The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Believer

We're going to talk today about the life of the Spirit, the life of the Holy Spirit. That's going to be kind of our topic today. So can I just open us up with prayer and we'll get into it? Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity here today to open our hearts to you. Thank you, Lord, for the worship. Thank you, Father, for just the opportunity to lift our hands and tell you that we love you and that we belong to you. And thank you, Lord, for the freedom that we have in this country to gather as we are doing right now, to open up the Bible and to talk about your word, to talk about who you are and how you want to work and move in our lives. And so we just really pray, Lord, that as we talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, Lord, that your Spirit would be actively moving and ministering among us here, that you would be speaking to people about their lives and how you desire to work and to touch their lives. So be with us, we pray. Thank you so much for your grace, wisdom. We just pray for your Spirit to guide us and we ask it in the name of Jesus, amen, amen. When I'm thinking about this topic about the life of the Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, it makes me think of computer software. Stay with me. Most of you guys know that I've always been kind of techie and, you know, into computers and stuff like that to the point where my grandkids call me up for computer advice, which is a little weird twist. But I have a few programs on my laptop that I use every day, but I'm aware of the fact that I use only a small percentage of what these things can actually do. I have this program I use for editing videos, I've got, of course, my Bible program. And I use them and I enjoy them and I get out of them, you know, what I want. Again, maybe 5 or 10% of what the program is capable of doing is what I'm utilizing. And the reason I brought that up to you today, because that's what I think about when I think about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, because what I've learned as a pastor is that most Christians operate with about 5 to 10% of what the Holy Spirit wants to do in their lives. In other words, what I'm saying is there's a whole lot that the Holy Spirit brings into your life, potentially, for you and me to lay hold of and to walk out in our Christian life. But unfortunately, we don't often take advantage of it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be talking to you, I'm going to bring up several elements of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and I'll put them all up as a bullet list just to begin, and then we'll go through these. We're going to talk about the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the confirmation of the Holy Spirit, the godliness that the Holy Spirit desires to work in us, understanding, counsel, and then finally we're going to talk about power. And by the way, I don't pretend that this is a comprehensive, complete list of everything the Holy Spirit perhaps wants to do in our lives, but these are the things that I consider to be very important elements of our walk with Jesus. And so we're going to start here with the first of the five, and we'll put that up on the screen for you, and then we're going to talk about the conviction of the Holy Spirit or the convicting work of the Spirit. That word conviction is actually used in some different contexts in the Bible, but Jesus is the one who spoke to us about the conviction of the Spirit. And let me put that on the screen from John 16, verses 7, actually we're just looking at verse 8 here, yeah. It says, when he comes, he will convict the world, and then he told us about what? It would be concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So Jesus said, the Holy Spirit's coming after me, and not that the Holy Spirit wasn't already active, of course, but he's going to come and specifically begin to speak to people about sin and righteousness and judgment. And by the way, that word that Jesus uses there, convict, interestingly enough, it's a Greek word that means to expose and to rebuke. So it has a couple of different meanings right there. He says the Holy Spirit's going to come to expose things, and he's also going to come to rebuke. I don't know if you've ever felt like you've received a rebuke from the Holy Spirit, it's happened many times for me, but this is really the first step of our Christian life. I believe the Holy Spirit comes to convict all of us of sin, whether or not we respond to it is a different matter altogether. And here's the interesting thing about all these different works of the Holy Spirit that I'm going to talk to you about, all of them can be resisted, every one of them. I don't know if you've learned this in your Christian life, but the Holy Spirit is an incredible gentleman, and he will not push himself on you. Sometimes I wish he would, but he doesn't. He waits for you and me to respond to him and to invite him, literally to invite and to receive these different areas of work that he does in our life, and one of them is conviction. And again, this has to happen for us even to become a believer. It starts by the Holy Spirit convicting us of our sin, the fact that we're sinners, and we need a Savior, right? So this is ground-level Christianity. If you don't ever respond to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, you're never going to even become a believer. And you know some people do resist. You might be talking to somebody about the Lord or about sin and the fact that they need a Savior, and they're like, oh, well, now wait a minute here. I'm not so bad, you know what I mean? And of course they're comparing themselves with other people, and it's like, well, you know. I happen to believe that all people are inherently good. Well, the Bible actually has a different message. It says that we're all inherently evil. We're all inherently sinners, and Paul in Romans chapter 1 tells us that every single one of us are under the curse of sin and subject to the wrath of God. Every single person. So this is a work of the Spirit that begins our walk with the Lord. And if we receive it, this conviction of the Spirit, we're now open to move forward. But you know, if somebody doesn't respond to the convicting work of the Spirit, there's no moving forward. People used to come down and talk to me after a message, and if they would say something to me to the effect of, well, I know I'm a sinner. I know that this work of the Spirit has already taken place, and we can move forward. And I can talk to them about what to do with your sin, and how God has sent His Son to forgive you, and so forth and so on. But if that person, you know, you start talking about sin and they kind of bristle a little bit or they do a little pushback, it's like, well, they're not ready. They haven't even come to that first place yet, you know? And so these are really, really important first steps. And this convicting work of the Spirit produces something in us that only He can produce. Paul talked about it in his second letter to the Corinthians. Let me put it on the screen. Second Corinthians 7.10, it says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief, which is, I'm sorry, I got caught, produces death. So godly grief. Have you ever had grief about your sin? Have you ever been grieved by your sin? I mean, I hope that everybody in this room has. Well, you know what Paul calls it? He calls it godly grief. Do you understand that anything that has the word godly in front of it means it's not from you? You don't have any godly in you apart from God in you, right? Apart from the Holy Spirit living in you, there is no godly in you. There's no godly in me. It's just all Paul until the Holy Spirit comes to indwell, and now suddenly I have the potential to have a different kind of a grief than I would have expressed otherwise. I can actually have godly grief because that comes through the Spirit's conviction and convicting process. But here's what's interesting. Even after coming to the Lord, the Holy Spirit continues to convict us. Have you ever done something as a believer where somebody gets in your face or says something rude and you respond rude back and then instantly kind of have that feeling like, have you ever done that? I sure hope so. Because this convicting work of the Spirit keeps going on. It's an ongoing thing in our lives, and we can resist it even as believers. Did you hear me? Even as Christians, born again Christians, we can resist this ongoing work of conviction from the Holy Spirit when He begins to speak to you and me and say, hmm, you can do better because I'm here to help you do better, but that was all you that time. And but you know, we can kind of, you know, we can resist that and I can say, you know, he got in my face, he deserved what he got. Yeah, maybe I said some unkind things, but he deserved it. You see, that's resistance. Now it could even be about some bigger area of sin. You know, as a Christian, you can walk through an area of sin that's pretty major and you can justify it in your heart and mind for a period of time. And the world will give you all kinds of excuses to justify your sin. But you know, that can only go on for so long. What's interesting is in the book of Psalms, David actually describes what it's like to resist conviction from the Holy Spirit. Let me put this on the screen from Psalm 32. It says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. But then he goes on, look at this. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. That's conviction. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Now if you go on and read in that Psalm, David goes on to say, but then I acknowledged my sin. And he talks about how after acknowledging his sin, you know, he was made right between him and the Lord. I sought your forgiveness, I confessed, and so forth. And he ends up with what this Psalm begins with, this blessed condition, this blessedness of someone whose transgressions are forgiven, you know. But what was he doing in the meantime? He was justifying, resisting, holding back, and just kind of, you know. Do you notice in that Psalm, he describes a physical impact of resisting conviction. He literally says, my bones were wasting away. And I felt like, he talks about how his strength was dried up as in the heat of summer. Have you ever had heat exhaustion? It's not fun. Well, he literally describes resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit like heat exhaustion. He says it just zapped my strength. I just was like, just kind of, I didn't want to do anything. But it was all because he was resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Isn't that crazy? It can actually have a physical impact. So my encouragement to you is that when the Holy Spirit convicts you, respond quickly. Come to the Lord quickly. Say, Lord, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have said that. I confess that that was all me, and it was dumb and stupid, and I'm sorry, and please forgive me, right? Come quickly to the Lord. Come quickly. The next thing we're going to talk about, as the Holy Spirit wanting to do in our life, is the next slide, which is confirmation. The confirmation. God comes to confirm things to you and me through his Holy Spirit. That's the agency through whom he confirms things in our lives. Let me show you Romans 8.16 on the screen. It says, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit about many things, but one of them is that we are children of God. You know, it's the Holy Spirit who does that. He comes to tell you, you're mine. You belong to the Lord. You're a child of God. Now, you remember what I said about every aspect of the Holy Spirit in our lives? We can resist it. Here's what's crazy. The enemy can get a born-again, washed-in-the-blood-of-the-Lamb Christian to begin to deny this very confirmation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to confirm, but our own hearts can be so tainted and tampered with by the enemy and by our own guilty thoughts that we can actually begin to doubt that we are children of God. And I hear this all the time from Christians. They'll talk about their life. They'll talk about their failures. They'll talk about, you know, the mistakes and challenges they've gone through. And then they'll say this, sometimes I wonder if I'm even saved. Well, this is a person who is taking that conformational work of the Holy Spirit and kind of pushing it away. You can push the Holy Spirit away. But usually, and I'll tell you, when this happens, when people begin questioning their own salvation, there's always one thing that's consistently happening in their life. They're focused on their sin. In fact, even fixated on it to the point where they've lost sight of the Savior. They've lost sight of what the sacrifice that Jesus did on the cross. They're not thinking about that. They're just thinking about their sin. And when you, guys, when you sit and ponder your sin all day long, guess what happens? It gets bigger. It gets bigger and uglier and insurmountable. And that's why the Bible tells us to keep our eyes on Jesus, to look to him, the author and finisher of our faith. Because when you begin to look to him and what he did on the cross, you realize my sin is no match for what he did for me on the cross. So this is what the Holy Spirit comes to confirm. But he also comes to, let me show you this, 1 John, another interesting passage. Chapter 5, it's the latter part of verse 6. John writes, the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. He comes to confirm the truth in our lives. That which is true. Have you ever heard somebody talking? They're not even quoting the Bible. They're just talking and they're saying stuff. And the Holy Spirit confirms in your heart, yeah, that's true. What that person is saying is true. And you just have this sense that, yeah, that's a true statement. It's not found in the Bible, but it's still true. And how do I know that? Because the Holy Spirit came to confirm it. And he testifies in me and through me that this is a true thing that this person has just gotten done saying and so forth. So these are works of the Holy Spirit that we have to be open to, to hear his heart, to hear his voice, to hear his conformational voice in our lives. Let's look at the next work of the Spirit on the screen, and that is godliness. Yeah, well, this is what we call the ongoing work of sanctification, holiness, if you will, to be set apart and so forth. But this is such a direct work of the Holy Spirit. You know, let me just say, like I said before, there's none of this in you and me. There's no godliness in us. You know, the New Age tries to tell us, you know, that we need to get in touch with our inner God. You know, there ain't no inner God in me except for the God who lives within me. And before I knew Jesus, there was no inner God at all. It was just Paul. And he was lost and blind and in darkness. So whatever godliness is happening in your life is because of the Holy Spirit. And he wants to continue that work and enlarge that work of godliness in you. Here's the problem. There's a good many Christians who believe that godliness comes about by just keeping the rules. And I hear this quite often with people. In fact, some people will even tell you that you get saved by putting your faith in Jesus, but you stay saved by keeping the commandments. I've had a lot of people tell me that. And you know, they'll say, well, yeah, I believe that we're saved as a free gift of God. But once you get saved, you've got to keep the commandments. And I tell them, listen, if you have to keep the commandments to stay saved, then you don't believe salvation is a free gift. It's something you earn through works. You can say all day long, I believe in salvation by grace through faith, but you don't if you still think you have to keep the commandments. That's not how you get saved. You know, it's interesting. In the Old Testament, you can read through the law and all the books that have to do with the law. I'm talking about the law of Moses. Do you know that God never once promised that if the Jews kept the law, they'd go to heaven? Not once, never one time did he say to them, oh, by the way, keep this law and I'll let you into heaven. He didn't say that because, first of all, it's not possible. They would have to keep it perfectly and nobody can do that, right? So we don't get saved by keeping the law. We know that. And we don't live in godliness by keeping the law. Well, how do we allow godliness or the work of the Holy Spirit to bring godliness into our lives? Paul talks about it in Galatians chapter 5, up on the screen for you to see. together, but I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh meaning the desires of your sinful nature, right? And he goes on to say if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under law. So Paul's answer to you and me isn't to follow external rules carved in stone, it's to follow the leading of the law giver who now lives within our hearts, right? Because you know that's what God promised in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 31, he said, I will write my law on their hearts. So that law that was given in the Old Testament, which was external to all those people, has now been made internal for you and me through the Holy Spirit living in our lives. We're now to follow his lead, okay? That's how we walk in godliness, following the Spirit's lead. But we have to learn to follow the Spirit's lead because we're out of practice. And we're very good at following our own lead. We have that one down pat. But as far as following the lead of the Holy Spirit, that's a challenge. And you might spend the whole of your Christian life learning how to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, but it's something we have to do. And in so doing, Paul says there in Galatians, we will not gratify the lusts or the desires of the sinful nature as we follow the leading of the Spirit, right? So this is the beautiful thing about this godliness thing. It's not going to come from you, you know? And it's not going to come from trying harder. I used to hear people say, you know, well, Pastor Paul, I'm having kind of a rough time, but I'm trying harder to live for Jesus. And I'm like, how's that working out for you? Trying harder. Grit your teeth. I'm going to be a good Christian if I have to die trying. Yeah, you'll die trying. Because you know what? That's just not going to happen. It doesn't come by trying harder. It comes by surrendering, surrendering. Lord, you know, and the first thing that we need to do as it relates to godliness, particularly concerning any sin in your life that you're struggling to get victory over, is to confess to the Lord that you have no ability to get over that sin in and of yourself. To come to Him and just say to Him, I am weak and I can't do this. But you know, He's going to come back and say to you the same thing He said to the Apostle Paul that was written for us in 2 Corinthians, where He says that Jesus told him, hey, listen, my power is made perfect in your weakness. You want the power of God in your life to overcome sin? Get weak. Don't try to be strong and grit your teeth and be a good Christian. Get weak and say, Jesus, I can't do this. I can't do it. But you can. And you need to teach me how to surrender to you and follow your lead in this thing because I can't do this on my own. That's the beginning of walking in godliness, is to surrender your life to the Lord. He promises that He's going to be there for you. He promises. He promises to be there for you. Great promise recorded in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, up on the screen. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man, but God is faithful, amen? And He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. That means beyond your ability to endure. But with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. This is a promise from God. You got a temptation going on in your life that keeps dragging you down? He promises that He will give you a way out. Every so often I get a note from a Christian and they'll say, Pastor Paul, I know it says that God will give me a way out of temptation. Would you please tell me what that way out is? Here's the deal, it could be anything. The way out that He gives you may not be the same way out that He gives me. It's going to be depending on whatever temptation you're involved in and whatever situation you're involved in, and it's going to be unique. The issue isn't knowing the way, it's knowing that God is faithful and He's going to give you a way, so you need to be looking for it, right? That's the issue. So yeah, there's no big secret here. It's just, Lord, I know that you provided a way for me to stand up under this temptation. Now show me and lead me in that way. All right, next way that the Holy Spirit wants to work in our lives is through understanding. This is another work of the Holy Spirit expressed by Jesus. Let me show you this on the screen from John 16. It says, I still have many things to say to you, Jesus speaking to His disciples, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit comes, He will guide you into some truth. Oh, it doesn't say that, does it? What does it say? All truth, doesn't it? He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. This is the understanding that we get from the Holy Spirit. He comes to bring understanding and to guide us in knowing what's real, what's fake, what's true, what's false, what's good, what's bad, because you know what? The world has everything topsy-turvy, and if you're listening to the world, you're going to be confused, because the world comes to tell you that light is actually dark and good is actually bad and evil is actually, you know, good stuff and all these other things. We need the Holy Spirit speaking to us and giving us understanding. Paul describes it in a very special way in 1 Corinthians 2. On the screen, he says, we have received, and that's all of us believers, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. Why? So that we might understand the things freely given us by God, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. See, we can talk to one another about spiritual realities. You know why? Because the Holy Spirit is giving us understanding. I'm doing that to you right now. I'm talking to you about spiritual dynamics and spiritual understanding, and you're understanding it because the Holy Spirit is there to give you understanding, right? Guess who doesn't understand? Listen to what he goes on to say in the next little bit here, up on the screen. He says, the natural person, and that refers to the person that doesn't have the Holy Spirit, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly, that means foolishness, to him, and he's not able, listen, he is not able to understand them, because why? They're spiritually discerned. They're spiritually understood. I see so many Christians trying to get unbelievers to lay hold of spiritual truths, and what we're being told here in this passage is that that is an exercise in futility. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned, right? He cannot. Now, I believe that God has given enough grace for anyone, meaning unbelievers, to at least embrace the fact that they are sinners, if they're willing to accept that conviction, and they're in need of a Savior. They have the grace to do that, but that's about it. Until they get saved, they're not going to be able. They're not going to be able to lay hold of spiritual truths or spiritual dynamics. It's just not going to happen. Paul tells you right there, he cannot understand those things because they come from the Spirit and they're spiritually discerned, right? It's God who gives us understanding. Do you guys remember, do any of you remember picking up a Bible and trying to read it before you got saved? I hear about this, and it happened to me, actually. People will tell me, you know, yeah, I thought, you know, there was one point in my life I thought, you know, I should probably look at the Bible, see what it has to say. So I opened it up, and I was like, ah, this is a bunch of nonsense. And they closed it and never picked it up again. And then later on, they got saved, and the Holy Spirit came to live within them, and they opened up that same Bible, and suddenly they couldn't get enough. They wanted to stay home from work and just read their Bible, because it was just absolutely exploding with insight and understanding. And they're suddenly like, I get it. I get it now. I see what's going on. I see what God's been trying to tell me all along, but I couldn't get it before. And sometimes they'll even say, why couldn't I get it before? Because God hasn't given you understanding. That's what He does through His Spirit. And it's something that we need to be expecting. Listen, if there are big question marks in your life right now, expect God to give you understanding about those things. That's what he comes to do now I'm not telling you he's gonna give you perfect understanding about everything because there are some things about which the Holy Spirit will hold back and he'll say I Just want you to trust me I'm not gonna give you any further info or in understanding about that particular thing because I want you to trust me I just want you to trust me But by and large his heart is to convey Understanding. Amen Next thing the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer bringing counsel and you know, we all need this is basic It's basic stuff. And the reason it's basic that we need Counsel in our lives is because we we don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring and many times we have to make decisions that are Going to affect tomorrow, but I but I have a hard time making that decision because I don't know what tomorrow is gonna be like Well, guess what? I know someone who does and That's the Lord. That's the Holy Spirit. He knows and so he comes Do you understand he is the counselor capital C? so many times Christians and I see this happening Listen if the world wants to go find a counselor somewhere great But you know when I see Christians running after counselors, my heart is grieved a little bit And I understand talking to somebody who just needs to help you figure some things out But when I see Christians focusing on counselors to The point where they ignore the counselor Capital C. I'm thinking you've shortchanged yourself Because one of the things the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life and in my life is he wants to bring counsel He wants to talk to you. He wants to speak to you about those tough spots in your life He wants to give you insight he wants to counsel you on the direction that you are to go and and it's important now Again, we all face situations for which we we wonder. Okay, what's God doing here? Now? I don't get it Well, you know, you're in good company Even the Apostles struggled sometimes to understand what where God exactly was leading Let me show you this on the screen from Acts chapter 16 It says and they and that refers to Paul the Apostle in his Evangelistic team went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia Having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia and when they had come up to Micea they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus another word for the Holy Spirit did not allow them so passing by Micea they went down to Troas and then this passage goes on and says and a vision appeared to Paul in the night a man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and Saying come over to Macedonia and help us and when Paul had seen the vision immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia Concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel To them so what's going on here? So here's the Apostle Paul He knows he's been called by God to be an apostle and to take the gospel into the uttermost parts of the world Right, and so what is he doing? He's going out and taking the gospel. But what is he finding? closed doors He says in that passage, you know, we started to you know Move into the region of Phrygia and Galatia and and and what did we the Holy Spirit said? No, no, no No, I don't want you to go there yet. Not it's not time Hmm. Okay. So we're then it's head down to here toward Micea and they start heading into this area called Bithynia and the Spirit speaks Again, it says no. No, no, not yet. I got something else going on, but he doesn't tell him what's going on yet Now you got to know that's really frustrating, right? To not know I hate not knowing You know, I'm gonna be so glad when Jesus returns and we know all things but you know right now It's the exact opposite we see through a mirror dimly, right So it's pretty challenging and it was for them too And so we don't know how much time passed in this whole process that we just read through acts. It was probably several days where Paul didn't know they're kind of like well, you know closed door closed door closed. I don't know what are we gonna so they're they're they're hanging out over here at Troas and One night Paul has a dream and it has a vision in this dream And he hears he sees this man from across the way over into Europe saying come come in and and bring the gospel here So he tells his guys. Hey guys, I had a dream last night and and they talk about it and they conclude that Well, I think the Lord wants us to go there Well, you see this it's a process sometimes Don't think that if it's a process for you that you're stumbling or having a hard time this whole Understanding thing takes time takes prayer takes effort But God wants to give you understanding Expect him to give you Understanding. Okay, and and in those times when you're not sure Which direction to go? We are given in the Word of God a barometer to help us make decisions. It's actually in collages. Let me show you Chapter 3 verse 15 says let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts You know that that word rule in the Greek literally means to referee it means to call the shots to call it as he sees it How does he call things in our hearts so as to? Confirm them and to give us understanding peace That's what Paul is saying here. Let the peace of God call it in your heart So that means if you've got some decisions and you are lacking peace about a particular decision You're making then you need to like hold back Let the peace confirm it for you. Let let God give you understanding through his peace You know when you make a decision and he gives you peace and you're just like, you know This isn't really the way I wanted to go But this is the way I think the Lord wants me to go because I just have peace about it I'm just at rest about this decision Well, that's the Holy Spirit doing that work of confirming his will giving you understanding through that beautiful gift of peace There's a there's a passage in the the book of Acts chapter 15 where they talk about this Agreement look at this on the screen This is when they had to make a tough decision about some of these Judaizers that were going around confusing the people It says and it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no Greater burden than these requirements. You can see that what they're saying is we came to a understanding through the Holy Spirit To the point where they were willing to say this was our Counsel the counsel the Holy Spirit gave us this is the counsel we've received and this is what we're going with Right, so God wants to give you counsel. He wants to counsel you about your life So can I just say something? There there may be a place for human counselors. I don't I don't want to speak badly about that, but as a Christian if you're only going to get counsel from other human beings You've shortchanged yourself Because the counselor is waiting to be asked Lord what would you have me do? Help me to know your direction. I need your counsel. I Need your understanding and it might take time And it might take time and that's something I think that we struggle with I I have gotten so many emails from people over the years who say to me Pastor Paul, here's my situation. I've prayed about it But and then they write me and say what do you think and what they're saying without saying it is I'm praying about it, but I got tired of waiting For the answer and so I'm coming to you and I'm learning I'm learning as a pastor for 40 years To respond to people and say go back and pray some more Because you do not want to shortchange yourself with counsel from a fallible human being like me That's not what you want to do You want to keep pressing in hey, listen if you got a fast for a period of time do it Problem is we've been we've been raised as I've told you many times in the past We've been raised in the drive-up mentality of life. We drive up to the bank. We drive up to the restaurant We drive up to this and that to get our order quick and we want to treat God the same way Hey God, do you have a drive-up window? I need some counsel, but I need it now and Sometimes the Holy Spirit says yeah, I have counsel, but I want you to wait on me. I Want you to wait for me? I want you to wait to hear my voice. I Hate waiting I Hate it But that's sometimes he asks us to do and if we try to shortchange that What have I done? What have we done? Last thing the Holy Spirit that we're going to talk about here this morning. Anyway that we're going to look at is The power that the Holy Spirit wants to bring into our lives and you know, Jesus promised power to believers It's given us in Acts chapter 1 up on the screen. We'll remind ourselves of this. While staying with them, Jesus ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem. He said, stick around guys. I want you to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. And you will receive power. Look at that. There it is right there. You will receive. He didn't say salvation. These guys were already saved. These guys had already received the Holy Spirit indwelling them. That happened the very night of the resurrection. Remember when Jesus breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. They're already born again Christians with the Holy Spirit living within them. But he says, there's another work. There's another function of the Spirit that I want you to be open for. And I want you to wait for. And when you receive the Spirit for this function, you will receive power. And he goes on to say, you know, you'll be my witnesses and so forth. And he called this a baptism. And that's a very good word for it because, you know, the word baptize or baptism means to immerse. And that's why when we baptize people in water, we dunk them. We immerse them in water because that's what the word means, to be immersed. And it's a picture of being immersed into Christ and in his death on the cross. Well the baptism of the Spirit is not a baptism where we use water. It's in fact is nothing material about it at all. It's a baptism of the Spirit where the believer is immersed in the Spirit. But it's for a completely different reason. Power. It's for power. That's exactly why we are baptized in the Holy Spirit. And you know when you read the book of Acts, it was immediately after the baptism of the Holy Spirit that we start seeing spiritual gifts happening. They weren't happening before that. But after the baptism of the Spirit, spiritual gifts began and changes in attitudes. I mean what an incredible change 50 days had or so for like guys like Peter, who denied that he knew Jesus in front of a servant girl and later, 50 days later, having been empowered by the Holy Spirit, stood up and accused the people that he was speaking to of crucifying the Lord of life. He said that to him. He said, and you crucified him. That's power that you can't account for on a purely human level. It's the power that God wants to work in you and me through the Holy Spirit. And guys, we need power. I mean the world we're living in today, good grief, do we need power. I mean the things that are going on in the world and the deceptions that are out there and the delusions. Do you guys hear about the UFO stuff they're going to be releasing? I had a lady write to me and she said, Pastor Paul, do you think this is going to be the delusion that Paul talks about in Thessalonians? I don't know, but I know that the world is full of them and we need power to work through those sorts of things. And God is going to give you power if you will be open to it. What did I say about all these things of the Holy Spirit, all these functions? We can resist them. Every single one of them we can resist. We can say, no, not that. And when it comes to power, you can resist that too. And you know what? You're still going to be a Christian, you're still going to love the Lord, and you're still going to go to heaven, but you'll walk around without power. He wants to empower you through His Spirit. He wants to give you power. And it could be power to just be a mom or a dad, but it's also going to be power to witness and to live your life and to be bold and so forth. This is the kind of stuff, you know, the Apostle Paul was put in so many situations where he lacked power personally, but saw that power manifest through the Spirit. He was very aware that this was not him. In fact, let me show you this on the screen. Colossians chapter 1 verse 29, he says, "...for this I toil, struggling with all his energy..." Look at this, "...that he powerfully works within me." He was very aware of it. Are you aware of the power of the Holy Spirit working in your life? You're going to be more aware of it the more difficulties you face and the more willing you are to be open to the power of the Holy Spirit. And it doesn't have to make you weird. It will, however, make you powerful. But it's a power of the Spirit. Listen, the thing that's different about this, and a lot of Christians believe today that we receive the empowering work of the Holy Spirit when we're saved. Well, that's not what the Bible says. It can happen that way, but the empowering work of the Spirit is different from the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit, which is what we use. That's the term the Bible uses to speak of becoming born again. That's called regeneration through the Spirit, okay? That's a wonderful thing, and it happens to every single Christian that gives their life to Jesus. But it only happens once, and that's when the Holy Spirit comes in, right? To indwell. But the empowering work of the Holy Spirit comes upon, and it comes multiple times whenever you need. You don't just walk around in this supernatural power constantly. The Spirit comes to empower us when you need it, and you know that you know that you know that the Spirit has given you power to pray or to do this or do whatever the thing might be, or even sometimes just to believe. It's like, man, that's just that faith, you know, to believe. But, you know, it's not with you constantly, that empowering work. We see in the Book of Acts that the disciples were empowered over and over and over and over again, but this was the Spirit coming upon, not to save them over again, but to empower them. Are you open to the empowering work of the Holy Spirit? Do you need power to live your Christian life and to share with the lost about who Jesus is? Well, we all do. So let's be open to the Holy Spirit. Let's just say, Holy Spirit, you know, the Word says that you've come to bring power. I need that power. I want that power. I ask you to empower me. You know, you're witnessing to somebody at work or something like that, and you just take a moment to pray, Lord, give me power. Give me your power to witness right now. Give me your words, you know. You face a situation that you don't know how you're gonna face it. Lord, give me the power. Give me power through your Spirit to face this situation in faith and trust and confidence of your good work in my life. Amen? We're gonna have some people up here to pray for you after we're done, but let's close in prayer right now. Father, we thank you so much for your Word. What a glorious Word. What a wonderful, encouraging Word that you give us through the Scriptures of all these things you long to do in our lives. And I thank you for each and every one, Lord. Thank you for the conviction, the confirmation, the counsel. Thank you, Lord God, for the power and all the rest. We need every work of your Spirit that you desire to do in us and through us, and we pray that you would be, that we would be open and receptive and not push you away in any of these things you desire to do in our life. We want to be people led by the Spirit. Be with us, we pray. Strengthen us, we pray. We ask these things in the authority that is ours through Jesus Christ, our Savior. And all God's people said together, Amen. Have a good rest of your day. God bless you.