.jpg)
The Rock Family Worship Center
Taking The Church Outside The Walls
The Rock Family Worship Center
THE SPIRIT THAT REVEALS WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHAT YOU'VE DONE
We challenge the tradition that the Holy Spirit’s role is to convict believers of sin and walk through John 16 to show how the Spirit reveals Jesus, guides into truth and affirms our identity as children of God. We share stories, scriptures and practical ways to replace shame with sonship and move from behavior tweaks to inner transformation.
• Holy Spirit convicts the world of unbelief, not believers of sin
• Context of John 16:8–13 and what “convict” means
• Three core ministries: guide into truth, remind of Jesus’ words, bear witness to sonship
• Difference between conscience and Spirit’s voice
• Why condemnation fails and goodness leads to repentance
• From behavior modification to identity-led transformation
• How prophetic tone should comfort, not humiliate
• Daily communion now, not “one day” spirituality
• Practical declarations that reinforce identity in Christ
So uh most of us, you can see what we've been talking about the last few weeks, and and I'm gonna go back into it a little bit deeper today. Most of us were raised up hearing something like this, and I brought this come out in a sermon a couple of weeks ago, and it kind of stuck with me. It was just part of my sermon at one point, but then the more I read it when I was up here, it kind of hit me a little bit harder. Then we talked about it a little bit on Wednesday night. But what most of us have come up hearing is that the Holy Spirit's job is to convict us of sin. We've always been taught that. I've been taught that. I'm sure most of us that was raised up in any churches uh, you know, down in the South, we were taught that it was, it was the purpose of the Holy Spirit was to convict us of sin. I want to challenge that. I just want to I want to cause you to think a little bit deeper on that because uh I'm gonna show you this morning that that is not the role of the Holy Spirit. That is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and I'm gonna show you that through Scripture, not through my opinion on that. Uh the Holy Spirit's job is not to convict of sin. Now, if I just got up here and just said, made that blanket statement and just went on to something else and left it, that would be very confusing. A lot of people would disagree with me. But I understand that. So if we grow up imagining a spirit who follows us around, pointing out our flaws, uh, replaying all of our mistakes that we've done in life, and shining a spotlight, always shining a spotlight on our failures, that's kind of the mindset that I that I always got out of it. But here's the thing: Jesus never said that. Nowhere in the Word does he say that. In fact, Jesus said the very opposite of that. The Spirit's ministry is not to remind you of where you blew it in life. He's not to remind you of where you made mistakes in life, but to guide you into truth, to remind you of who you are, to bear witness to your identity in Christ, that you are sons and that you are daughters of Christ in Christ. When you discover this, when you discover who you truly are, that's why we talk so much about identity. When you discover who you truly are, sin begins to lose its voice every time. When I know who I am, I don't worry about sin. That is not the focus when I'm walking around every day. My focus is not looking at what I've done wrong in my life, and also my focus is not looking at somebody else trying to figure out what they've done wrong in theirs. My focus automatically comes off of sin when I'm a child of God and I know my true identity in Christ. It is not focused on it. It loses its power, it loses its voice. So let's look a little bit closer this morning at this traditional misunderstanding. And I call it that because it is. It's something that's been passed down from tradition, you know, it's a traditional statement. It's got some meaning behind it. Guess what? It comes from the Bible. It wasn't just something somebody made up one day. It came from an actual Bible verse that we're gonna talk about in just a minute. So it's got it's got uh uh its start, its beginning, its Genesis was the Bible, but uh it's become a traditional statement. So this traditional misunderstanding that the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin. You gotta grab that a minute. Let's look at these verses here. We're gonna read through them real quick, and then we're gonna come back and jump on a couple of them and break them down. But John chapter 16, let's look at verse 7 through 13. Quite a few verses, but we can read it and then we'll come back and kind of look through it. Says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. We can stop right there. And you need to stop right there and say, What is he saying right here? This first sentence, he's saying, I'm not lying to you. I'm not telling you something that's then going to say, well, you decide whether you want to believe it. He says, I am telling you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. He's talking to the disciples here. It's to your advantage that I go away, for I for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, if I leave, I will send him to you. And when he comes, listen to this, he will convict the world of sin. Boom. Here's where we get it from. Here's its origin. Okay, we'll go back and tackle this in a minute, but I want you to always see that tradition always starts somewhere. Just because we're saying it's a traditional statement don't mean that it's an unbiblical statement. But it's always sometimes pulled out of context and pulled out of uh, we're not looking at the audience that it was talking to. We're not looking at the time frame and everything that it was given. So he says here, and when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
SPEAKER_00:Verse 9.
SPEAKER_01:Of sin, judgment of sin, because they do not believe in me. Let's go on through verse 30. Let's read through verse 13, and then we'll come back and hit it. Of righteousness because I go to my father. It's hard to read these because of the way they're broken up in here. You kind of have to just read them, read them straight through. Of righteousness, because I go to my father, and you see me no more. Of judgment, because the ruler of the world is already judged. I still have many things. Again, pay attention to the audience here. He's talking to his disciples. He's saying, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them right now. However, when he, when who, when the Holy Spirit, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. Well, he will not speak on his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak, and when we tell you, he will tell you things to come. A lot of stuff in there. We can spend the rest of the day talking about these verses right here. But I don't want to. I just want to show you a couple of things and then we'll move on from it. Most people base this idea that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin right here out of John 16, verse 8. Because what did it say? It said he will convict the world of sin. So we've taken that and we've turned it around and we've automatically said, well, wait a minute. If he tells his disciples that the Holy Spirit's going to come and he's going to convict of sin, then obviously he's come to convict us of sin. And boom, there it goes. And it's passed down, passed down, and passed down, and passed down, and passed down. And now it's just something that we that we believe. Jesus was speaking. If you go back to this verse, go back to verse uh eight. And when he has come, he will convict who? The world. He's talking about the world here. He's not talking, he's talking to his disciples, but he's not talking about his disciples. He's talking about the world. Okay? And he was describing the spirit, testifying about who? About him. He said, He's going to tell you, the spirit's going to tell you about the truth. I am the truth. He's going to come and he's going to reveal me. He's not going to reveal sin. He's not going to reveal guilt. He's not going to reveal all this other stuff. He's going to reveal me.
SPEAKER_00:Not replaying the sins of believers. Now listen to this.
SPEAKER_01:You got to realize here, he's talking about the people who are non-believers. When you go back and you study this set of scriptures out right here, you'll see that. If you skip down, what happens a lot of times is most people read verse 8 to justify this statement, and they stop right there and never go to verse 9. Where I want to go ahead and read through it. In verse 9, he says, conviction of sin, because they do not believe in me. He gives you the people that he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00:He said, the ones who do not believe in me. Understand he's talking about concerning sin because they do not believe.
SPEAKER_01:He's talking to disciples, but he's not talking about the disciples. Why? Because the disciples believe in him. He's telling them a story about what's going to happen about the people who do not believe in him. The people where? People in the world. It specifically said that word. We missed that word in there a lot of times. The Spirit convicts the world of one thing: missing the truth about Jesus. That's going to be the go. In the Greek, when you look this word up, it's elincio. It means to bring light so that the truth can be seen. So the word convict actually means to bring light so the war a truth can be seen. It's not about shame. It's about revealing a reality. It has nothing to do with shame and guilt. So the Spirit is saying to the world, you have misunderstood God. Let me show you who Christ really is. He's going to bring the truth. He's going to come and he's going to reveal to you the truth of who I am. Because when you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Okay? And because y'all think like this, and I'm talking about he's talking to the world, because you think like this and you don't know who the Father is, your mindset automatically shifts to fear and guilt and sin. But the Holy Spirit is coming and he's going to reveal to you who I really am.
SPEAKER_00:Who the Father really is. Okay. So what exactly is the Spirit doing?
SPEAKER_01:This is important to know because we talk so much about the Holy Spirit, and it is about the Holy Spirit being revealed in us, being living in us, sharing every day with us, having communion every day with us, walking, we say it all the time, walking in the spirit. It's not one thing, it's one thing just to get saved, to have salvation. But our goal is as Christians, as being Christ-like, as children of God, is to walk in the Spirit. That means we're in alignment with what the Spirit is saying. So when you look at it like that, I look that the Spirit here is what he's doing is he's exposing a distorted image that the world that he's talking to. He said, I'm talking to the world. I'm convicting the world. He's exposing a distorted image that they have of God, of Christ, and of themselves. And I tell you, we have church people today. We have people who are believers today in this world who have a wrong interpretation of God, a wrong interpretation of Christ, and a wrong interpretation of themselves. No different than what was what was being talked about right here. So let's look at what Jesus actually said. The Spirit would do. Because that's that's what's important. What did He not what I believed, not what was passed down to me, but what did Jesus actually say that the Spirit would do for believers? He gives three main ministries of the Holy Spirit. John 16 and 13 is one. I want you to see it with me. We'll get back to that one ago. However, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will do what? He will guide you. I'm pausing right here just so you can think about it for a minute. He will guide you into all truth. Truth about what? Truth about who God is and who you are in him. In John 14 and 26, says it a little bit different, but this is the second thing that he says that the Holy Spirit will do part of his ministry when he comes. He will remind us of everything that Jesus said.
SPEAKER_00:But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.
SPEAKER_01:We got to catch some of these little terms sometimes that we just skim right over. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said.
SPEAKER_00:How can you remember something that you never knew?
SPEAKER_01:It's impossible. You can learn something that you never knew, but you cannot remember something that was not already there. These things were given to us in the very beginning before the foundation of the world when he chose us. So it says that he will bring to our remembrance these things. So not everything you ever did was wrong. Ever did wrong, is he going to bring back to you? You know, we sometimes think that I used to be scared to go in a prophetic service. I'm going to tell you, when I first got saved, I was scared to go around a very prophetic person. Why? Because I knew things I was doing. And I thought they was going to call me out in the middle of church and start pointing out and calling out all the things that I was participating in.
SPEAKER_00:I was scared to death to do that.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm telling you, there's people, I can remember years after that when I started prophesying, and we'd get up. I mean, Pastor Don used to call us to the front of the church, and he would just say, Okay, Cynthia, you go. Pastor Brian, you go. We'd go to restaurants and we'd just prophesy over people. And I can remember the fear in people. They were scared to death that you were fixing to call something out.
SPEAKER_00:That was going to embarrass them. And there's sometimes you did.
SPEAKER_01:And I thought at the time that that was the Holy Spirit. And now I know it really wasn't. I can go back and look at my own self and realize there was a lot of words that I gave over the years that was more flesh than it was spirit. And I'm honest enough to say that now because I recognize it now. I can remember Pastor Don pulling me aside one day and he said, Man, you gotta you gotta tone down. He said, Your messages are hard. And it hit me one day and I said, you know, they are. They was more convicting. Why? Because I thought the Holy Spirit was supposed to convict. If I was prophesying over you, I wanted to say something that was gonna make you feel bad. Why? So you would change. So my prophetic words, I still, I mean, I had a prophetic gift, but I let the flesh and the and the things that I've learned over the years get involved in it, and my purpose was to give you something that was gonna provoke you to change, but it was out of fear and it was about embarrassment, and it was about things like that. I would not prophesy that way today. Today I realize it's got to be comforting. Why? Because the Holy Spirit has come back as a comforter. How does he come back as a comforter but not comfort you? It don't make any sense. So he's not here to tell us everything about what we did that was wrong. Everything Jesus said about you, that's what it said. About your identity, about your righteousness, and about your union with him. I told you there was three of them. This is the third one, Romans chapter 8, verse 16. There's a lot of them in the Bible, but these are just three, the main ones that you can look at here. This third one, the Spirit Himself, he does what? He bears witness with our spirit that we're children of God. If somebody prophesies a word to me and I feel like a failure, that's not bearing witness with what the Holy Spirit is speaking to me. If I prophesy a word to somebody and makes them feel like they're further away from God than what they really are, that's not a true spiritual word from the Spirit, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00:That's why prophecy can be tough when done the right way.
SPEAKER_01:You really gotta be in tune with the Holy Spirit. Now there's I've seen I've seen very detailed, deep, prophetic people who give words that mean they'll just blow your mind. And I've seen other prophetic words over the years where you know you know it's the flesh. Those kind of words you just listen and walk on. You don't rebuke them. You just listen. That ain't from me. That ain't the Holy Spirit speaking there. You know, and you just move on. But we gotta realize we don't know this if we don't understand what the purpose and what the ministry of the Holy Spirit was. We don't have to guess on it. I just gave you three verses right there. He will guide you into all truth, he reminds you of everything that God said about you, and he bears witness with your spirit. Those are three key things that you can look at right there. So when you're looking at that Romans 8 and 16, he bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. He doesn't witness to our failures. He's not witnessing to our shortcomings. And he's he's he's witnessing to our sonship. Who are you? Who did my father when he chose you? Who did he create you to be? Before the foundation of the world. See, the Spirit doesn't reveal sin. The Spirit reveals a son and a daughter, a father of God. Never reveal sin. Think about it. If the Holy Spirit's job was to constantly remind you of your sins, you'd be more conscious of sin than you are of Jesus. We've talked over the years, I've I've preached many messages on being being God conscious and not being sin conscious. This is what, this is what this mindset does. It causes us to be sin conscious. It causes people to tap into this mindset that brings up everything they ever done wrong in their life, rather than forgetting that and saying, Who did God call me to be? What does God really think about me? But again, scripture scripture does not tell us anything about sin, the Holy Spirit digging into our sin. Scripture says the opposite. In John 1 and 29, he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00:He took it away. Why would he take away the sin of the world?
SPEAKER_01:Why would Jesus go to the cross, do everything that he did, go through everything that he went through, die on the cross to take away the sin of the world, for the Holy Spirit to come back every second and remind you of it. Is the Holy Spirit contradicting Jesus? Yes, if we teach that way. We know he's not, but he is contradicting what Jesus done if we teach that he's convicting us of sin all the time. He's not doing that. Hebrews 10 and 14, he says, by one offering, he perfected forever those who are sanctified. I just kind of threw this verse in there. I don't want to go into it today because I mean we could go off on a whole new sermon on this right here. But this is just showing you again what the scripture actually says about it. Instead of just tradition. So here's a question. And I and I just said it a little bit while ago, but I just want you to think about it. If Jesus took away sin, why is the Spirit spending his whole ministry bringing it back to our attention? That is not happening. The Holy Spirit is not doing that. That is not his job. That is not the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit's role is to reveal to you Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:Not mistakes, not bad habits.
SPEAKER_01:Now you might be thinking right now, well, if the Holy Spirit reveals something positive to me, like who I am as a child of God, then why do I automatically begin to think back to the negative things that I've done? And that happens.
SPEAKER_00:Because you got a conscience. Okay? Your conscience and the Holy Spirit are not the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:So every time somebody says something good about you, when somebody looks at you and they say you are a child of God, you're created in the image and the likeness of God, your mind automatically says, I can't be like God. I mean, I know, I know what I did. That's not the Holy Spirit telling you that. That is your own conscience telling you that. That's why we say it's a battle where? Not a battle out here. It's a battle in the mind. Why? Because the Holy Spirit's speaking something, and our mind is totally contradicting it. Which one are you going to believe? You're going to believe your experiences, you're going to believe your mind, or you're going to believe what the Holy Spirit is revealing to you. That's why it's a battle in the mind, and there's been plenty of books wrote on the battle up here. You know, people made a lot of money writing about that. Why? Because it's important. So the Spirit's role is to reveal Jesus to you. Condemnation never transforms anyone. Never going to. Never has.
SPEAKER_00:If pointing out sin truly changed people, the law would have worked. Think about that.
SPEAKER_01:If pointing sin out in people would have truly changed them, then the law would have worked. And I want you to see what 1 Corinthians 15 and 56 says.
SPEAKER_00:The strength of the law is sin. Condemnation produces fear.
SPEAKER_01:Not transformation. Guilt creates behavior modification. If I feel guilty about something, it may convict me to want to change outwardly. So what do I do? I start modifying specific behaviors. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. If you're doing something bad and unnatural, we want to stop doing it. But we're not going to stop that just so we can be closer to Jesus. We stop it. We want it to be an inward to an outward change. That's transformation. Anybody can change a behavior. I've always used this example and I just it makes sense to me, but I can take anybody who is actively using drugs. I'm not saying recovering, I'm saying actively using, and I can make them stop within an hour. I can lock them up and not give them any drugs.
SPEAKER_00:No access to it at all. Guess what? They'll stop. They will stop.
SPEAKER_01:Why? Because I have just modified a behavior. The behaviors I'm using every day. I just put them somewhere and gave them no access to it. By definition, they have stopped. But it don't change nothing here. And that's what happens in a lot of, there's a lot of great rehabs. There's a lot of great places, but there's some places where they just talk about changing behavioral things, and then when the people walk out, we want to keep saying, well, why is the recidivism rate so high? Why does people keep you know going back? Why do people keep relapsing? Because they change behaviors, but they never change the thought process that led to it. So this is what the difference is here. We're talking about not just changing behaviors, but actually changing our mindset from the inside. We're changing something on the inside, and then the outside just automatically takes care of itself.
SPEAKER_00:So think about this. Instead of fear, instead of behavior modification, think about these identity, revelation of sonship, awareness of union.
SPEAKER_01:Not what am I doing. I'm not ashamed to tell it from the pulpit. I've been in situations where I know what I was doing was wrong, and I still knew who I was. But my behavior was not lining up with who I really was. I wasn't conflicted from that standpoint. I knew my identity, but I was weak. And I was still, there was still behavioral things going on. Okay. But when I start focusing on identity, when I start focusing on the revelation of sonship, I am a son. He never left me when I messed up. He never kicked me out and said, now you gotta earn your way back. When I focus in on these things and I and I realize that there's an awareness in my me of union with him, again, that I never, he never separated himself from me because I messed up. I've told you that day I was in a bar, had a few too many, and was prophesying to a guy beside me. Why? Because even though I was in that situation that behaviorally I was doing those things, who I really was just kept coming out. And I began prophesying to this guy. Probably should have been prophesying to myself, but the spirit was still working. I'm not telling people to go out and do that. I'm just saying that what I'm doing didn't change who I was.
SPEAKER_00:It never changed it.
SPEAKER_01:It's hard to tell, you know, a lot of people wouldn't want you to tell stories like that. Because then they're gonna say, oh, these people ain't gonna realize that they're gonna think that you can just go out and live how you want and still be filled with the Spirit. That's not that's not the message I'm saying there. The message I'm saying is you are still a child of God even when you mess up. And the key is not to stay there, not to get this mindset that I can stay here and still be this, but to realize that I still am this. He never left me. I'm still who I always was. And when I begin to get an awareness of that now, I begin to change all of this. It changes on its own. I don't want to live like that anymore. I don't want to do those things anymore.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want people to look at me and that's the person they see anymore. So what is it that leads a person to repentance?
SPEAKER_01:Because this is something else that I think we've we've misinterpreted at times. Because we think and we've given people this idea, and I said it well ago, that if I tell you how bad you are long enough and I make you feel guilty and I make you feel embarrassed and I make you feel all these things, that it will convict you to run to this order.
SPEAKER_00:And you know why we do that? Because it's worked. It has worked over the years.
SPEAKER_01:We have convicted people enough with our words that they ran to an altar to repeat a prayer and to have their life transformed or changed. But in Romans two and four, it really tells us the answer. We don't have to try to figure this out. He says, Oh, do you despise the riches of his goodness? forbearance and long suffering. I like this part. Not knowing. He was saying, are you ignorant of this? And then he goes on to say that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
SPEAKER_00:Not the guilt, not the shame, not the fear.
SPEAKER_01:And I love the way he asked this question here. Are you ignorant of this? Do you not know this? And I believe I have to believe when you go back and look at the story, I mean, I can picture him sitting there talking to people and saying, y'all been trying to scare them into it? You've been trying to to to you know produce fear in them and guilt and shame and all this stuff to try to change them?
SPEAKER_00:Do you not know that it's the goodness of God that does it?
SPEAKER_01:I believe we need to ask ourselves the same thing today in the church. Do we not know that it's the goodness of God that leads men to repentance and not all these other things?
SPEAKER_00:If fear, shame, or sin awareness were the key, why didn't Paul just say that? If that was was what really worked, why didn't Paul teach that? He didn't. Let's look at it from a from a more take it off the Bible a minute. Just look at it from a more common sense perspective.
SPEAKER_01:What causes people to open up? I can think of many times I'm sitting in a counseling session or something and people may come in and they may have in the very beginning they may be just shut down. They're behind this wall you just it's like pulling teeth trying to trying to get an answer out of them.
SPEAKER_00:And the one thing that gets these people to open up is not me beating them up.
SPEAKER_01:It's not me telling them everything they've done wrong in their life and why they're in the position they're in and all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:That's not it so think about what causes people to open up love or shame? Love. Even if somebody's done wrong can you love them through it?
SPEAKER_01:You're not going to shame anybody into opening up to you what makes a child that's left home? Kind of like the prodigal what's made a child who's left home return? Fear or kindness they're not returning because they think they're going to be beat or most of the time they don't want to go back because they start thinking those things. Mom and daddy's going to be mad they're going to do this they're going to do that they're going to so they don't want to go back.
SPEAKER_00:But kindness and love makes them draws them back. What changes a marriage criticism or compassion criticism don't it'll make it worse the spirit reveals your true identity one more verse I want you to look at with me.
SPEAKER_01:Romans 8 16 I know we we looked at it earlier but I want to pull this back up again I think I quoted it earlier.
SPEAKER_00:The Spirit himself who the spirit himself so there's no confusion on who we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_01:The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. If the Spirit is telling you anything opposite of being a child of God you might need to test the spirits that you're speaking with the only way I know how to say it.
SPEAKER_00:It ain't the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is going to tell you about you being a child of God.
SPEAKER_01:It's going to bear witness with you not going to tell you anything opposite now I don't mean that you know mean when I say that but I'll be honest with you I mean there's a lot of times we hear things that is not of God and I I'll be the first one to say I've done it. I've said well man that the spirit's telling me this the spirit's showing me that and now I'm honest enough to say there were so many times I thought I was in tune with the spirit and I was not because that was not the spirit telling me that why because the Bible tells us exactly what the spirit does it's never going to be opposite of what God has has already said about us. That's scripture so notice this verse here children of God notice it that it does not say that he bears witness that we are failures. It does not say that he bears witness that we're sinners it does not say that he bears witness that that we need to do better. His voice affirms you are a child of God period if the spirit is telling you you're not good enough it ain't the spirit it's your own mind it's your own guilt it's your own conscience but the Holy Spirit's never going to reveal that to you when you live from identity you naturally begin to manifest what's already true about you. The Spirit's conviction is a call to remember as we said earlier not to repair he's not in the repair process he's in the remembering process he's in the business of bringing back to you what God has already said. And I love that word we really have to pay attention to that word when we're talking about remembering because you cannot remember what you never knew. And he says I will bring back he didn't just say I will teach you this new thing. He says I will bring back and help you remember these things which means you've already been there before you ever went somewhere and when you're riding through a place you think you ain't never been through there and then all of a sudden you start seeing stuff and you're like I I remember I remember that you've been there before I've I've been in situations you know a lot of times we call it deja vu you know you've been somewhere and you're like wait a minute I I I remember I remember this and I can there's been times man I can remember it so vividly. I mean details details specific details and I remember thinking one day I don't know how I don't know why I don't know the details of but I've been here before something spiritually this has been revealed to me before in some way you know but it's always going to be positive things it's never going to be negative. When you act outside of your nature and we've all done that none of us in here are perfect we all act act outside of our nature at times we joke we used to joke all the time about Sherry every time Sherry acted outside of her nature she had a church shirt on all the time like Sherry get that shirt off if you're going to do that we've all acted outside of our nature at times happens um but when you act like that and catch that word act action word action it's a behavior when you do something that's not who you really are the spirit never says oh look what you did look at you look at you look what you did look how bad you are he whispers that's not who you are that's not who you are I've been there many times I've done something and the and the Holy Spirit whisper it back to who you are not you says it's not you he never says look what you did he never makes you feel bad he says you're righteous you're loved you are united with Christ you are holy because he is holy the spirit brings you back to the truth of your identity in Christ not to the memory of your sin not to the memory of your pain not to the memory of your guilt not to not to all that he brings you back to the truth of your identity so what the Spirit's voice what does it actually sound like I said the other day everybody's had their own experience I'm not going to argue nobody's experience I can I can't do that I can tell you what I've had and what I hadn't had and and I can only only remember I said it last week one time where I was I was at first community and I was up there at the front of the altar by myself and I was praying about something and and I heard a voice like to the point that I turned around to see who was behind me. It was a loud that's the only time it's ever happened any other time it's been just a small still voice that we sometimes confuse with our conscience. Okay? And that's why sometimes it's so hard but as we get to know him as we're more in a more intimate relationship with him we get to know his voice. So I don't confuse his voice with past voices. I know the voice of the Father I understand what he's speaking to me I understand the voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the Holy Spirit he doesn't say God is disappointed in you he says nothing can separate you from his love he don't say you up bam you messed up again I knew it would happen but he don't say that he says you're forgiven you're clean you're righteous he doesn't say you better get your act together he says walk in who you already are he gives you truth he gives you direction he guides you he leads you he's our comforter he doesn't say look how far you've fallen he says look how close you are Christ is right here. He's here he's in you the spirit never pushes you into shame he always pulls you into identity always so when we I'm going to summer try to summarize this here and close it up but the finished work it makes a different kind of disciple and I don't say that in a in a I do say that in a bragging way I'm proud of everybody in here that has has truly understood and begin to look at things not saying we're all there yet I know there's people come from different denominations here and different things and and sometimes we struggle with some finished work stuff that we talk about. I know that that's fine. But there's there's for the most part people that come here that you you have grabbed on to finished work teaching and theology and you've tried to understand it and you've tried to look through these verses with a different perspective and a different mindset. And the finished work it makes a different kind of disciple it makes people search it makes you go a little bit deeper and say you know I'm going to ask a few questions here because I want to know more. I don't want to just look right here I want to I want to go below the surface I want to dig a little bit it creates a believer that lives in freedom they understand identity and they live in freedom or maybe you used to be a believer led by guilt who lives in cycles I know a lot of people like that. I used to be like that I lived in cycles good good back up back up back up good good good it and my life would just was like that and it gets old and I mean again I can tell you many times I've sit at that church out there with the lights off right in the front of the altar and had conversations with God and said God I don't understand you I don't know why you're doing this to me I'm here at church every Sunday I'm a youth pastor I'm doing this and I started naming off all those things that I was doing trying to figure out because I was doing so good why ain't you why ain't you doing your part and then as I matured a little bit as I started really to understand who he was things started to make more sense I'm no longer a believer shaped by fear who disobeys temporarily I'm a believer now I'm shaped by the truth transforms permanently and when we say transforms permanently we're not saying that we don't still make mistakes that we don't still have some crazy thoughts sometimes we're human but see I don't live in those mistakes anymore I don't live in guilt anymore I may I may take a stroll through it every once in a while I may get you know walk through some self-pity every once in a while but then I say dad I'm not get that crap off of me and I go on back to who I am I don't live in that anymore come on there's people and I'm talking Christians believers who live in that every single day no wonder they wake up every day and say God I'm ready if you want to take me because their life is miserable how can the Holy Spirit live on the inside of you you be one with him and you live a miserable life that don't make sense to me so we've got to begin to look at this a little bit differently and that's what the finished work pushes us and motivates us to do is look at it just a little bit differently than we always have I'm not a believer anymore listening for uh condemnation and listening to to people and they're going to cause condemnation in me and guilt in me. When I say things from up here sometimes people take it the wrong way but I really mean it's I don't care what you think. And I hope that you don't care. And what I mean by that is that you don't live your life based on what other people think or say about you. I know who I am even if you don't agree with it I don't need your agreement for me to understand my identity in Christ so no matter what somebody says about me it don't change who I am it just changes your perception of me. So I want to be that person who I'm not condemned every day I'm not getting beat down every day I'm not living my life like that I'm a believer listening for identity and listening listening every day and realizing that God is always there with me. No matter what I'm going through he's never left me he's never going to leave me he's never going to forsake me I'm never alone I'm never going through something by myself unless I choose to I can choose to block him out and say I got this I'm going to handle this on my own I can do that because he's not just going to jump in there and intervene he's always speaking but I can choose to not listen I can choose to shut him out I think we have taken that our willingness to shut him out and we have called it you know in a sense said that he's left us.
SPEAKER_00:Just because we shut him out don't mean he left but that's what we've turned it into he's always speaking to us he's always trying to bring us back to our identity.
SPEAKER_01:So in closing let me just say a couple of things right here and I think this is things that we need to we need to speak every day over ourselves. We need to make declarations over ourselves the Spirit is not exposing your sin. He's revealing your sonship he's not exposing your past he's not reminding you of who you used to be he's reminding you of Jesus He's not convicting you of guilt he's convicting you of truth what is the truth he's not punishing you or pushing you away or distancing himself from you or separating from you he's guiding you home he can he can just amazes me that we can sit there sometimes and we can we quote that he'll never leave me he'll never forsake me and then I turn around and teach people that your sin is separating you from him I mean that just don't even make sense to me forget the Bible just from a common sense perspective it don't even make sense how can he separate from me if he says he'll never leave me the Spirit isn't here to point out your mistakes he's here to show you who you are you are a child of God don't care what you've done don't care what you've been through he's not trying to drag up your past he's here every day to remind you of Jesus Christ he's not trying to make you feel guilty he's pointing you to the truth he's not pushing you away he's guiding you home you are loved you are accepted you are free and I think our goal should be not only for us to see this every day and to speak this every day and remind ourselves of it every day but this is something that I think that we need to help other people walk out because there's a lot of people who are not living free. Their mansion's prepared for them they're ready to walk through the pearly gates but they're not living free right now they're living in shame and with shame and guilt and condemnation and just ready to go. God take me whenever you want I'm just tired of this old world and again that's you know I don't think as Christians we should not live a life to where that is our mindset.
SPEAKER_00:Every day why can't we show him here?
SPEAKER_01:Why can't we actually walk around and and show people be an example that's what we're called to be we're called to be an example of Christ to walk out that his life to walk out who he created us to be here on this earth that's the difference between you know when people say well that that what y'all teaching is way out there. No it's not it's just saying that we believe what he done is complete and that now I have the ability to walk out everything that he said that I am that's it I can do that now I can walk it out sometimes I don't even need a Bible to preach to people all I need is my walk all I need is to just show Jesus Christ through everything that I do through everything that I say I don't have to quote a scripture all the time it's great if you know the scriptures that can back them up and somebody wants that supporting scripture that's great. But I don't sometimes it's just we're in a situation let me see how he gets out of this we're in a moment we're in a something's happened let's see how you manage this and sometimes people watching our lives just looking at us that's all they need to see I've heard it many times not just from myself but you know hearing it from other people I've heard people say you know I don't know how they did that I don't know how they come out of that I don't know how they managed to get through that and that's a door we always say Lord we pray and open up doors of opportunity there's your door of opportunity when somebody says how do they know who they are they're not perfect but they know who they are they don't let that situation get them down. They don't let that situation put them in a place of guilt and condemnation even though they're in that place they know who they are and they pick themselves right up out of it. No matter what comes as long as we can tap into our identity and as long as we realize we get into this but it hit me while it goes and I said I think one of the problems and I'm gonna end with this I think one of the problems when we talk what we talked about today allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal things to us one of the reasons we can't do that is if I'm waiting on one day and I don't realize he's here today then I can't allow him to help me in this situation. I have to realize he's here with me today. It's not a one day thing that's not taking away all those one day things that's just saying that he's here with me today. And if I realize that any situation I get into I realize that he is with me and he is guiding me and he is my advocate and he is leading me into truth but if I don't realize that then who am I communing with my own conscience I used to tell people you know some people isolate themselves. Y'all ever seen anybody that does that they get in this place and they'll isolate themselves and they'll say well that's just that's that's the best place for me to be because I I just can't be around other people and you know building walls up and that's what that's what isolation is it's building walls up and and the thing is walls work from the standpoint of keeping people out so what they're what they're actually trying to do is working from that standpoint but what they're not looking at is walls actually imprison you too and you are stuck in this place and the only person that you have to run things through is yourself listen when I'm in the worst of the worst situations the last piece of advice I want is for myself but when I realize that the Holy Spirit's there why because he's in me and he's never he'll never leave me nor forsake me so the Holy Spirit is in me he's there with me and I begin to commune with him and not my own thoughts everything changes but if I don't recognize that he's there because I'm waiting on him one day then I don't have that communion with him I don't have that real daily relationship with him I'm just waiting one day that's the difference in what we're teaching with finished work that's really all it is to say that hey you have access to that heaven you're waiting on that Holy Spirit you're waiting on that freedom you're waiting on you have it now you have access exactly you have access to it right now so again I hope you see a lot of these things that we're saying is not just for you it's for you to take in but it's also for you to take in learn understand and throw back out to other people help other people begin to walk out of the places that they're in there's people stuck there's people in prison right now there's people I'm not talking about prison walls I'm talking about the own walls within their own life that they've imprisoned themselves we can break them out of that we can break the walls down we can help them be free I challenge you look for the opportunities because I guarantee you if you if you put yourself in a position and you say Lord lead me to somebody that person will show up in your life that needs you.