aimed at renewing the damaged relationship with God.
7. Destiny -
Clear sense of mission. God has a purpose for us. We are on the edge of missing destiny, purpose for us and our children unless we purify ourselves.
Sincerity deepens. Passion returns. Ownership of mission becomes personal. The renewed relationship with God is as important as the mission.

15. The Movement PRECIPITATING EVENT Discovery of Limitations
Created to be: Image (Relational)
PRECIPITATING EVENT
Discovery of Limitations
Shared Desperation
Deep Contrition (Attitude)
Destiny
Direction/Do (Action)?
Discerning Process
At any point, the process can break down!
Called to do: (Vocational)

16. Discovery

17. Discovery
God, we stand in a moment in which we realize that we are no match for our present dilemma.
We have been far to self-reliant, and too little dependent upon you.
We need you, not merely your hand.
We confess, that without you, we are empty believers, woefully inadequate for the task in the present moment:
We cannot do what you have called us to do, alone. We cannot be what you want us to be without renewing our relationship with you at the altar of sacrifice.

18. Discovery (cont.)
We are fighting against unseen forces that no mere human can subdue.
Our solutions fail us. Our formulas will no longer work. Our programs are inadequate. Our cisterns are dry. We need resources, particularly, spiritual power, wisdom and discernment.
We have tried to do divine work with human skill. We have tried to carry on a holy mission with soiled hands. We have failed – not merely the nations around us. It is us, O God, in need of your grace.

19. Desperation

20. Desperation God we ask you to break our hearts.
Bring us to a place of deep dependence upon you.
We confess our inadequacy for the task.
We acknowledge our frailty.
We submit to your sovereignty.
We ask not to be brought to a place of exasperation, but a place of deep yearning for you. Not just for your help, but for you!
We repent of being casual over eternal issues. We repent of dry eyes. Of prayer that is more talk than tears.
Give us the grace to move beyond prayer – to cry out to you.

21. Discernment

22. Discernment We cautiously ask you, to show us our condition.
Why are we failing at the task – at least here in America? What has gone wrong with the harvest?
Why is the church lukewarm?
Before you, with the help of the Holy Spirit, lead us into honest self-examination – in the light of the Scripture.
Let the prophets speak again. Bring a cultural change to us, to the church, to the nation.
Help us see again, a clear vision for what you want us to be – your representative people, holy. And what you want us to do – reach the world with the gospel.

23. Grace to Weep

24. Grace to Weep: We weep for the murdered babies.
We weep for 40 years of public school education without a Bible.
We weep in the face of rising teen suicide, pregnancies, and drug addiction.
We weep over our increasingly hostile and violent society.
We weep over our shamelessness, the loss of our ability to blush at sin.
We weep over the plague of pornography, a symbol of our national search for satisfying love.

25. WE WEEP (cont.):
We weep over the hollowness of commitment and displaced children, wounded by the divorce of their parents.
We weep over the absence of fathers - godly men who would dare to be boldly Christ-like.
We weep over the moral vacuum of our nation, the silence, if not the absence, of godly leaders in government who have the moral courage to call us back to our roots.
We weep over the rewriting of history, to script out the existence of Christ and the influence of God and the Bible in our early American history. We weep over the lie.

26. WE WEEP (cont.):
We weep over the loss of a Creator God, and the replacement of a godless philosophy called evolution that reduces our value by making us a product of chance, when we are a special creation of God.
We weep over the banning of the Bible and the repression of Christian speech.
We weep over the rise of cultists and astrologists, over the concept of pluralism, when Christ himself proclaimed that he was the only way.
We weep over the spirit of deception that grows more powerful each day, whose tentacles seem to threaten the church itself.

27. WE WEEP (cont.): We weep over the demise of the traditional family.
We weep over homosexuals and lesbians, whose pain is manifest in anger at those who remind them that the scripture calls homosexual behavior sin.
We weep over those who have innocently, and not so innocently, contracted AIDS.
We weep ... over what might been, over what was at one time, over what is threatened, unless God sends a powerful national revival.
We weep over America, many nations, divided and bitterly torn, without a shared consensus of values, no longer under obedience to God and his word.
We weep!

28. WE PRAY ...

29. AND WE PRAY ... And, we pray - "Spare thy people!"
We are the salt and the light. If there is decay and darkness, we must accept the blame. We have failed.
We have not been the people of God that we need to be. Judgment must begin in the house of the Lord. It is the church that must repent for the condition of the nation.
We pray, that we will not be a reproach and the nations will not reign over us. We pray that they will not say, "Where is their God?"
We pray for a church in danger of becoming a reproach. We pray for a Christian people, more influenced than we are influencers.

30. Deep Contrition

31. Deep Contrition Break our hearts.
First, with the recognition that we have sinned. Second, that we have failed you.
May we not cover – and conceal.
May we deal ruthlessly with our own sin.
May we be deeply aware that we have fallen short of God’s glory.
Change us. Change the Church. Change the Nation.
Rend our hearts.

32. New Direction

33. New Direction Redirect us. Renew us. Fill us with the Holy Spirit.
Help us to redefine our relationship with you as the representative people of God.
Make us hungry for private, personal encounters with you.
Help us to rekindle our passion for the lost.
Make holiness more than buzz word. Bring integrity, authenticity back to your people.

34. Personal Destiny

35. Destiny
You called me ... Let me fulfill my destiny. Don’t let me die with promise in me. Let me have something to lay at your feet.
Let the character of my life be as important as the practical work in my life.
Let me glorify you with my life itself.
You created us to be with you.
You called us to work for you.
Let my relationship with you be as important as my vocation for you.

36. Corporate Destiny

37. Destiny (cont.)
You founded our church. You birthed it. Let us see it as more than a building to which we come for worship.
Let us fulfill our destiny.
Renew our movement. Restore our vision. Fill our pastor and his peers with the Holy Spirit. March through your Church around the world with a mighty revival that renews the missional DNA of your Body.

38. Call to a Solemn Assembly
Blow the trumpet in Zion…