SPEAKER_00: Well, happy Wednesday to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's the last Wednesday of the semester.
SPEAKER_00: Are you full?
SPEAKER_00: Bill, are you full?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: So there's been a few times in my life when I've heard the Lord speak with really profound clarity.
SPEAKER_00: One time I was a freshman in college.
SPEAKER_00: It was actually the first time I heard the Lord speak.
SPEAKER_00: I was going through up to that point, the most difficult time in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I was at AM.
SPEAKER_00: I was away from my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I was away from my parents.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't a soccer player anymore.
SPEAKER_00: The girl that I was in love with went to that school in Austin and didn't want anything to do with me.
SPEAKER_00: And I had gone with some buddies to a uh a Bible study, and I I was I was walking back, but I was angry in all of my confusion and hurt.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was angry, and I remember exactly where I was because I was walking back in my dorm room, and in my mind, in my heart, I I was saying to God, uh, God, what do you want from me?
SPEAKER_00: In a very angry tone.
SPEAKER_00: And it was it was the first time I heard him speak because he replied, it wasn't audible, but it felt like audible to me.
SPEAKER_00: He just said, All of you.
SPEAKER_00: My reply was, Well, you're getting more now than you've ever gotten, so why don't you just back off?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I don't know why you didn't strike me dead on the spot.
SPEAKER_00: I would have, right?
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward, uh I'm working as an engineer, and uh I'm really I'm really struggling.
SPEAKER_00: I'm struggling with a number of things.
SPEAKER_00: One, uh we were in a season where we where we were working 60, 70 hour weeks, a couple weeks in a row, and uh wasn't seeing my wife very much.
SPEAKER_00: And then on top of it, on this day, my my boss lost his temper and he had yelled at me, and so the the whole day was just a horrible, rotten, no-good, very bad day.
SPEAKER_00: And I I was driving home, and uh on top of that, it is like insult to injury.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there there's traffic, and then it just for some reason that day I was surrounded by idiots on the road, and and everything kept compounding.
SPEAKER_00: Where it got to a point where it was it was like it was a comedy of errors, where it was just like, are these things happening on purpose?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't, I I'm over my limit, and then another person like cuts me off, and I'm like, come on, you can't be making this up.
SPEAKER_00: And I I I remember uh crying out to God in absolute anger and frustration, and it's another time where I heard him speak with absolute clarity.
SPEAKER_00: He just said, I love you too much to leave you alone.
SPEAKER_00: I share both of those stories with you because I I was thinking, so this this on Wednesday nights this fall, we've walked through the Holy Spirit, teachings on the Holy Spirit, um, what scripture says, how how we can know uh the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And then this last little series, we've we've been looking at meeting spots where the Holy Spirit promises to meet you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was trying to think, how how do I want to end the semester?
SPEAKER_00: And and this is how I want to end the semester.
SPEAKER_00: Having done an entire semester on the Spirit and stirring up your affection and letting you see scripture, this is this is the point I want to drive home.
SPEAKER_00: With both of those illustrations, what I want you to know and understand is the Spirit of God was not my feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the Holy Spirit, the first point for tonight: the Holy Spirit is not a feeling.
SPEAKER_00: He is a person, and he is promised whether you feel him or not.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the truth of the matter is, is without faith, it is impossible to please God.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read for you.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I have a I have two pages of quotes from famous preachers, uh Charles Spurgeon, C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, uh A.
SPEAKER_00: W.
SPEAKER_00: Tozer, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Lloyd Jones, John Piper, Oswald Chambers, okay, Tim Keller.
SPEAKER_00: All on how your feelings as a Christian are not where your hope lies.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Do not let your feelings govern you.
SPEAKER_00: You must talk to yourself, you must preach to yourself, you must remind yourself of the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: There are times when the Christian feels utterly cast down, but that does not mean that God has left him.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to John Piper.
SPEAKER_00: God is doing 10,000 things in your life, and you are aware of three of them.
SPEAKER_00: That is so profound.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing 10,000 things and you are aware of three of them.
SPEAKER_00: See, the reality is, is your faith must be tested.
SPEAKER_00: Because only by trial can the power of God in us be perfected.
SPEAKER_00: Oswald Chambers.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11, 6.
SPEAKER_00: Without faith, it is impossible to please him.
SPEAKER_00: But listen to me, faith must be tested.
SPEAKER_00: It must be tested.
SPEAKER_00: Your feelings, okay, what are your feelings based on?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think you don't get enough sleep, you're sick, you have a spite, a fight with your spouse, your football team doesn't come back in the second half, right?
SPEAKER_00: Let's that that's all the fickle ways that you have feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pretend that you've become mature, right?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I fight with my wife and I'm wondering, God, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, why don't you just do the dishes, right?
SPEAKER_00: That'll that'll help.
SPEAKER_00: That'll go a long way.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but but that those are your fickle feelings, but but let's pretend that you have more mature feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: Your feelings are based on impressions, they're based on your own probability, your own perspective, as if you know what God is doing?
SPEAKER_00: How many times have you been walking into a trial and you beg God, please take this away, only to find out that that trial was actually God working out something magnificent in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, you're like Garth Brooks.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God for unanswered prayers, because I didn't know what I was doing.
SPEAKER_00: Your feelings are all over the place, and your feelings have nothing to do with faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith must be established on God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith always increases by opposition, while false confidence is damaged and discouraged by it.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to George Mueller.
SPEAKER_00: God delights to increase the faith of his children.
SPEAKER_00: We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, we ought to be willing to take them from God's hand as a means.
SPEAKER_00: I say and I say it deliberately: trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeat are the very food of faith, not your feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Point number two, the Holy Spirit is working on your character.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is working on you.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Romans 8, 29.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever wondered what God's plan and purpose for your life is, look at it.
SPEAKER_00: It says right here.
SPEAKER_00: He also predestined to, sorry, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know what God is doing in your life?
SPEAKER_00: He is trying to transform you into the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now let me ask you, is that an easy task?
SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna take some work?
SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna take some trials to transform you, to make you look more like Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Yes is the answer.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Galatians 5, 16 and 17.
SPEAKER_00: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: For the flesh sets its desire against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you have the spirit of God inside of you, but you also still have the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And those two things are at war within you.
SPEAKER_00: And God is trying to teach you how to rely upon his spirit, and guess what?
SPEAKER_00: The only way he can do that is through trials and opposition.
SPEAKER_00: Not by waving a magic wand and for you being filled with the Holy Spirit and having just uh, you know, euphoric experiences from that moment on, right?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I got saved at 15 and that was it.
SPEAKER_00: I just walked around on a cloud, just abiding in Jesus all day long.
SPEAKER_00: That's all I ever did.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you need work.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: God will not wave a magic wand and poof, fix everything inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: I need to say this with clarity.
SPEAKER_00: Your fears, your doubts, your confusion, your hurts, your hangups, all of that is actually wrapped up in a lack of belief and true understanding in who you are, in who God is, and who other people are, and God must work that out of you through faith.
SPEAKER_00: Not through waving a magic wand and poof, you suddenly become Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the way that it works.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why am I being so passionate about this?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Spirit is going to put you through trials in shaping you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an illustration.
SPEAKER_00: A student one asked the president of a school whether he could take a shorter course than the one prescribed.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, replied the president, but it depends on what you want to be.
SPEAKER_00: When God wants to make an oak, he takes a hundred years.
SPEAKER_00: But when he wants to make a squash, he takes six months.
SPEAKER_00: There are no shortcuts to reality.
SPEAKER_00: Unless the time factor is acknowledged from the heart, there is always danger of turning to false entitments of a shortcut via the means of experiences and blessings where one becomes pathetically enmeshed in the vortex of ever-changing feelings, adrift from the moorings of scriptural facts.
SPEAKER_00: So the reality is in each of our lives, right, there are going to be overwhelming times when the Spirit of God is taking you into a trial, through a trial, coming out of a trial.
SPEAKER_00: That is the actual normal Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's trying to transform me into the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: God cares more about my character than he does about me being a mouthpiece.
SPEAKER_00: God cares more about my character than he does about how I feel today.
SPEAKER_00: So the reality is there will be seasons when you don't feel that close to God.
SPEAKER_00: Every mature Christian has been there.
SPEAKER_00: Now those seasons don't last forever.
SPEAKER_00: That is not an excuse to become apathetic to feeling or experiencing the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Those seasons don't last forever, but they are real.
SPEAKER_00: And and part of it is to mature you so that you are not driven by feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we are driven by faith in who God is and what he is doing, whether I can feel him or not.
SPEAKER_00: Third point, finally, and I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: The end is certain.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to um 2 Corinthians 3, 17 through 18.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom or liberty.
SPEAKER_00: But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
SPEAKER_00: So God's aim in your life is to make you look more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You may get discouraged sometimes, but can I tell you God's not discouraged?
SPEAKER_00: I mean this.
SPEAKER_00: God's not discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: God knows who you are becoming.
SPEAKER_00: God sees what he is producing in you and where it is going.
SPEAKER_00: God already sees the end, and he is not discouraged.
SPEAKER_00: He is overjoyed.
SPEAKER_00: You get discouraged, you think, God, I am messing this whole thing up.
SPEAKER_00: Spirit, are you actually producing anything in me?
SPEAKER_00: And God's not discouraged, because he already knows.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, beholding, glory to glory, you are going when you see him, you will be like him.
SPEAKER_00: When you behold him, you will be like him.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he already knows what you're going to look like in ten years, what he's producing in you in 20 years, and he already knows the final end product.
SPEAKER_00: The end is certain.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we praise you.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you for your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you that this work that you began in us, you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we praise you even for trials, even for circumstances that squeeze our faith and force us to come face to face with the limits of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you right now for that.
SPEAKER_00: Because you are producing in us a trust and assurance of you in your word, in your character, regardless of how we feel.
SPEAKER_00: And Holy Spirit, that is you working in us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thank you for that.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we do confess we love those moments when we feel and sense your presence, when we hear from you, when we have such encouragement and confidence, God, that you are pleased with us, that our spirits are uplifted.
SPEAKER_00: We love those times.
SPEAKER_00: And as your children, we beg for more of them.
SPEAKER_00: But Father, we will also take, we will also take the trials and tribulations that come from your hand because we trust you that you are working all things for good.
SPEAKER_00: And that in the end, we will look just like you, King Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's in your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Hope it was a great semester.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, real quick, I am available for prayer down in the front, and I would love to pray with you.
SPEAKER_00: You are dismissed, okay.