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Welcome to the Jesus Image Podcast.

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Hey guys, love you all so much. By the time you see this, I will be on my family vacation that we do every year. And just know that I am missing you a lot and I'm ready to get home. Michael probably has a few more weeks in him, but um I miss you so much and I just love our church family. And I just hope you guys are having the most amazing summer and that you just feel the Lord so near and he is just so present in all that you do. I wanted to talk to you guys about being totally dependent on the Holy Spirit. As you know, we just celebrated Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, it's not just a feeling, he's a person. I say this all the time, with a personality. He has feelings, we can quench him. We are so blessed to have the Holy Spirit in our life. And I often remind myself, and I want to say it to you, um, don't be afraid to talk to him. He's there to comfort you, he's there to help you, to navigate things in your life. You don't have to do anything alone. Maybe there is nobody in your life. Maybe you don't have family, you don't have friends, you don't have people that you can go to. Well, you have the Holy Spirit, and if you have him, then you have all that you need. So more than ever, we need the Holy Spirit in our life. I don't know about you, but I don't even want to live a day without the Holy Spirit. I don't trust myself when I'm not in prayer, clinging, clinging to Jesus, talking to the Lord, asking Jesus just about my life, about my family. He's really such a big part of our life and he's there. But so many times we don't actually turn our attention to him. We don't access him. We don't talk to him. We act like he's just something that's a being, like that we don't have access to, but we do. We have the Holy Spirit in our life to help us, to comfort us, to guide us. So that's what I want to talk to you about today. We can get right into it. Go to 2 Timothy 1.13. Waiting for you guys to turn. We'll do a little pause. All right, 2 Timothy 1.13. It says, Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me. A pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. See, if you don't live a life with the Holy Spirit, you're gonna have a really hard time holding on to what you know about the Lord. If you don't hold on to these precious things, they're so easily forgotten. How many times has the Lord just trusted you with something and you don't steward it? You don't, you don't press in, you he speaks to you, but you never, maybe you don't write it down, you don't listen, you don't pray about it. What happens after that? We quickly forget because that's how that's just how we are. Our minds are not wired to really hold on to things when we just don't give our attention to it. So the Holy Spirit helps make Jesus real to us, and he helps you remember all that the Lord has done. And sometimes, I do this a lot actually. I need to do it more probably, but you have to just sometimes be with God. And if you're having a hard time remembering what the Lord has called you into, or maybe there's promises over your life, or maybe there's been prophetic words or things that you just haven't seen come to pass, family members you've been praying for, situations you've been praying for, go in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to help reveal to you what God has said so that you can be trusted with more. We know the parable. If you aren't faithful with the little you already have, how can the Lord trust you with more things? So the Holy Spirit is the one who helps you do this. You cannot do it on your own. None of us are that good, we're not that qualified, we're not that smart. But none of us can do it without the help of the Holy Spirit. So you need the Holy Spirit in your life to help you hold on to all that the Lord has already done in your life so that you can also trust God to do more in your life and through your life. So a life void of the Holy Spirit, it will be really hard to hold on to what Jesus has taught you. And if you can't hold on to what he taught you, you're gonna have a very hard time learning new things that he wants to teach you. You won't have the maturity, you won't have the depth. And the Holy Spirit helps you mature in the Lord. Often I'll read the scriptures. I read the Bible every day. It's a very rare occasion that I miss reading the Bible. It's rare, like I'm sick or something. Even then, it's been a very long time since I haven't picked up the Word of God every single day. Well, sometimes I read something and it just doesn't land. I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't really understand what the Lord is trying to say, or maybe it's just it's not applying to me the way I want it to. Well, when I ever, whenever I feel that way, which is often, I will ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, please help me understand what the word of the Lord is saying today. Help me understand a deeper revelation, help me like understand what you are trying to speak to me right now. And whenever I read the Word of God with the Holy Spirit in mind, who is the author of Scripture, He makes the scriptures alive to me. And even things that I have read many, many times. I've read the Bible through many times already in my lifetime. Every year I read the Bible through maybe almost twice, sometimes in a year. I'll read something that I've read maybe a hundred times. And when I'm reading it with the Holy Spirit, it comes alive to me. It makes sense. I understand. Actually, I'm actually able to retain things when I'm reading with the help of the Holy Spirit because he is our helper. So never go through this alone. You're not gonna understand the depths of the Word of God without your helper, the Holy Spirit. So again, 2 Timothy 1.13, just a quick recap, hold on to the pattern of wholesome teachings you have learned from me, a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. That tells me you actually have to protect it. Because if you don't protect what the Lord has trusted you with, things that you've heard, things that you've seen, then you'll quickly lose it. And I teach on this a lot. What a tragedy that would be to lose something that you've been trusted with. But if you're not aware, then that's what happens. So it would be a tragedy for that. It'd be a tragedy to lose all that God has trusted us with just because we're not aware of the power of the Holy Spirit in our life. So it's the Holy Spirit that reveals Jesus to us. Go to John 14, 15 through 17. It says, if you love me, obey my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you. Just think about that for a moment. Never leave you. You're never gonna have to feel lonely or alone for the rest of your life if you walk with the Holy Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him. But you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you. See, the world will never accept the Holy Spirit. He's not for the unbeliever. He's for the believer. The world will never understand the ways of the Spirit. And the sad thing is, many people in the church don't understand the ways of the Spirit. Many people in the church don't welcome the Holy Spirit into their churches, into their homes, into their families. They treat them as common, they treat him like a feeling or like an exclamation mark, like Michael likes to say at the end of a sentence. No, no, he is a person to be loved, to be honored. And you can't just treat him like he doesn't exist because he does. And he is so holy, that's what we call him the Holy Spirit, that if you reject him, he's not gonna force himself on you. Yes, he wants you. Yes, he wants to be received by you, but you have to you actually have to want him. He's not for the world, he's for the church. And we have access to him whenever we want him, every day. There's there's no, he's never off. The Holy Spirit doesn't have a nine to five. He's always available whenever we need him, and how we all need him just to help us guide our life. If you're thinking about, I don't know about my future, talk to the Holy Spirit. I don't know about my spouse. Oh, you better talk to the Holy Spirit. Like, I don't know if should I take this job? Talk to the Holy Spirit, ask him to lead you and comfort you. He's not gonna lead you down a path of destruction. He's always there, but we don't turn our affection towards him and we don't give him access to our life. We try to figure this all out on our own. How many times do we ask friends for counsel and not talk to the Lord about what we should do for our life? And then we wonder why we're headed down a just a destructive path. Why? Because we're letting people of the flesh lead us and not the the amazing, amazing creator of the world. All right, so the Holy Spirit brings joy to us and he helps us walk through hardship. Okay, I'm gonna give you scripture for that. Romans 5 3. It's more awkward to wait on camera, but I'll give you guys a few moments there. Romans 5 3. It says we can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how clearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. So if you ever question the love of God, this scripture right here should make you never ever question if God loves you. It says it right here. We know God loves us because he's given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love. Not the Holy Spirit to condemn, even though he will correct and condemn when needed, but to fill our hearts with love. This is how much we are loved by God. Never question his love for you. He loves you so much. And you can rejoice when you run into problems and trials. When is the last time you actually rejoiced when you had an issue and not complained? I'm speaking to me too. When is the last time you've done that? But the Bible teaches us that we can rejoice because it's gonna help us develop our endurance and our character. And some of us have so many giftings, but we don't have the endurance and we don't have the character. Some of us have the character, but we don't have the endurance because we haven't gone through enough fire yet. So our character might be good, but we haven't been tested. So we can't endure when the storms come. And they do come. But it's the Holy Spirit that helps us get through that stuff. And we don't need to be disappointed because we know God loves us because he gave us the spirit. Thank you, Jesus. Disappointment can derail you. I've seen so many people just completely get crippled with disappointment. Well, what does that look like when things don't go your way, things don't happen the way you think? I mean, gosh, we could be disappointed every second of the day, because things will always disappoint us. The world will just disappoint us. We disappoint ourselves, people disappoint us. That can derail you. But if you are feeling weary and defeated, this is when you ask the Holy Spirit to help you to receive the love of God. Because when you're aware of the love of God, it overwhelms you in such a holy, beautiful way that the disappointment doesn't seem to matter anymore. What people did to you, I mean, I don't mean to sound harsh, but like who cares? Like they're just people. Yes, we love people, of course we do. But like God, people, like there's no comparison. Like, so yeah, maybe someone hurt your feelings. Maybe somebody said something mean to you. Maybe, you know, someone didn't like your Instagram post. Like, okay, are we gonna just like get all disappointed about that? Are we gonna focus on the fact that God knows our name and he calls us by name and he calls us friend and we have him in our life? So if you lost somebody, I'm sorry, but you have God. You're gonna be okay. You almost have to think like this sometimes just to get yourself out of these funks in life that we tend to go through sometimes when we do feel disappointment. And a big source of disappointment in people is from other people. And that's normal, and I felt it too. But when I feel weary or disconnected, I have to remind myself of how loved I am by the Father and how much he wants my attention and my time, and how he has a desire to know me deeper. And when I start to think thoughts like that, nothing else really seems to matter because I have the attention of God. And if I feel insecure or maybe unworthy or unseen, or whatever that we can all feel at times, I have to also remind myself, but the Lord sees me, the Lord knows me, the Lord wants me. So maybe so-and-so didn't see my gifting, maybe they don't appreciate me, maybe they don't even like me, which is really possible. But the Lord loves me with an everlasting love. So, you know what? If I can cling to that, I'll be okay. But again, I can't cling to that in my own strength. I'm gonna need the Holy Spirit to help make Jesus and his love for me real. I can't tap into my experience, even though I'm thankful that I have an experience with the Lord, but I have to tap into asking the Holy Spirit, help reveal the love of God to me. And we just read it. That's what he does so, so beautifully. So if you have a deficiency in feeling the love of the Father, then I'm lovingly telling you, get to know the Holy Spirit more. Talk to him, just talk to him. He's there, willing and ready and wanting to listen. Amen. Without the Holy Spirit, we can't love one another. Romans 15, 30. It says, Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to join in my struggle by praying to God for me. Do this because of your love for me given to you by the Holy Spirit. So if you have an issue loving people, if you have an issue being kind, if you have hate in your heart, if you have unforgiveness in your heart, talk to the Holy Spirit. I know this sounds so basic, but it's all this is why I have scripture. It's all right there. You you love people better when you walk with the Lord. Like think of your life before Jesus. Think of how angry you were, or how you hated people or hated maybe your family. I don't know, hated yourself. And think about how you felt when you found the Lord, how much more love you had in your heart, how different you felt towards people, towards yourself, towards just even the lost, how you had a heart for the lost, the broken. So the Holy Spirit helps you love people. And let me say this: even your enemies, even people that you have a hard time forgiving, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. He will help you, he will help you see life in such a different way. He will help somebody that's so critical and negative see life with a beautiful lens. This is what the Holy Spirit does. So again, if you have an issue-loving people, for forgiving people. And if I was, if I did an audit right now and said, how many people have unforgiveness in their heart? And if we were really being honest, I think half of the church would raise their hands right now because unforgiveness is such an issue. Well, if you need freedom from that, you can't do it in your own strength. You need to lean into the Holy Spirit and ask him to help you. So to know the person of the Spirit, you need to know Jesus. Go to Romans 8, and I'm gonna start reading from verse 1 through 2. It says, So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Oh, I love that. We belong to him, and so you don't have to fear death anymore. You don't have to fear your worst fears, you don't have to fear a life of not being loved and known by God because we've been free from that, and there's no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. If you belong to him, there's no condemnation. That's what the word says. So the Holy Spirit is so vital in your life. We need him every single day. You need the power, the work of the Holy Spirit. So, how does this apply to church? Of course, we're we've just been talking about how it applies to us individually. Church, okay, let's talk about the early church. They they understood this very, very well. They waited for the spirit to come and then the church was birthed. Go to Acts 1, verse 8. We all know this passage, but it's a good one. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So here sometimes in the West or really all over the world, we start church because we want to. It just feels like the cool, trendy thing to do. And then we wait for the Holy Spirit to come, or we ask him to come just so we can make our services maybe more explosive or seem more whatever. But that's not how the early church did it. No, no, no. They they met the Holy Spirit first and then became witnesses telling people everywhere about the Lord. We have it backwards here. You can't even don't, I wouldn't even start a business without the Holy Spirit. I wouldn't, I wouldn't make a life-altering decision in my life without the leading of the Holy Spirit. I definitely wouldn't start a ministry or a church without the leading of the Holy Spirit. I think Michael talks about it so beautifully. Whatever you use to sustain or to birth something is what will have to sustain it. If something is birthed in the flesh, then the flesh is gonna be the thing that's gonna have to sustain something. If it's birthed in the spirit, then the pressure is off of you because it's the Holy Spirit that will keep it alive. He it's his church, it's his work, it's his business, whatever it is you're called onto, it's his. So that takes such a weight off of you because you're like, it's it's your work, God. At the end of the day, like you sustain it or not, it's not ours. So you have to make sure you're you're allowing the Holy Spirit the time he needs. And impatience is such an issue right now in this generation. It's it's it's always been an issue in in every generation, but it's it's worse now because of technology. We get, oh my gosh, like I could order something right now on Amazon. It could be at my house in a few hours because it's just the world we live in now. So we're we've lost patience. We want to know something right now. I want to know my future now. I want to know who I marry now. I want to know my career now. I want this now. I want to be a minister now. And that is just not the way it's done. There is beauty in patience and allowing the Lord to let his will be done first in you, and then he can trust you with more things for his glory. So it's just, I think we really need the Holy Spirit in these days just to show us the leading of the Lord. Go to 1 Corinthians 2 1. Through four. It says, When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you, I would forget everything except Christ Jesus, except Jesus Christ. Same thing, but the one who was crucified, I came to you in weakness, timid, and trembling. And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speech, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. Didn't say partially, it said only on the power of the Holy Spirit. When have you heard someone talk like this? This was Paul saying these words. The amazing apostle who said, I didn't rely on anything but the power of the Holy Spirit. If Paul relied on the power of the Holy Spirit, if Jesus, while he was on earth, waited for the Holy Spirit to descend on him. We know this after baptism, and then his earthly ministry began. Why are you trying to do anything without the Holy Spirit? If they needed the Holy Spirit, so do you. And he wants to know you, and he wants to comfort you, and he wants to lead you and guide you. And he's so available if we just turn to him. May He be just in charge of our life, but our church, this church, all that we do, may the Holy Spirit feel free to move however it is he wants to. May the Holy Spirit know that he's in charge and we're just yielded vessels that just get out of the way and let him do whatever he wants to do in our life. So I want to pray for you real quick before we close. But dear Jesus, we love you. Holy Spirit, we welcome you. Holy Spirit, if we've not given you the attention, the honor that we should, oh, we ask that you help us. Jesus, forgive us for making it about other things and not keeping you central in all that we do. We need your power in every area of our life. We need your guidance. We need your leading, God. And we trust you, Lord. And I ask, God, that you will help us get out of the way so that we can allow the Holy Spirit to move however it is He wants to. We welcome Him in this church. We welcome Him in our homes. Holy Spirit, we welcome you in our life. Every day, wherever we go, we want you right there. And we are so thankful that you are. And we lean in on all it is that you're wanting to show us. In Jesus' mighty name, Lord, bless this beautiful church family, Lord. Let them feel your overwhelming nearness in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. I love you guys so much. I can't wait to be back with you very soon. You guys are so dear to us, and just thank you for being the most amazing church family in the entire world. Love you. See you soon.

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