This episode (part 2 of 2) discusses the seven mountains of culture, a concept first shared by Youth With a Mission founder Loren Cunningham — Arts & Entertainment, Business, School, Family, Government, Media, and the Church. Islam has done a good job infiltrating these spheres and it’s time for Christians to rise up collectively and become active, awake and informed. Pastor Joe suggests three practical ways for Christians to apply change in these areas, while keeping a love for the Muslim people as central in our hearts.

This sermon by Joe McIntyre was recorded more than 10 years ago but is perhaps even more relevant today. Listen to Part 1 here, if you haven’t already.

Mentioned In This Episode

Sharam Hadian
Loren Cunningham
Francis Schaeffer
John C. Maxwell

Full Transcript

But if there was a vision for all realms of culture being invaded by the Christians, not only would revival be sustained, but it would become reformation. And that’s what we’re looking for. We’re not just looking for some kind of a revival, although I’m in favor of all the revival, we can have. But see, we’ve got to move beyond revival thinking, we’ve got to start thinking reformation, we’ve got to think we must invade the culture, or the culture will be totally invaded by things we don’t like.

So what I, when I was thinking about this, there’s some things and I’ve sort of touched on them already. But let me just suggest, whatever realm you’re called to of these seven realms, first of all, learn your authority in Christ. Learn that where you go, you carry Christ with you, and you carry the authority. If you look at it this way. It’s like you get a piece of paper up here, you draw a line down the middle, and you put over here, let’s see the authority of Christ, all authority in heaven and on earth. And then over here, you put the devil and all that’s left for him. There’s none. Except it would appear that we’re waiting for him to come down and fix it and he’s waiting for us to wake up and fix it using his authority. So you have to learn your authority. The name of Jesus is above every name and at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and you come in His Name. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Secondly, we need to draw heavens wisdom for the sphere we’re called to. One of the great illustrations of this is the servant woman who was working for Naaman’s wife. She was a captive. She was working as a servant, but her influence in that family led to a king encountering the living God of Israel and reshaping that relationship, because she was faithful where she was called. It’s not about being kings. I mean, we want as many Christians as we can to rise to as high level of authority as they can. But wherever you are, wherever God has placed you, your influence matters. Because you could point a key person to Christ. What we fail to realize is it’s not the numbers of people that reshape things. It’s a handful of people who mould the culture. What God spoke to Cunningham, he called them the mind moulders. Seven mind molders that create a culture. And so we want to see the wisdom of God released through the church.

Now what this really does is it elevates the believer to a place of very important, see, we’ve kind of had in the church, “Well, you know, there’s ministry, and then there’s you lay folks.” You know, it’s kind of a tiered, you know, “There’s Jesus, and then there’s me, the pastor, and then there’s you folk.” Well, that’s not what God told ministries to do. They’re to equip the saints, so they can do their life task on the God and in the power of God and in the wisdom of God with the favor of God. Serve in a Christ like spirit, wherever you are. You can’t be the critic of your boss and pray for him effectively. I know that’s a shocker. I mean, there may be much to criticize, but you have to forsake your right to join the pool around the water cooler that’s criticizing leadership. Because if you partake of that you’ve lost your authority. Because you have to come in a Christ-like spirit of serving. And if they’re the worst pagan in the world, that’s not your problem. Pray for them. Pray for the business. Do everything you can to be a blessing. Because you’re there, they can be blessed. That regardless of the economic season, God can still find ways to get blessing where his people are.

The other thing is, and this is one that I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately is draw upon the creativity of God. Because we carry his image and his likeness, and he’s a creator. So you can bring creativity into the sphere in which you’re called. There’s a lot that can be said about that.

But the last one really was was believe in the favor of God. Now, do you remember when Israel was in Egypt, they were slaves? And when they came out, God said, I’m going to give you favor, and you’re going to take their gold and silver when you go out and their clothes. Just think how crazy that is. An oppressed people, servants, slaves, who have little, and they come out, and the people that have held them in captivity, say,
“Oh, please let us give you our gold and our silver and our clothes. They’re losing their entire slave force, and they’re paying them to leave. That’s the power of favor. See, when God’s favor comes upon the people, they find doors opening. See Jesus has the keys. Did you know that? And he opens doors that no man can shut and he shuts doors no man can open.

But we know he can do that. But do we know he can do it for us? Is that our mindset? “Well, you know, we’re just supposed to get through this world until the rapture.”
Well, I’m all for the rapture whenever Jesus wants to come. But I see where he said occupy till I come. When I get when I first got saved in 1970, you know, we didn’t think we should do anything because Jesus was coming any second. And so we were kind of warning people to not miss the boat. But some few years later, he hadn’t come yet. And you know, somewhere along the line I had to break down and get a job. Shocked my theology, you know?

But seriously, one of the things you know the media does is they use fear to sell. Do you realize that a lot of end time theologies use fear to try to get people saved. And Christians listen to it. And they get full of fear about the horror of the end times. In the last days, the mountain of Lord’s house will be established, and the law of God will come forth, and all nations will stream into it. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Make disciples of all nations. You know, that’s a pretty large vision. “But how are we going to do that with all the darkness?” When the darkness comes, the light of God will come upon you and the glory of the Lord will be seen upon you and nations will be drawn to you. We got to start reading those other verses. Don’t you think?

I mentioned that in Genesis 11, about the Tower of Babel, God said that nothing they purpose to do will be withheld from them. Well, you know, God didn’t have a millions of believers in the earth, who could rise up and stand against that movement. But he does today. And we can pray. See, one of the things I really appreciate about Shahrams presentation is you come away with an awareness of the dangers of Islam, but a love for the Muslim people. And I think that’s a very important thing. I have a relative that sends me stuff. Some of its real good, but some of it has that racist antagonism in it that’s easy to imbibe from some quarters, and you’ve got to guard your heart. You can’t allow that. Otherwise, when you meet somebody that’s Muslim, your walls will go up. And what you want is your walls to come down and the life of Jesus to come out. You want to have God’s love for them. Because we’ve got an example right here of what can happen when somebody is is bold enough to share their faith with a Muslim.

As far as praying confusion, this may seem a radical idea, but the psalms are full of what are called imprecatory prayers. And what we’re wanting to do is cause the plans of Islam or the gay community or other factions in our culture, we want to pray confusion into their ranks. Psalm 35, “Let them be brought to dishonor who seek my life, let those be turned back and brought to confusion who plot my hurt.” It’s not ungodly to pray that. You see, we’re praying for their salvation at the same time. But we’re just praying that their plots, that their communication networks will fail. So they’ll leave their van by the side of the road and get their drugs taken away. See, that was millions of dollars for the drug cartels that was stopped by that simple thing. And I think it was a direct answer to prayer, because we were praying that there would be confusion among the the cartels. And so communication lines broke down, and their works were exposed and they were ineffective. And that was just you know, that was probably 25 years ago.

Well, what if an army of Christians rose up to pray and recognize what was going on, with a love in their hearts for all the people in Islam, but an authority to release confusion? Do you think God has angels that their assignment is to confuse the enemy? I do. “Guys, we need you.” In Psalm 40, it says “Let them be ashamed and brought to a mutual confusion who seek to destroy my life.” Brought to confusion. I think that’s an effective tool for many of these things.

There’s a growing amount of teaching on the seven mountains, that’s coming into the church. The site where that Cunningham quote is found talks about how the business Mountain is the key to the rest of these things. Because if Christians don’t prosper, then every attempt to invade the culture will be underfunded. That means business is a high calling,and that God wants to bless the work of the hands of his servants and release amounts of money. As you recall that Shahram said that part of Islam’s teaching is that you give your money to further the cause of Islam in the earth. They’re very intentional about that. Well, dI don’t know if you ever seen the statistics, but there’s just an amazingly small amount of Christians who tithe. But if they all tithed, there’d be millions of dollars for the advancing of the kingdom. But see, people are passive. And sometimes, believe it or not, they’re self centered. I know it’s a shock. My theory is that that’s the way we all are until God really shapes our thinking, to be Kingdom thinking. And we learn to embrace Christ’s likeness.

You know. In my early days of ministry, I just wanted to get the church to know who they were and to walk in the truth. But, you know, I knew we had political responsibility, and I did encourage them to vote, and we sometimes had voters registration. But it wasn’t as clear in my heart, how important it is for us to be involved in all areas of the culture, because there’s kind of a dualistic thing that we fall prey to, and that is, there’s the natural world, and then there’s the spiritual world. And in the Hebrew world, all of life is holy. There isn’t spiritual and secular, that’s Greek. The biblical world is everything that you do in life is holy, and it should be blessed of God, and you should do it with joy as unto the Lord.

And so our task at hand is to wake ourselves up, and to wake up as many believers as we can, so that the army starts to rise up and see the vision. What Cunningham was praying about, wasn’t how to affect politics, it was how to evangelize the world. And God said to him and to Bill Bright, and interestingly enough, three days later, Cunningham’s wife was watching television, and she saw this broadcast of Francis Schaeffer saying the same exact thing. So God has put this vision into his church, so that we can walk in it. You can’t say, just, there’s giants in the land. That just creates fear. What you have to say is there’s giants in the land, but the land is ours, and our enemies are bread for us. Because if God delights in us, he’ll give us the land. That verse is in numbers 13, I think, and Joshua 1.

But you see, those Old Testament pictures, we’re just like them. We can just be intimidated by the giants. And God would have us be men and women of faith. See, God said about Caleb, he said, he has a different spirit about him. Well, let that be the spirit that we imbibe as the spirit of Caleb, that we just say, “Give me this mountain.” That’s what he said, Give me this mountain. I wonder if he knew about those seven mountains. But see, he knew there was a mountain that was his inheritance. And he was ready at the age of 85 to go after it. So we don’t have a retirement program. We just have a refirement program. So Just lay hands on your brain and cast out that spirit of stupid, and there you go.