Sean Feucht: No Turning Back – Revival, Government Tyranny & Standing Firm in Crisis

0:00 Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this edition of the Strang Report podcast. I am so excited to talk to my good friend, Sean Foyt, who just wrote this book called No Turning Back. And full disclosure, I published the book, but I just finished reading it myself and I was excited. We wouldn't have published it if we weren't excited about it. But Sean, you did a great job on this book. I even listened to your credits where you said, this was one of the hardest things you ever did. And when I think of all, you know, you had smoke bombs and services, the kinds of things all over the world. So how in the world was writing a book the hardest thing you ever did and why? Well, you know, I think the book to me, you know, I don't, I'm not like maybe a typical author. I mean, I've written some books, but I don't get on a cycle of just writing them every couple years. I'll really only write them when I feel like, hey, this is a mandate from the Lord. You know, this is a word I need to and what happens in that and what happened with this book is I actually begin to live through it. I wanted to write a book on spiritual warfare to wake up the church. And having gone through a lot of the things that we went through. I didn't realize that actually writing this book would enter me into a whole new level of spiritual spiritual warfare. Yeah.

1:24 So we were kind of, I was writing this, I would say in real time as we were walking through this stuff, which I think kind of makes it unique in a way because it's like a fresh word. It's not like a concept that's abstract or theological or something that's far off. It's actually something we were wrestling through at the time of writing it. That's kind of what made it a unique project for sure. Well, I thought it was very well written. In fact, I told a friend that as I was listening to it, because I listened to the audio version, which you read, which I enjoyed hearing it in your voice, that it kind of reminded me of someone like Mark Batterson, who's in ministry and he would use his own experiences. I mean, just the cadence and the way you wrote it. I thought it was great. And also the first time I ever heard of you, about you was when you ran for Congress.

2:22 Yeah. And then when you lost and went in Congress and I found out you were with Bill Johnson's ministry, I didn't know much more about you. And then when COVID happened, Um, you defied the COVID lockdowns and, uh, probably a lot of people know this and hopefully if they read our Charisma, uh, website, they know about it. Cause we've covered, every time you did something that we felt was newsworthy, which was a lot, we tried to cover it. I remember you even had boycotts that, or maybe not a boycott, but, uh, I'm not saying it right. Uh, you had demonstrations at Disney when Disney did a couple of really wild things. You had one there in California where you are, you had one here in Orlando, which is where I am. I actually wanted to go to it, but I was out of town, but just tell me about your.

3:11 Odyssey a little bit, and especially about the era with COVID and, and all the things. And then I went about, I have a whole list of questions. I want to talk about Canada too, which I just think is outlandish. Yeah, I mean, I think the whole, I think if you just look at my life or the years of ministry coming out of college, a lot of it was just following and being obedient to the word of the Lord. And a lot of times that looks like different things in different seasons, whether the branding is different or the ministry name is different or whatever, but it's been very consistent. for us on our mandate and our calling since the beginning when we had no kids and now when we have four, two of them are teenagers.

3:59 So which is a whole new world. But for us as a family, it's just been pursuing God and making him known and being bold and, you know, standing up in the face of fear. And so, you know, in prior years, you know, pre -COVID, that looked a lot of doing mission work in closed nations in North Korea. I went inside of North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. You know, we planted works across the Middle East in the middle of wars, rescuing kids out of the sex trade and child trafficking, which we still do. But then I really felt like, man, you know, I can't go to any more. How many more prayer meetings can I go to where we're praying for the end of evil legislation of abortion or child perversion or just all the different things. I, you know, I'll raise my hand up and really felt the Lord called me to run. And, you know, which by the way, side note, you know, really when the Lord tells you to do something like, I felt like obviously God told me to run because I was going to win. I'm like, why else would he told me to do this? You know, but I was in California and running in a very, I mean, they said it was a purple district. It was a very blue district. And, uh, but yet I had this optimism like, okay, God, you're calling me into this. Like there's no way I can go wrong.

5:19 Um, and of course I didn't win. And it took me a little bit to realize that the Lord wanted me to peek behind the veil of government, see the corruption, see the landscape, see, and that really began to set me up for what happened in COVID, which the first case of the virus happened in the district I was running in a month after I lost my election. And so it was like really this God set up for me to be able to see how that district in California responded, what the governor did, all the restrictions, all the tyrannical, all the hypocrisy. which enabled us to respond in the way that we did. And I couldn't, I don't know that I would have responded in the way that we did in COVID and the lockdowns had it not been for my run in Congress. So all that to say, God arranges the seasons and sets us up as long as we're willing to follow Him and be obedient, He'll make it all work out. Sometimes it takes us a few years to look and see, oh, I see His plan. But yeah, then we launched, you know, Let Us Worship. and became the largest, you know, revival pushback movement against that. The lockdowns, we went to all 50 U .S. capitals leading up to the election, held the largest church services in America during the pandemic. And still even to this day, this summer, I would say across America, I don't know that there's another ministry doing more outdoor revival events than we have

6:51 hosted even this summer. So it's been a wild journey. It's been full of... twists and turns and a lot of opposition in many different ways. And so that's why even the book writing about how to navigate this spiritual dimension has been a message that's been really dear to me, something that we've lived. Well, I have so much respect for you. And I also wanted to mention that I really liked the title of the book, No Turning Back. I thought it was very appropriate. What I didn't really... realized that it's a lyric of a song. I have decided to follow Jesus, which is repeated several times and it says no turning back, no turning back. Sean, that is one of my favorite songs. In our churches, we don't sing it, but when I was a kid, I responded to the... Something the Lord was calling me to several times while they sang this song I have decided to follow Jesus and so it really meant a lot to me and I thought it was very appropriate But there's a very interesting story that I did not know about the man from India who wrote that song mm -hmm yeah, I mean it was written by a martyr basically and He, uh, he, he wrote the, and I talk about this in the book, you know, um, and I actually didn't know about this. I mean, I'd been singing that song a lot at altar calls across America. And most recently in one of the biggest venues was in the Kennedy center

8:21 at Charlie Kirk's, um, Memorial, his vigil that took place in the Kennedy center in DC. I sang it. Um, And then all of a sudden I began to realize, man, there's such anointing in this. There's such, it's surrender in this. And then I researched it and realized it was actually a martyr that wrote it. And, you know, they were getting ready to take him away and he knew he would never see, and his whole family, he knew he would never see his community again and he was... They were you know, he was going through his mind is this is this worth it? And he said no turning back, you know, we've decided we made up our mind and so I think that that was really appropriate for Not only of course in the season the vigils that we did and stuff in in the wake of Charlie's life But I think also everyday for believers, you know, as we walk through different seasons and especially ones where we know God's called us on this path, but it's like we're not used to suffering. We're not used to persecution.

9:28 We saw that in COVID where, oh, the government knows what it's doing. We're not going to push back. I feel like the Lord is trying to train our muscles, you know, on how to stand up, how to rise up and how to be bold and how to really say in the face of great suffering, I've made up my mind and I'm not going to change. I've decided to follow Jesus. So that song has been something that's really been special to me, to my family as we've walked through different seasons over the last several years. And special to me too. Let me ask you, how well did you know Charlie Kirk and why did or what were the circumstances that led to your leading the music at that memorial at the Kennedy Center? Yeah, Charlie and I were good friends. I mean, I was texting with him, you know, the day before, you know, his assassination.

10:24 And so we joined together and did a lot of joint things together. I was at many of the Turning point end of the year events. We did pastors conferences together and For the first year of the Kingdom of the Capitol tour Which we went to all 50 US capitals hosting lettuce worship, you know preaching the gospel Act, you know activism standing up for biblical truths and foundations and altar calls ministry communion at every single US Capitol, Charlie was a part of the first year of that. So we kind of did that together. Um, so I, I had a history of, of things with Charlie and I mean, I think, uh, you know, I, everybody.

11:16 in the beginning, in some of the early days of Turning Point, there wasn't as much of a buy -in. Obviously people were called Christian nationalists and white supremacists and whatever label they like to put. And so I was one of the kind of the only worship leaders that was like, hey, I don't really care. I just walked through COVID and, you know, Charlie was one of the first ones to endorse me when I took my congressional run. He said, yeah, we need a long -haired worship leader in Congress. So he was one of the first ones to join with me. And so I was one of the first ones to join with him when he started doing these events. I said, I'll come lead worship. So several times when the president was there, different people, I did worship and took the heat for it in those days. So when it came time for some of the vigils and stuff they had planned, especially the Kennedy Center, I was like, Man, it would be an honor to get to do worship for that. So it was special. Well, let's talk about COVID. You know, that's something that none of us will ever forget. Now, I happened to live down here in what we like to call the free state of Florida. And yes, we had shutdowns, but they were mild compared to other places. Although the very first pastor to get arrested was Rodney Howard Brown down in Tampa. They released him fairly quickly, but I didn't think I would live long enough to see that kind of thing happen.

12:42 Yet it does happen and it's a whole lot worse in Canada and you have quite a story about Canada too. In fact, it's just hard for me to believe how biased the Canadians are. Do you think America is going to go that far left or do you think the tide is perhaps turning because different Christians are now standing up for Like you are standing up. And also we, we do have more freedoms in our constitution than, than the Canadians do. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, I, I actually had to push, push to Santa's a little bit in, in, uh, in a pandemic because I was getting fined $2 ,000 a day worshiping Jesus in Florida. So.

13:24 I said, stop posting about you being the free state and you guys are, you know, finding me more than. So anyway, that was a Palm Beach thing. And, and, and, uh, you know, you find these pockets of very antagonistic, anti -Christian legislators in every state, whether it's a blue state or a red state, they're still there, you know? And, um, so thankfully we got all those fines reversed, but we had to fight in Florida for that. Um, now when it comes to Canada, I think, you know, I had never imagined, I was actually waiting to the Vax requirements, because for a while there in order to cross the border into Canada, you had to have a vaccine card and I was doing that. So I was waiting and I was seeing these pastors being drugged off to prison in Canada.

14:12 I mean, a group in Montana, Canada was like right across the border. Went up went going there all the time but done ministry in Canada for 20 years back and forth across the country So it's a place that I really love people. I really love And I was just crushed to see what was happening during kovat in their nation So when they when they dropped the vax requirement, we made a plan to go from coast to coast Really modeling some of those early prayers and even in Canada, you know, they have this this statement, I believe it's even on their seal or on their whatever in Ottawa, but it's from that Christ would have dominion from sea to sea. And so that was kind of what we ran with to bring Spark Awakening and Revival and Hunger, not knowing that we would face this. unbelievable bias and hypocrisy and really this anti -Christian bigotry. Some call it Christophobia that was happening in Canada.

15:19 That was last summer, which ended up being one of the biggest news stories. And the devil always overplays his hand. We had 12 permits that we had planned, paid for, We know we brought all of our gear, our bus, our truck, paid all the taxes, all the, you know, the insane expenses it is to bring stuff across the border, the duties, the fees, blah, blah, blah. And we pay for all of these permits, had everything in place. And then one by one, they began canceling them. They canceled 11 out of 12 of our permits. What did you do then? Oh, you know, what we did, we don't back down for anything. We just, you know, found alternate venues, did it in farmer's fields.

16:05 I mean, we just, wherever and however. I thought that was cool about the field because it wasn't just any field. It was a wheat field and the farmer needed to harvest the wheat before it could become a big parking lot or whatever you needed. Yeah. It was actually really prophetic. That was really, really cool. That was the first, it was in Nova Scotia actually. And that was the first one that was canceled from a bunch of crazy LGTBQ activists, you know, that raised a fuss and, and, you know, they, they, the city canceled it. We had the most epic venue there in Nova Scotia, very historic place on the water.

16:47 They canceled it because of safety concerns and. So yeah, we had to move it last minute and we couldn't, I mean, the sad part to be really, you know, honest is that we couldn't find church venues that would have us across the country. So the pastors were afraid, is that why? It was. They were just so afraid. Some of them were in the middle of building projects and they didn't want to lose favor with the city. I mean, just, I can go on and on the list, you know, of just how weak and soft and pathetic and frustrated, but the good thing is that there were some bold pastors. There were some that rose up and said, no, we're gonna do this. There were some, and definitely there were people. And I think we ended up, we're in the middle of three lawsuits in Canada right now. I'm not a big lawsuit guy, but here I am finding myself in the center of lawfare these days, which is the way it goes right now. But I feel like God brought us into this national conversation of pushing back this bigotry and the government trying to silence the voice of the church. Really, they were trying to cancel every other venue we would find for stupid reasons. And then we had a government contractor employee that was operating in a secret antifa cell that broke inside of a church when

18:20 we were worshiping and threw smoke bombs at us. And the police didn't find him, didn't arrest him. They find us for hosting the worship service. So I don't even understand how that's possible. What did you do wrong? Well, their claim is that... They're claiming that we didn't have a permit to do it inside of a church. I mean, but what I'm saying is this is how stupid it is. It's like, you don't need a permit to worship God inside of a church. That's what churches are built for. But what Canada doesn't realize, and a lot of people in the US, is how strong and powerful these anti -Christian people are that are in authority and how they will do anything that they can to silence the church. So we get called dramatic and we get, you know, I get, um, you know, a zillion YouTube videos about how it makes stuff up. And it's just this dramatic thing. And it's like, no, no. Everybody that was in the room saw this guy break in, throw smoke bombs at us with the purpose of emptying the church so that we had to go outside where there was 500 raging protesters ready to do all kinds of horrible things to us. Um, that was the goal, but yet. What's wild is that the smoke alarms did not go off, which is crazy because the pastor was like, we light a birthday candle in here and they go off. He's like, it's a miracle.

19:53 You know, so it's just, it's just wild how God works. But the point is, is that that confrontation brought a national conversation to the forefront in Canada. And it was like, well, why And it was even like normal people. Like, we had people showing up to the Let Us Worship event, so we're not church people. Just because they were caught up in this religious liberties conversation, and they were like, what is so crazy about what these guys are doing? Like, what's so wild about this long -haired dude? He wants to worship God and do whatever, let him do it, you know? So we actually had public opinion turn on this one issue simply because we provoked something. You know, we didn't plan for it. We didn't want it.

20:40 It ended up costing me a ton of money. So much money that we never got back. Um, having to pivot and do secondary events. We're still in lawsuits to get the initial money back, you know? So, uh, it's not easy. That's why to bring a full circle about the book, uh, it's not easy. It's not, it's not a walk in the park, but yet it's part of following Jesus. And he's, he's been with us every step of the way. You know, one of the things that stood out to me is you said the greatest challenges, the greatest emergency in history are also the greatest opportunities for revival. Can you elaborate? Yeah. Yeah, I think the great, like, I mean, we say the greater the resistance, the greater the breakthrough.

21:27 I think that the, you know, there's opportunities when things get so bad or, you know, I mean, you look in America, it's like, it had to get so bad for people to actually wake up. And I think if you look throughout the Bible or even the Old Testament, you can see the Israelites, when they were in seasons of prosperity and apathy and things were fine, they weren't really motivated. And the sad part is that sometimes it takes tragedy to motivate people. to want to change, to motivate people to have urgency. With Charlie Kirk being assassinated, you know, one of the things that came out at the funeral was something about a seed falling to the ground and, you know, they're becoming a lot of Charlie Kirk's. Are you saying that at all? Yeah. As a result, it's almost been a year since he was shot. Yeah, I mean... I feel like in the in the in the beginnings of that there was a real move like profound move of God where You know churches were packed people were coming to church. It was just like this I mean Beholding a guy in the most publicly viewed assassination maybe in high -profile assassination maybe in history Because everyone's seen it on their phones and on social media and it's replayed a million times It provokes people to want to live a life Worth, you know something and so I felt like that was amazing. But then I felt like the enemy

22:58 released a counter move Which was one of conspiracy and suspicion and division And I feel like the purpose of that counter move was to rob what God was doing. I think right now we're seeing that, you know, the rise of the conspiracy podcasters and the whole purpose is to derail and distract from what God's doing. We've had a lot of those people come after us too. And so, you know, you have to recognize, again, pointing back to the book on spiritual warfare, you have to recognize The enemy is trying to come distract, discourage, and derail a genuine move of God. And so, yes, I think there was a movement that was birthed, but the enemy birthed a counter movement to try to distract and discourage people. We got to get back. We got to get back to what it's all about. In the few minutes we have left, I want to talk about the book. Before we went on, we were actually talking about how people don't read like they used to. I'm a reader. I read a book a week and I loved reading your book.

24:05 I thought it was excellent. I highly recommend it to people. If somebody's watched this long, it means they're pretty interested in you. Of course, there's a lot of places they can see you on YouTube and everything else, but tell, persuade my viewers why they should buy this book, which by the way is probably easiest to get it on Amazon. You'll get it tomorrow. But why should somebody spend the two and a half or three hours it takes to read a book like this? Yeah, I mean, I just think right now, I think what I'm really struck with is there's a lot of people, either there's two categories of people.

24:47 One, people that are just so overwhelmed with... What's happening out there with fientines with wars and rumors of wars and economies shaking and shifting and you know we have access to every single tragedy that we can get in our phone that comes in a second and they can overwhelm so they kind of disengage and. I think that that can be an issue because we're called as Christians to be salt and light then there's the other people that I think they're so engrossed in it that they're more impressed with What the devil is doing and very under impressed with what God is doing. And so my encouragement is like Why I wrote this book is not to sell it and sell copies. Like this is not This to me is not, it's not a branding thing. I really felt this word of the Lord remind the church about the weapons of worship and prayer and spiritual warfare.

25:46 And I feel even since releasing it ever more stirred with this, we have to wake up the people. Like the church has to wake up. I feel like we're, just to be very honest, I feel like we're veering back into pre -COVID days. Like we forgot just six years ago what happened to us. And, you know, there's a lot of Christians with amnesia. And so my heart is that this would be a manual that would wake people up to the fullness of what God has for them to not be overwhelmed, you know, with, with evil or with distraction, with whatever, uh, but be consumed with, with what God's doing in the story he's writing and then activated to become a solution and be salt and light. So that would be my encouragement. I think I've written a bunch of books, sold a lot of books.

26:42 I think this is probably the best one I've ever written. My wife thinks it is. So I would encourage you to get it. And your publisher does too. I really like this book. I highly recommend people read it. I appreciate you fitting in time to talk about it because we're doing a lot of publicity, but I wanted to personally do it on my podcast because I want to... encourage the people who follow me to read the book. I think it'll really benefit them. And thanks to you for taking the time. Thank you for the leadership that you provide in the body of Christ. You know, I've seen and read a lot of bad stuff about you, but from my personal interaction and watching you now for what, six or eight years, I believe that you're the real deal. And I just... pray that you'll raise up many other, that God will raise up many other Sean Foyts because we certainly need it.

27:38 So, and to my viewers, thank you for watching. Tune in again next week for another episode of The String Report. God bless you.