We failed to protect the church and to preach good doctrine
and address those moral and cultural issues
that everyone else is talking to, but for fear we haven't.
Just seems like there's a window of opportunity open
over 2025 for a real spiritual renewal and revival.
2025 is upon us and we are looking at what is God saying
for this upcoming year.
And with me today is Pastor Travis Johnson.
And we are gonna talk about what God is telling him
about 2025, but we've got a great story
that you gotta stick around for,
but what he's been doing with Christmas trees.
So stick around with that.
Pastor Travis, it's great to have you here.
Hey, it's great to be with you, John.
So let's talk about what God is saying
about the year 2025 to you and your church
and the people that God has you influencing with.
What is God saying and how do we need to respond to this?
Absolutely, a couple of things that I'm hearing right now.
Looking out at 2025 and in the cultural mash
of this environment that we're in,
where there's so much, there's like a window
of opportunity open.
It feels like to me, I don't know that it's revival,
but it's a window of opportunity for revival.
And we see really a revival of the American spirit.
I feel like we are going to see a revival of the family.
You know, not necessarily speaking,
spiritually church revival, but just a renewal
and a refocusing, a re-gripping of the family
and a revival of things good and decent and profitable.
So for me, for the church, it seems like
there's a window of opportunity open over 2025
for a real spiritual renewal and revival.
And so in that context, what I'm hearing in my heart,
what I'm sensing, what I find myself speaking regularly
is that in that environment,
it's not a time for a lot of talk.
It's not a time for a lot of consensus building.
It's a time to go.
And so what I'm hearing is take dominion,
show up, take dominion.
The environment's already been prepped.
Step in, step forward, take dominion and go.
And then with that, people will come with us.
People will come along.
But then there's always a temptation
to stop and try and bring everyone,
get everyone deciding with you,
working through that process.
And that's good.
That's who we are, pastors.
And a lot of Christians are like this
in that we are conflict avoiders
because we have a need to be liked.
And I think some of it's probably natural,
but some of it's built to just
from kind of the work that we do.
But what I would say is go with the goers.
Go with the goers.
Praise God we wanna bring everybody along.
Let me just say this to you, John,
which I know is no problem.
And you are alive and vibrant in your faith
and as enthusiastic as anyone that I've ever met.
I walk away strengthened in my faith.
But to you, to my wife, to my friends,
my children, my church, believers,
is I would say this, I want you to go with me.
I want you.
I'm going to heaven.
I'm going into the presence of God.
I'm going to take dominion in 2025.
I'm gonna move forward and I want you to come with me.
But if you don't, I'm going.
I'm going.
There's this tremendous opportunity.
I feel like God is orchestrating so much.
He's done so much look back.
It's not the way we would have done it.
I wouldn't have planned it that way.
All of these little miracles and all of these things
that have been organized together
to bring us to this point, I wouldn't have done it.
But when you look back in retrospect,
you go, look what the Lord's done.
And so here's what I'm doing.
I'm on the threshold.
I'm walking through the door in 2025.
I'm not looking back to see who's following.
I have confidence that as I walk through,
people are following.
I know that because I'm following other people
that are walking through that door as well.
There are generals.
There are some sweet little grandmothers
that have been on their knees before the Lord praying,
seeking His face, calling out our names out over decades.
And they're walking through.
I'm walking through too.
And I think the Lord's really going to bless the church.
I think we're going to see revival in 25.
Amen.
I love that.
As you were talking about this, there's
a window of opportunity to do this as well.
I just mentally had this picture of an apple orchard.
And the apples were ripe.
And there's a time to pick.
But if you let them sit there too long,
they're going to rot.
And they're going to fall off.
And they're not good for anything at that point.
So what I'm feeling is that there's a time
that the fruit is ripe.
And this is the time to pick.
And if you wait too long, it's going to rot.
Oh, 100%.
Think about this too.
Let's talk about giving and givers.
You can't stop a giver from giving.
Givers, they give.
All you can do is make sure that you
have soil that's fertile and productive enough
that they would want to give into what you're working on.
And so the Lord is looking for people
who are a good investment and people who will listen
and who will follow.
And so the time between when we see a thing
and when we act on a thing is important.
You talk about apples, but hey, when God opens the door,
it's not the time to second guess and to say,
well, I wouldn't have structured it like this.
Are you sure?
Is this the right time?
No, when you see it, you walk through that opportunity
as quickly as possible.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people approach
an opportunity.
And then they overanalyze it, analyze it so long
that then the opportunity was gone.
Someone came along and took it.
So our ability to respond and say yes to the Lord
is powerful.
I'll say this, but a parent, when talking to their child,
if the child obeys but is delayed obedience,
delayed obedience is disobedience.
There's a window of opportunity the Lord's open for us.
And I just want to be as early on in walking
through that as possible.
I feel it.
I feel I can see it.
Yeah, that is really encouraging about this 2025 year.
What else is God saying to you about this?
For maybe nationally, I know you have some influence
with other Christian leaders nationally.
What are some other things that maybe God is saying about that
that you can share?
Well, I do think that one thing that's happened over the last,
not just the last year, but really 2020
was kind of a dividing line.
A lot of the people that we look to, a lot of the voices
have changed.
People were forced to pick a side or a path.
And then so many of us were radicalized.
You're surprised at the pace at which things happened.
So there's a kind of a reorganizing of voices
that God's raising up.
I'm thankful for that.
I am.
So there's some of that conversation.
But within this, my mind and heart
is going to Revelation chapter 3 when Jesus is talking
to the church at Sardis.
And the Lord says, strengthen that which remains.
Well, we don't have a lot.
The church is so compromised.
There is compromise in the church.
I mean, look, we have been hammered by woke gender
ideology, our kids have.
In school, the pronoun hospitality, the restrooms,
all of that stuff, it's crazy talk.
It's happening in every state.
You think we're aborting our unborn children?
There are so many things.
Religious liberty is at stake, free speech has been at stake.
And think about how many pastors said nothing, said nothing.
Here's what the Lord says to the church at Sardis.
He said, you are known for your good reputation.
So we're nice, respectable churches.
We're nice, polite churches.
We have this nice veneer, and good things are being said.
But we failed to protect the church
and to preach good doctrine and address those moral and cultural issues
that everyone else is talking to, but for fear we haven't.
And so the Lord says to that the way to approach that
is to strengthen that which remains.
It's not to go back and try and get consensus,
but it's to build up what is good and righteous.
And when we do that, that's what would have moved the church at Sardis
through.
And so my prayer is that we as a church step into that moment.
And I see that organizationally.
I see that in groups like National Faith Advisory Board,
the people that are coming together, the courage that has really come up.
Man, I think about pastors like Jensen Franklin.
I'll never forget him, a 19-year-old boy, 18-year-old boy at a youth camp.
And Jensen was much younger, playing his saxophone.
He's doing an altar call.
He pulls me up onto the stage, and he's prophesying over me.
He looks at me, says, you were not made for small things.
And I'm just going, of course, I was a mess at that age.
And seeing those, in my mind, heroes in the faith,
consistently, faithfully through the years, moving on through,
and seeing so many of those people rallying together.
And their voices from different streams, too, coming together.
Moving into me, it feels like there's a real mustering taking place.
And there are people all over looking for someone
to wave that standard on the battlefield so that people can muster to that.
It feels like that's already happened and is happening even more.
I feel like you've seen some of that stuff just politically,
a reassertion of goodness in leadership.
But spiritually, I see it.
I believe God's raising up some great voices in this moment.
Amen, amen.
Pastor Travis, one of the things that God is raising you up to do
is actually changing lives by buying Christmas trees
and giving those around.
And you told me before we started this recording
that you had a very unique experience with this outreach
that you've been doing, which has started off in your church
whenever your church was in the Miami area
and has grown to many, many states.
And you've been able to give away millions of dollars through this.
But in responding to some of the disasters that have happened recently,
God brought you to a very unique place.
Can you tell us this story?
So, John, that's called ByatreeChangeAlife.com.
It's a small group missions project that just got out of control.
We were paying for raising money for an adoption
for a little girl from Ethiopia into a Coast Guard family.
Now it's across America.
This last year, it's amazing.
All of us together, it's not like one big person, but all of us together,
tens of thousands of families have helped us to give away over $13 million
to help children.
So as a part of that, we were sponsoring Christmas at Chimney Rock.
And Chimney Rock had really captured America's imagination.
During Hurricane Helene, a 20-foot wall of water comes through that town.
And just a lot of devastation.
Homes wiped out.
Businesses wiped out.
Four feet of silt in downtown Chimney Rock.
And so there's so many stories there.
Bottom line, we were there for the Christmas tree lighting,
just that little area.
And then the next day, I was standing outside, and I met two families.
Some kids run up to the Christmas tree, and they're seeing decoration
on the Christmas tree.
We had decorated the tree with items that had been scavenged downstream
from the flood.
And they were shoes.
They were little toys.
They were little guitars that had been lost from people's homes.
So these little kids come up, and they're seeing their toys and clothing
in the tree.
It was the most joyful, tearful moment.
Really?
These items were in your house?
Really awesome.
Yeah.
What?
All right.
So what all's yours?
That's what.
Like everything.
Like everything?
Let's see you guys.
I was so glad to be there for that.
It led to some prayer.
I love you.
Bottom line, one member of the family is actually
moving to our area just above Orange Beach here in Alabama.
By the way, it's like heaven.
It's beautiful.
Get to heaven, John.
But if you can't, come on to Orange Beach.
But they're moving down.
And so tomorrow, we have a bunch of people from the church
that are meeting them with their moving van,
and we're unloading their house.
It was just this amazing thing.
And I felt like God had just bent down to kiss the earth,
and I got caught right in the smack.
I thought, this is really heaven.
So it was a wonderful time.
So these little kids were seeing their own toys
on this Christmas tree.
And I think one of the questions that everybody's
going to ask in the comments, and let us know in the comments.
Make sure you're subscribed to this channel and everything.
Did these kids get to just like, that's my toy,
and then actually get to receive that,
or is it just staying for decoration?
Tell us about getting those things back.
I mean, obviously, they want to take those down.
But I watched them.
The kids didn't even ask.
They were just, if you see the video,
it's euphoria and tears, and the family
is bouncing around trying to take all the pictures.
Actually, when that happened, I was behind the tree
taking some video of the tree, because it was so remarkable.
I mean, I don't know.
It was like seeing something in color in the middle of a black
and white TV show.
And so that all happened.
I actually have some other footage where I just say, hey,
if you'd like, I can take a picture.
I didn't even realize what was going on at that moment.
So I stepped over to take the picture.
And then that's when all of this euphoria starts to come out.
So hey, my family went through Hurricane Andrew.
We lost our home.
My dad lost his church.
I don't have a lot of pictures from when I was little.
He slept under a picnic table for a week
while he's pastoring the church as National Guard.
And that sort of thing came in.
He got an RV.
And I tried to talk him out of staying.
I wanted him to leave.
But he's like, I would be a terrible pastor
if I left my church right now.
But if you ask my dad, he would say
that was the best time of his ministry,
because it was so terrible.
Nobody should have to go through that.
Those dams breaking upstream and just wiping everybody out.
Nobody should go through that.
However, when people come together
and they help one another, it's extravagant.
It's actually a fulfillment of scripture
that the world will know us by our love for one another.
And I've seen that over and over.
Even in the comments of this video that's gone viral,
you see non-Christians saying, this is what it's all about.
This is beautiful.
Thank you for letting us know that there's still
people that care.
So John, it was awesome, man.
It was just awesome.
That's beautiful.
Pastor Jarvis, thank you for sharing that story with us.
That's very touching, especially this time of year.
We know that we're celebrating the greatest gift
that God has ever given us, Jesus coming to this world
to eventually die on the cross for us.
But he had to come as a baby as the greatest gift
that God has ever given us.
And we do that to each other.
We give gifts to each other to honor that.
And what you've done is give us a great gift as well.
So Pastor Jarvis, thanks so much for joining us here today.
Thank you so much.
And let me say this.
If anybody wants to be a part of By a Tree, Change a Life,
you can host a site at your church.
It's amazing what's done.
It's so much more than anything that you can imagine.
You end up making some incredible friends.
You can fill out an interest form at By a Tree, Change a Life.com.