Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference was marked by powerful personal testimonies and calls to prayer and to radical trust in Jesus.

The Stream’s own James Robison and Sheila Walsh testified to the power of God’s work in their lives and encouraged the pastors who had traveled from around the country to be equipped and encouraged at the conference on Capitol Hill.

Friday morning Sheila shared her testimony with warmth and verve, moving some in the audience to tears as she spoke of the wounds in her life and the way God used them to bring healing and reveal His glory.

“I have a fresh sense of hope,” she told the church leaders. “It’s not too late for us to see God do something” in America. But it will take the “testimony of transformed lives.”

Quoting 1 Thessalonians 2:8, Sheila implored the crowd to share “not only the gospel of God but our lives, as well.”

“There are a number of believers who are shouting answers to questions no one is asking,” she said.

Sheila referenced 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” The inference, she said, is that we should be prepared to live a life that raises questions.

Sheila led by example, telling the story of how she grew up with a father who suffered severe mental illness, abused her and her family, and committed suicide. Her family history left wounds of shame that she sought to hide under the mask of Christian ministry.

As she found out, “it is possible to be very well known and profoundly lonely.” Sheila went to seminary, worked on the BBC, and cohosted The 700 Club before her mask finally broke. One day she fell apart on the air, going from TV host in the morning to psychiatric ward in the evening.

Sheila explained that “sometimes God will take you to a prison to set you free.”

“Mercy weighs so much that God will take us to our wounded places to show us the truth that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ,” Sheila said. “A relationship with Him based on nothing that you bring to the table, based entirely on who He is.”

Sheila told the pastors that these broken people are going to come to our churches, and while “there will always be someone louder, someone more articulate than you … only those whose lives have been transformed will be able to stand and love them.”

The pastors and church leaders gave Sheila a standing ovation when she exhorted them: “Pray you’ll have the courage to tell the truth: that we are not the good news. Jesus is.”

Stream founder and publisher James Robison echoed Sheila’s calls for honesty and radical trust in God.

“Many of us are praying for an awakening,” James said. “I want to see a church that looks like the church Jesus prayed for, a church adorned in His glory, a bride that looks like Him.”

He reminded the pastors that “it’s not how big the church is, it’s how big He is in the church.”

James warned the pastors of our diminishing freedoms in America. “It is for freedom Christ set us free! Freedom is like the rain: it blesses the just and the unjust.” Freedom allows everyone to flourish.

Proclamation of the gospel is our role, James told the pastors. “Church never intended to be the kingmaker. We have a king.”

James also gave his testimony, tearing up as he shared about his childhood as a fatherless child living in dire poverty.

“God Almighty looked down on that fatherless child and chose him to be an evangelist,” James said. “And your church is full of James Robisons!”

Anticipating the anxieties brought up by this year’s election, James told the pastors that “Donald Trump needs a head-on collision with the truth.” James said that he had met with the Republican presidential candidate and left that meeting with Donald Trump knowing that James Robison loved him.

He told the crowd the they don’t always get their always get their first choice. “My prayer,” he said, “is that Donald Trump will learn to love his enemies and that he’ll listen to wise counsel.”

The crowd of pastors and church leaders applauded loudly as James promised to never back down from God’s agenda.

“He has opened the door to the church. Let’s go in and deliver the truth in love and let’s pray for that awakening.”