Familiar Stranger Q&A

Panel by: Pastor Nate Levering, Jason Rivera, Emily Turner, and Jenny Wasserman 

Transcript

0:07

Good morning. My name is Nate. We've been walking through the series together as we've uh talked about. If you're brand new, I'm gonna spend a couple minutes before we jump into the panel, kind of just doing a review on the last six weeks. We have been studying, as M said well, the uh the Holy Spirit and specifically what Jesus has to say about the Holy Spirit. And so uh if you sort of track with the life of Jesus, he lives this perfect life, becomes a sacrifice for us on the night before he goes to the cross to give his life for us that we might have forgiveness of sin, that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit. He spends some time with his closest disciples preparing them to lead the church, us, into this era in which Jesus will have had done his saving work of redemption, but then he will leave the Holy Spirit to guide us, to empower us, to protect us, to do the work through the church that Jesus intends for the world. And so uh we've been not not so much sort of having these big shifts, but kind of being reminded, kind of creating some new awareness in the way we we think. Uh and this has been a series in which we've really sensed God inviting us to learn some things, to pay attention, maybe in some new ways, as a sort of launching point for walking with God and living the life of mission and purpose that he has for us. And so we've been having some fun jumping in. Uh, and even, you know, I have a good buddy and we've never had conversations about the Holy Spirit, but we're doing the life group together, and he comes to church here. And he was telling me recently uh about how different it is to teach his daughter to drive than it was to teach his two older sons. He said, With my sons, I just gave him the keys and we drove. With my daughter, I give her the keys and she gets out of the driveway, and he's like, It's all I can do, not to grab the steering wheel. She's kind of just looking around and we're sort of staying, sort of between the lines. He was telling me one describing one time coming down Tuolamy Road, he's like, It's red. No, it's red. It's red, and that means you need to stop. And he's like, What I needed was that little, you know, break that the driving instructors, I'm not sure if they still do, uh, had, you know, and it was like we started reflecting and thinking about that. That I think oftentimes one of the things that the Holy Spirit would love to do is to sort of jump out of the passenger seat to kind of grab the wheel of our lives. Maybe for some of us, pump the brakes, stop. You're gonna destroy yourself, you're hurting the people around you. For some of us, this series has been this sense that the Holy Spirit's actually like, hey, that the the pedal on the right there, go. I gifted you, I'm empowering you. Go. Tell those people you're a little bit scared to step into the gifts I've given you, begin to ask questions, begin to just see in new ways how I might be desiring to move in your world and in your life. And so, again, just language to launch into our lives of faith. Jesus said a couple of things as he kind of sandwiches this pretty long teaching, much of which is about the Holy Spirit. The first thing that he says about the Holy Spirit is this, and this takes us back to week one. He says, I will ask the Father, he will give you another advocate, the third person of the of the Trinity, to help you and be with you forever. The spirit of truth. And then at the end of Jesus' teaching, and this is the one that's kind of messed with some of us, because in our honest moments we would say, I don't know, it might be nicer to have Jesus here, like in the in the flesh. But Jesus said this to his disciples. He says, Very truly I tell you, when Jesus uses that language, it's not like he was not teaching truthfully, but he's saying, Give me your attention. Give me your attention, consider this, think about this, wonder about this, pray about this. It is for your good that I'm going away, Jesus says, unless I go away, the advocate, which is Jesus' word for the Holy Spirit, will not come to you. But if I go, if I go, it'll be better for you. Dads, moms, kids, employees, employers. It's gonna be better for you. You'll be better at life, you'll be better at what you've been asked to do, you'll be better at walking with me if I go. Why? And then he kind of describes how this works and how the better comes. And so he gives a number of things. And so I just want to kind of walk through them. Jesus says this first off, the Holy Spirit's gonna help you in ways that I couldn't help you if I were here in the flesh. He's gonna help you in all kinds of different, if you've ever sort of asked yourself that question, how do I love these sort of unlovable people? Jesus' answer is, I'm gonna send you a helper, the Holy Spirit. How do I forgive these people the way that I've been forgiven in Christ? Well, Jesus' answer is that he's going to give you the Holy Spirit. How do I navigate this future? I remember my dad saying one time uh in sort of his last days, and he was looking at his grandkids with just love, he said, Man, I don't envy you having to raise your kids in this culture and the way that it is. And I remember just leaning in, I said, Yeah, but dad, like think of the potential. If these kids can learn to walk in step with the spirit for God to move and shine in this culture. So the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, will help us in those things. He will dwell in you. He says, I'm gonna go away, but I'm gonna come back in spirit and I'm gonna dwell in you. Paul takes us a step further and uses sort of some Old Testament language about the temple. And he says, actually, your body, your physical body, is gonna be like the temple of the Holy Spirit. He will be present and he will be power and he will guide from the inside out. He goes on then to say that he will teach and guide, but but the Holy Spirit, as Jason taught that particular week, doesn't teach and guide by ways of like a bullhorn or you know, like our digital sign. It's like, here's your sign. Oftentimes it's through a whisper, it's through the time we spend in his word, it's through learning to listen. The Holy Spirit will witness about Jesus. This is one of the things we said that like you can tell when it's the Holy Spirit, because he's saying, pay attention to Jesus, pay attention to Jesus, see him, know him, share him. Jesus said that he will convict the world. He'll convict the world. And if you remember, he said specifically he'll convict the world around uh what's wrong with the world, namely sin, our sin, my sin. What's right in the world, namely Jesus, his righteousness, and then who ultimately wins in the end. It's this picture of hope in the midst of judgment. And then lastly, as we looked at last week, the Holy Spirit comes bearing gifts. There's been a part for me, uh just try to like, as we've unpacked God's word, I hope that you would have this sense that that the Holy Spirit desires to give you good gifts, to use you in ways that maybe you're not attuned to, you're not maybe ready for, but as we talked about last week, that we would sort of be like a ship with the sails up, just saying, God, blow, fill these sails. I desire to serve you and to know you in increased kinds of ways. And Jesus said, I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit, and that will be his goal. Now, throughout this series, as we've been sitting in life groups, as M said, and just talking with so many of you, lots of questions have come up. So I want to invite our panel to come up now. Uh, and we are going to attempt to answer a few of those to the best of our ability and experience. Welcome up these guests, please. Woo-hoo! We're excited. It's gonna be good. Okay. And you can ask a question if you want. So text your questions. We got a couple questions for service. So if you're one of those people that likes to mess with us, now's a good time because Emily will get your question and potentially ask it without your name being attached to it out loud, and we'll have to try and do our best. And your phone number. Okay. Um, so good morning, church. We have uh Pastor Nate, Pastor Jason, who is our youth pastor, if you've yet to meet him, and then our dear friend Jenny Wasserman. So Jenny has hosted multiple Bible studies um with our church for our church. Um, so okay, just really fast before we dive into the questions, we thought it might be helpful to kind of know as you hear their answers, um, maybe a little background of where they're coming from. So maybe it was the church that they were raised in, the household that they were raised in, but what kind of prompting of the Holy Spirit, what knowledge um kind of brought them to where they're at today? Yeah, so I became a Christian when I was about seven years old after being invited to vacation Bible school by a friend. And so I grew up kind of in an independent Baptist church where there wasn't a whole lot of necessarily talk about the Holy Spirit. So that was something that as I went on to college and I began to journal in my time with the Lord, I began to realize that I was interacting with the Holy Spirit. He was the one who was kind of guiding me as I was processing and thinking through scripture. So that became a part of my life of realizing like one of the ways I was connecting with the Holy Spirit was through journaling. Um, and then I went overseas to do um cross-cultural ministry in conservative Muslim countries and learn just a lot of how God works differently in different cultures and to see some of that and be challenged in new, new ways that were beyond my comfort zone sometimes. But then also to be a part of a for a season uh church that really was grounded in scripture, but also really was encouraging us to really lean into hearing from the Holy Spirit and stepping out in faith as he leads and directs. Thank you, Jenny. Um, yes, like Em said, I am Jason. Um does that sound like I am Groot a little bit? Yes, I am Jason. Uh I was raised in a very uh Pentecostal church. Um we uh we got to experience the Holy Spirit in really unique and tangible ways. Um, but with that being said, I got to experience what it was like to like sense and feel an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and then also when maybe that spirit, that outpouring slowed down, but the church continued to push into it. Um so I got to experience it up like kind of both sides of the goodness, the amazingness of the Holy Spirit, but also like a church that continued to push when it wasn't um necessarily what God was doing at that time. And so um that's where I was raised. Um, and then I've been here for about 12 years. Cool. My upbringing was a lot like Jenny. I think I was at a you know raised at this church. Uh the emphasis was not on the Holy Spirit. We were never taught to like fear the Holy Spirit or you know, it just that wasn't the emphasis. And so for us, the emphasis was, you know, knowing and studying the word of God, which was a great emphasis. Um, but it just probably wasn't as balanced, maybe as sort of I hope we are now. And um, yeah, but we saw God, I mean, God's moved in incredible ways. We just didn't necessarily have the language, and maybe we we didn't listen in ways that I think we're learning to listen now. So it's exciting. Awesome. So we had said that if you do have any questions, we do have some that you guys have sent in over the last week. But if you have questions as this is going, that's why I have my laptop. It's open in live time so you can submit any questions. We've already received one. Um, but the phone number is up on the screen. So go ahead and text in if you have any. Um but we're gonna go ahead and jump in with number one. How do I discern the Holy Spirit versus my own voice? Yeah, so this is a very common question in the church, right? It's a question that we kind of all wrestle with in some way, shape, or form. If you're like me, you're like, did I eat meatloaf last night, or is this the Holy Spirit? Like, which one are we working with here? Um, I woke three of you up. You're welcome. Uh no, it's this idea that I think to discern from the Holy Spirit, it needs to be a couple different ways. Number one, it has to be grounded in the word of God. So when you are trying to discern what the Holy Spirit is calling you into, it needs to be grounded in the Word of God. And I say this reluctantly because there's been times in my life where I've been like super frustrated with someone, and then I open my Bible and land on Psalms 4, and it's like, be angry and do not sin, go to sleep on your bed and be quiet. And I'm just like, Lord, I love you. But at the same time, I did not want to read that verse. And so it's this idea that it has to be grounded in the spirit. That's number one, and number two, it's really good to have like secondary input. Ask fellow believers, like, hey, I feel like I am discerning this from the spirit. I do this with Nate or my other elders or friends, you know, like, hey, I feel like the Lord is leading me into this. What are your thoughts? What are you hearing from the Lord? And then actually ask them to pray, right? So those are two ways that I think you can do it. Another really good way is I did um a class on hearing God uh at Jessup University, and there's a book that Dallas Willard writes called Hearing God, and it talks a lot about just journaling. Like it's a lost art, I feel like, for us. We're so busy. Jenny kind of like talked about it for a second, but um, we're so busy, but you would be so surprised if you wrote a letter to yourself from God. You would be like, There's no way this is gonna work. But if just try it, just like try journaling through what you're reading, what you're learning in scripture. Um, those are a couple different ways that I think you can discern. Yeah, and I would just say, too, as you're trying to lean into growing to hearing from the Holy Spirit, like Jason pointed out, you really do need to be in scripture. Like there's nothing that the Holy Spirit's gonna speak to you that is gonna be outside of scripture in the sense of it's everything's gonna align with that, and not to be fearful to kind of get it wrong sometimes. I think a lot of times we're so afraid that we got it wrong. I'm just gonna not bother. And so I think learning to grow and cultivate that so you get better and better at like, is this the spirit or is this not the spirit? And the more that you're willing to step out and take those risks is also helping you grow and discerning the difference between the Holy Spirit and your own voice. Yeah, there's certainly right. All of us can think of times where we're like, okay, clearly that was not God, right? We've all woken up from the afternoon nap. There's other times we're like, clearly, this is God. He's leading, he's stepping. It's easy for me to kind of see that there's those times in between where we're invited to respond, I think, most often and find out. And we find out oftentimes by the fruit, what grows as a result of the way we step into what God wants. I had a super fun story yesterday. And like I said, I'm learning a new language too with lots of us. And so I'm up in the middle of the night and I posted a one of my son's bikes that he's outgrown on online, and and I just put it up there and I'm up in the morning earlier than I wanted to be, kind of praying. And I just said, Okay, Holy Spirit, and it just hit me like I don't need the couple hundred bucks for selling this bike. I'd like to just give it away to a family. And so I'm just sort of again, this is pretty new for me in some ways. I'm like, give me a name, and I'm listening, and the name Garrett just came up. And I was like, Oh, I know Garrett, he's got some young kids. I love Garrett and his family, but I have no idea if they'd be the right size for this bike or anything. But in the morning, I'm gonna tell my wife Kathy, if she's like, You're crazy, I'll probably push pause. But she's like, Okay, we should call Garrett. And I went to go call Garrett, he's sitting over here, and Garrett texts me and said, Hey, I saw this bike that you have for sale. We're interested in buying it for our son. And so for me, it was like, that's not my voice, that's the Holy Spirit. And so I called Garrett and I said, Garrett, come pick it up. And then he would shoot me videos of his son Nolan riding around tween hard on his new bike. It's so cool to just, and again, I don't think anybody got saved yet. Maybe Nolan's gonna be an evangelist or something great, but just this little sensitivity and awareness to I don't have to do things the way I would normally do them. And so saying, Holy Spirit, if you have another route, a different path, let me listen, let me pay attention, let me be aware, and and I'm gonna go for it. I'll call him and see what happens. Now he had pre-called me, so it made it easy, but yeah. Well, thanks, guys. So maybe some of us are sitting here, like, I don't, I still don't know how to discern the spirit's voice or guidance, even as we're going through. Like maybe some of you took the spiritual um gifts assessment and you're like, I don't know what this means. Um, I have a gift of teaching, apparently, but I don't know what this means. Um, if you would just like some further support, prayer, someone to kind of walk with you through that, maybe coach you through that um so that you're you feel better equipped to discern. We have a whole list of people that our staff has worked with over the last week who would love that, love the honor of praying with you, meeting with you, kind of coaching you in that. If you're like, I just kind of still don't know what this is. So on your connection card or this, you know, on that little connection card in the seat back in front of you, if you want to just fill out your name and then and your phone number and on that little line, just write gifts. Um, that would be great. That would help us kind of know who to reach out to. Um, okay, we have, you guys, we have so many questions coming in. This is great. Um, okay, but I do want to get to this one that someone submitted um earlier this week because it I just think is really foundational for a lot of us. Um, so it's how do I explain the Holy Spirit to my young kids, especially when they don't exactly hear him or see him? Yeah, so I think this question already has a lot of complexity built into it. Cause even as adults, the concept of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit is a part of that is just a difficult concept for us to wrap our brains around, much less trying to share that with with our kids. Um, so but even in that, I, you know, I'm gonna encourage you to think and keep it simple. And so one of the things I think is great is to kind of think through different aspects of who the Holy Spirit is, like what his role is and what truths we know from the Word of God. And behind me, I sort of shared just some examples of how I might condense that down to simple ways that you could communicate that to your kid, but also just not worrying about trying to do it all at once, like just slowly chip away at that. So choose an aspect of the Holy Spirit and pair it with a Bible verse, or if you have a storybook Bible and there's a story in there and you can pull out a couple truths from that about the Holy Spirit, you can just share that with them and not feel like you have to like get it all done in one foul swoop, but think of it as sort of planting these little seeds of truth that are going to continue to grow as they grow. Um, and another way to kind of think about it too, when we think about you can't really see the Holy Spirit. And so trying to help kids kind of connect with that idea is in the original Hebrew, um, the word that we use for Holy Spirit sometimes was also connected and translated as like wind or breath in certain contexts. And so I think that's a good concept that we can kind of connect with our kids, where if, you know, you they you can point out, say, hey, see how the tree branches waving in the wind, and you can see the you know the effects of that wind on the branch. And so that's how the Holy Spirit works. Like we can't see the Holy Spirit with our eyes, but we can see his movement around us. He's working, he's powerful, he's at work. And that's something that kids I think can connect with because they understand the wind. You can't see it, but it's actually still there. And then also the idea of breath. Um, you know, you think of, you know, you can have your whole, you know, have the kids put their hand up and breathe and feel their breath and say, well, we can't see our breath, but that's what gives us life. And the Holy Spirit gives us life too. We can't see him, but he's he's giving us life and bringing life in order. And so those are some things that you can kind of connect to with your kids and begin to give those touching points that you hope will continue to grow with them as they grow up. Because throughout the Bible, you're gonna see instances of the Holy Spirit sort of, even when they use the word for Holy Spirit exactly, still describing it in Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples for the first time is described as a mighty wind. When God made Adam, he breathed life into Adam. When Jesus came after the, you know, after his resurrection, he breathed the Holy Spirit on his disciples. So just kind of helping them connect those dots so that as you grow over those years, those will continue to be kind of the foundation that you've laid. If you feel like you'd like some resources, um, there's two, there's four resources I'll mention. Um, so the first is just um two theology books, which sounds crazy, but they're actually written for families and kids. So they're not crazy. Yeah. So these two up here, one is more family oriented, this one here on the left. And then the one on the right is more specifically just kid focused because it's gonna have crafts and activities, but it's gonna tackle, there'll be like a chapter on the Holy Spirit, and you can kind of unpack that as a family together. That would be one thing you could work through this summer. Um, and then if you get through that, you know, on the Holy Spirit, you could move on to some other concept in those books. And then the next slide will have there's a board book that's kind of for ages one through five that really lays some foundational truths about the Holy Spirit. And you can just read through that with your child and kind of lay that foundation about the Holy Spirit. And then the other one is a storybook Bible that has four um stories from the Bible about the Holy Spirit. And what I love about this is just that a lot of them are from the Old Testament. And so it's gonna kind of grow us in scene. Like this is the same Holy Spirit in the Old Testament as the New Testament. It's just when he comes in the New Testament, one of his big things that we think about is him bringing salvation, which is huge, like he's convicting us of sin, but just a beautiful resource that you could work through together with your family if that was something you wanted to continue to grow in together. Yeah, and when I think about family, um, like teaching your family about the Holy Spirit, I think that it's also a really good learning opportunity for us to talk about some of the gifts uh of the Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, excuse me. Um, because I love the fruits of the spirit because they're the evidence that God is working through your life, right? So you guys know these ones love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and my favorite, your favorite, self-control. Um, those are all parts of the fruits of the spirit. Now, my mind was rocked when I learned that the fruits of the spirit are just the proof that God is doing things in your life, that God is using you, that the Holy Spirit is working through your life. And so if you see areas of your own heart in your family, right, where you're like, hey, I'm not showing patience right now. This is not something that I'm like showing you as my child patience. And so I want to work on that. I want the Holy Spirit to change this in me. Or I can see that you're not showing, you know, love to your little brother or your little sister. I want you to work on that so we can see God as moving in your life. And so just remembering that the fruits of the spirit are evidences of what God is already doing, and we as Christians should be um growing in those consistently, right? Like good tree grows good fruit. We should be growing in those fruits of the spirit um consistently in our life. Awesome. Okay, we're gonna take one from you this morning. It is how do we make sure we're not grieving the Holy Spirit? I mean, we we so we talked about this in length. I tried, I attempted to talk about this in length a couple weeks ago. So, um, like I said, we've we've hit on these. We spent a decent chunk of time talking about what uh Paul's inviting us to consider when it comes to grieving the Holy Spirit. So really it's it's just acting or living in ways contrary to the movement of God. And so that can be, like I said earlier, like just coasting through life when Jesus is saying, put your foot on the gas pedal. I want you to learn to give, I want you to learn to serve, I want you to learn to love in hard ways, I want you to forgive, go. You need to get moving. You're coasting. It can also be him saying, Hey, pump the brakes. You're moving into areas you are living in ways that uh where you can't hear, you can't be attentive to the spirit's movement in your life because it's too loud, because you're over busy, because whatever those things are. And the scripture is clear, it means real simple. That those are ways that grieve the Holy Spirit. He will not jump into your side of the car and grab the steering wheel and hit the brakes. He'll pick you up when you hit a wall, but he's gonna be the one that says, stop, go, move, stay in this lane, change lanes. Grieving him is when we say, you know what, I think Nate's path is pretty good. Nate's speed is pretty good. When he's saying, I want you to move, I want you to go. And those are just real simple ways that just the Holy Spirit's like, No, no, no, no, no, I have more. No, I have something different. No, I have. And we go, I think I got this figured out, right? And oftentimes for me, that's pace. Like I like to see a decision to go, like we're moving, like let's go. And oftentimes the Holy Spirit's like, how about we slow this down? How about we ask some wise counsel? How about you talk to your team before you just give them, you know, whatever this big thing is? And oftentimes that allows us together to kind of discern and hear. But I think that that's how we get in the way. I think another way we get in the way or we we and or grieve the Holy Spirit is by my students will notice while I talk about masks, um, by like having a chameleon mask where like here on Sunday morning, you're one way, and then you go to school for my students. You go to school, you're a different way. For you guys, you go to work, you go to Target, you wherever it is, like being cautious to like not just change your mask because you're in a different environment. Being cautious to like be like, man, I I want to be um in sync with the Holy Spirit, and and I want God to use me in these moments, and He will, as long as you know, He will still, even if you're masking up, but I think He would prefer you to just be you, be the person, the unique person that God created you to be. Okay, we are gonna jump to number four, um, because I don't want our church to miss this question. Um, how does the Holy Spirit sustain believers through suffering? I think this is uh should always be part of the conversation. Uh sometimes we can get down these tracks. It's like, you know, if we just do whatever we're supposed to do, God's gonna heal, God's gonna, you know, alleviate suffering. And that's just clearly not the world we live in. It's not the biblical world that Jesus walked and acted in. And so so many times uh we sort of live within this world where God's not alleviating all the suffering, but the Holy Spirit's in the middle of it with us. And uh as I've thought about this in our own life and kind of ins and outs of walking through some suffering, you know, the best sort of word picture for me is this idea of lightning bolts of grace. I mean, sometimes, you know, you you just see the clouds coming around, you see the darkness of the afternoon, you see the, and it describes our life well, I think, at times. Uh, and so, but in the midst of that, uh, God is a God that I from my experience, from what he promises to do, that shows up in surprising, beautiful kinds of ways that that don't maybe take the suffering away, but in the midst of it, it transforms us, right? From the inside out. It just kind of shows up. And I have a hundred pictures from our community, from our own lives of these times in the midst of suffering where there was a clarity and a presence and this sense of the power, not healing whatever was causing the suffering, but stepping into that in a kind of sustaining, beyond beautiful, lightning bolt grace kind of way. One of those, you know, I drew the card one day and we took my dad down. He was uh getting finishing up a series of his cancer treatment. And um, you know, he had graduated from radiation that day. And so I wheeled him out in the wheelchair. You know, my dad was a strong man, taught the word of God here for 40 plus years, and he was, you know, in a wheelchair and he had graduated from his little string of radiation and got to ring the bell. I don't know if you ever had this experience. And then to hear doctors and nurses talk about ways they'd seen God because of my dad's just presence and faith, what God had done. I mean, for me, it was like this thin space in the midst of what I felt was like kind of the world closing in and suffering. And when I think back on it, it was this lightning bolt of God's grace. And he shows up in the midst of those kinds of times. I think that the Holy Spirit oftentimes sustains believers through his church. God's oftentimes motivating, hey, make this text and just be encouraging. Hey, make this meal and take it over. Hey, you know, send them a word, just encourage them, just lift them up. They're in the midst of suffering. So I think God's created the church in such a way that we have a savior that suffered on our behalf, and he invites us into that for others. So we aren't to be shy of those places that if a marriage is struggling, if a family's struggling, man, we just enter in and we be present, not with, again, perfect answers, not putting all the pieces together, but just stepping in. And when we think of our times where we've walked through suffering, it's when the church comes around that oftentimes we feel the sustaining power and presence of God. And it's through believers like you and I. It's a powerful thing. So those are a couple things that come to mind. Yeah, and I guess I would add too, I think a lot of the temptation when we, I think, walk through times of suffering is to kind of ask the question that the disciples, when that storm came upon them and Jesus was just casually sleeping, and they're like, Do you not care that we're dying? And I think it's this temptation to be like, God, don't you see? Don't you care? Do you actually love me? And there's different things that are beautiful that the Holy Spirit does, I think, when we're walking through suffering. But I think the most kind of foundational one is just that he reminds us, God sees, he cares, he's with us. And that's just so important when you're all that storm is raging around you to know that he really does care, that he really is present and he really does love you. Yeah, I think to remind yourself in the midst of suffering that God is God and you are not. Um we, if you were to just take a brief like recount of your life and the desert seasons that you've gone in, the hard seasons that you've walked through, I would almost guarantee that something came out of that that you had you were not expecting. Um, in my life, I know, and when you look at like the just look at the Bible, every season of desert that you read about, it's always God preparing for something else. So now in the midst of your suffering, maybe you might just say something like that like, God, I know you're God. I know I am not. I don't know why I'm going through this, but I'm looking forward to what you're gonna use it for in the future for your benefit, for your glory. And I know that that is hard, but I promise you that you will begin to sense uh like an overwhelming sense of peace by being willing to let let it go. Like we are a fix-it generation. As I look around this room, I like, you know, I see men that that build things and women that build things, and we we like to like be in control, but that is not like that is we're not in control of God. He is God. We are not. And so being willing to just be like, okay, God, I I can't wait to see what you're gonna do out of this, and I don't know what that looks like. Okay, this is gonna take us on a different thread, but we've had two that came in that are pretty similar. Um, it's do people who have yet to know or accept Jesus as their savior still hear the Holy Spirit? And then for those who are non-believers, how do they experience conviction if it's not through the Holy Spirit? Oh, I think that you know and the theologically they would break this up with like sort of common grace and then uh specific grace. And so I I certainly believe that non-believers experience common grace. They experience the Holy Spirit in a ton of ways, not indwelling them, uh not freeing them from sin yet, but definitely uh compelling them to see Jesus clearly. Uh I so I would absolutely say that the Holy Spirit is, I mean, you can see tons of we could go there and probably in our own lives before we are believers, we're like, man, it took the Holy Spirit some work to get me around. And that's what he's doing. He's after us, man, he's pointing to Jesus. He and I think that he convicts of sin too. Um, you know, he'll and again, life does that, so it's our own flesh, but absolutely I think the Holy Spirit is is working on and working through us oftentimes. Great. Sufficient. Um uh okay, we are gonna jump to number five. Are gifts given? Like when we talk about gifts, we mean like the um spiritual gifts that we had talked about last week. Are gifts given or can they be developed? Yeah, so I think that gifts are given, um, but I also think that they can be developed. I think it's a both and I think um, you know, we've we've talked a lot about like how the Holy Spirit's consistently talking. We're probably just not listening, like quieting our souls enough to listen. And so I think that it's a both and I think that they're given to you. I think God has given each one of you specific, unique gifts, but I also think that they are consistently being developed if you're willing to let Him do it. You know, some of you are in this room, you're like, I would never sit on that stage. Ever. And then in like five years, you're sitting on the stage and you're we're like, see? You know, so I think that I think that they can be developed, but um, yeah. Yeah, I think with the spiritual gifts, it's something that the whole concept is just the idea of spiritual gifts. If you look back to the original language, it's just saying, like, it's this idea of just being indwelled by the Holy Spirit and letting him move and work in your life to build up the local church. The point of the gifts is not about you, the point is about glorifying God and edifying the church. So if we're really obsessed with pursuing after gifts, like we should be aware of what our gifts are because the spirit's given everyone that and it can ebb and flow over your life. It's not just one consistent thing, and sometimes it is. But the idea is that we want to be pursuing Christ so wholeheartedly that that's just what's gonna naturally, the spirituals, literally in the language, the spirituals are just gonna flow out of you because you're so pursuing Jesus and pursuing his word, and then you're gonna be led by the spirit, and these are gonna naturally flow out of you because these gifts, spoiler alert, they're not in heaven. Like this is just for a short season until we get to be face to face with Jesus one day. I think sorry, go ahead. No, go that line that you said, the gifts are not about you, just like so good. That was so I almost was like, dang, mic drop. Go, Jenny. Just experientially, you know, in walking this out, because it's tough. And I do think that you know, it's easy to see the gift of teaching growing. It's a different thing to think about the gift of prophecy or healing or miracles. Like, can I be, can I grow in that? Can I be kind of an average healer and then get to be a and and I had this experience again? I I've never like been a part of a church that really even, or let's just say I never really prayed this. And so I went through a short season, some of you have heard these stories where God used circles I was in, even an individual kind of came out of nowhere and said, Hey, I think that you have the gift of healing. God spoke this to me. Will you pray for me? And so just some crazy stuff that way. And then, you know, the other side of my story. So I start to think, again, not that the gift's about me, but but how do I grow in this? And then, if you knew, as I've shared a couple stories about my own father, like he most of his cancer went into his arm. And actually, the couple people that I had been a part of these healing moments were with like shoulders and arms. And so I prayed, laid hands on, asked God a million times. And I was mad actually that these other people had experienced at least momentary healing, and my dad continued his cancer just continued to grow. And so I think that, like you said, sometimes they come and they go. We we want to grow, we want to learn to listen more. Uh, we want to be more attentive, uh, bring all the faith that God gives us to the table. Um, but also remember, as you said, they're not about us and we don't ultimately know what God is up to in the midst of this situation. And so we we act humbly and we ask him to move. I love how Ralph will always say, you know, mate, remember, it's our job to pray, it's God's job to move. So let's pray. We have one job. I like his sometimes. So anyway, at least I think I do. Ralph has good Ralphisms. Um, all right, so we're gonna um just wrap this up, but one more that came in earlier um in first service was what's kind of the charge of the church now, now that we've gone through the six weeks, where are we headed? We're headed in the same direction we have been. This is not a massive shift for us, it's a new kind of language. I liked what Jason said about, you know, why you want you to share your personal testimony and then I'll kind of jump on. Yeah, I was just saying that when I when I um resigned from the church that I was working at, and we left with one other couple and they wanted to come here, and we're walking onto this campus, and I'm literally the wrestling with the Lord. I'm like, I don't think this church believes in the Holy Spirit. And um, and so I just put a fleece before God. I was like, God, I'm not willing to go to a church that's not willing to talk about like intimacy and marriage, um, money, and the Holy Spirit. I'm not willing to go to a church that's not willing to talk about those three three things. And our pastor at the time, Pastor Steve, he hit all three. He said all three from the stage that Sunday. And I was like, okay, God, this is my church, and this is where we've been for 12 years. And um, so yes, I do think that our church is like, you know, we are just opening up language that's been around for since before Jesus was here, right? You read about the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1. So we're not really talking about or doing anything different except for just trying to see how we as a body can do a better job of loving people really well, loving people like authentic authentically out there because we have a lot of people that come to this church and we're so thankful for you, but at the same time, it's our responsibility as Christians to like love people out there, to love people in our sports teams and on our works, to show them who Jesus is through the way that we show them love. I think, and for us too, thanks, Jason. Uh, you know, if you came from a background where talking about spiritual gifts and talk about something that was something that you should fear or something that you should, you know, really be cautious about, we want to be a church that helps normalize that for all of us, that God is moving in incredible ways. Uh, we want to be open to that. We as a church leadership take it um, you know, very seriously what it looks like to come alongside some of the biblical guardrails that the Bible does give us. We talked uh last week, some about uh 1 Corinthians 14. There are times where Paul steps in and he says, Hey, churches, we're getting out of alignment with really what the purposes of these gifts are and um what the Holy Spirit wants to do. So, so be careful, but lean in, learn to listen. Uh, learn to, you know, like um Jenny was saying, look for opportunities to raise up our kids. Sometimes our kids have a lot less preconceived nonsense than us, and they hear from God in amazing ways, right? So we don't have to like teach them that. We just need to help them, you know, continue to listen and to celebrate what God is doing. And so that's that's again our hope. Uh as Em said too, uh, that we, you know, it's easy for us to say, hey, let's just try and find 20 people or or more that we think walk with the spirit in really beautiful ways and have done that for some time. That if some of you are like, I would love to find out what my spiritual gift is, I would love to sort of walk this out in a way that I could grow in what God's asking me to do and leave in my time here. And so our hope is to just continue to create those networks of people that can help us continue to grow and learn and step into what God has. One of the things that Paul said just before he warns the church about gifts, and I put on the screen, it's in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1, he says this. He says, Pursue love. He's speaking to the church and he's speaking about spiritual gifts. He says, Man, all these gifts are amazing, uh, but don't let them be like the thing. Let love be the thing. Pursue love and then be open, I think he says, earnestly desire spiritual gifts. So, so look for those gifts that God might give you to love well. But we will continue to be a church that seeks to love well. Uh, and then our ultimate hope, like Jason said, is this would be a church where um where we and those that don't yet know Jesus come to know Jesus. And we think, based on Jesus' own words, that that's the Spirit's primary role. So we desperately need him, right? We want to ask him, we want to invite him, we want to bring him because he's gonna point people to Jesus and do that eternal saving work in the lives of people that we get to rejoice in. So that's who we hope to be. Awesome. Will you please help me in thanking our panel? Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us, Church. 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