SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Journey Christian Church podcast.
SPEAKER_00: This week's episode is called Supernatural Church.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Powerful, powerful stuff today.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you all so much for leading us in worship.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is worthy and just so thankful for our team.
SPEAKER_00: Don't they do a great job?
SPEAKER_00: Well, today I am concluding the sermon series on the spirit that I've been taking you through.
SPEAKER_00: Started it in January, then took a break and did a couple of other things and started it back up in April.
SPEAKER_00: And today is the conclusion of this.
SPEAKER_00: And I have enjoyed so much studying and sharing with you the things I've discovered and found.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that my life has changed in a number of ways as I've gone through this.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that for all of us we we see, we realize, we recognize the power that is available to us all the time, constantly.
SPEAKER_00: Because the reality is we can do a lot of things by human power.
SPEAKER_00: We can do a lot of things by our own power.
SPEAKER_00: You all know the story of Cain and Abel, how they, first two human beings born on this earth, and one kills the other.
SPEAKER_00: No wonder our world is in the place that it is today.
SPEAKER_00: No wonder there are wars and all these things going on in the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we got our start.
SPEAKER_00: This really showed the nature of humankind.
SPEAKER_00: And Abel's family line, they did not follow God.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the Bible tells us they accomplished a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Abel's family line, I mean, it is it is incredible the kinds of things they started and invented.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, it says in Genesis chapter 4, verse 17, Cain lay with his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch.
SPEAKER_00: Cain was then building a city and he named it after his son Enoch.
SPEAKER_00: You can build an entire city without following God by your own power.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, it goes on to say one of his descendants, Ada, gave birth to Jabal.
SPEAKER_00: He was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock.
SPEAKER_00: You can form a culture and create an industry without following God by your own power.
SPEAKER_00: 21 says his brother's name was Jubal.
SPEAKER_00: He was the father of all those who play the harp and the flute.
SPEAKER_00: You can invent musical instruments.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn and play and teach music without following God by your own power.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 says, Zillah also had a son, Tubal Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.
SPEAKER_00: You can invent metallurgy without following God by your own power.
SPEAKER_00: People can do all kinds of things without giving praise and credit and glory to our God and accomplish all kinds of things by human power.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that the church can as well.
SPEAKER_00: Churches can accomplish a whole lot by human power.
SPEAKER_00: Churches can pay off debt, churches can build buildings, churches can hire inspiring speakers and talented musicians, they can have inspiring services, they can do all kinds of great projects, they can do charity work, they can do all kinds of things without the power of God by human effort.
SPEAKER_00: But do you want to be a part of a church like that?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be a part of the church where everything that is accomplished, you can see, oh, I can tell how that was accomplished, so-and-so did it, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Or do you want to be a part of a church where God's movement is so obvious among us that humans cannot take credit for it?
SPEAKER_00: That it is so obvious that we say that that was not by the power of man, that was by the hand of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the church I want to be a part of.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a part of a church where God is moving so actively and so frequently that it is clear that supernatural power is at work.
SPEAKER_00: I want God to work.
SPEAKER_00: God works when lives are changed.
SPEAKER_00: Churches can do a lot of things, but churches cannot convert people, cannot change lives without a movement of God among those churches.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a part of a church that's raising missionaries among our midst.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a part of a church where the kingdom is advancing powerfully and forcefully as it was in the days of John the Baptist, not by human power, but by God's power.
SPEAKER_00: In Romans chapter 14, verse 17, Paul talks about the nature of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: It says, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the kingdom of God is not a matter of potlucks, but of changed lives.
SPEAKER_00: Lives that are completely transformed by Jesus and his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Lives that are changed.
SPEAKER_00: The church can be a natural entity or a supernatural entity as God intended.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God, as God desires, is a kingdom that is completely devoted to and reliant on Him in everything.
SPEAKER_00: How does a church become a supernatural church?
SPEAKER_00: How does the church no longer lean on human strength, but lean on God in everything that is done and accomplished there?
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're going to study today in this final sermon on the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Father in heaven, we are so thankful that you're here among us.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful, Lord, that you love us and that you have drawn us to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful that you see more in us than we see in ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray, Father, that you would help us to not lean on our understanding, but to lean on the Spirit, not to lean on our strength, but on your strength.
SPEAKER_00: That we would glory in our weaknesses and say, your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we pray that you would move in our church in ways that cannot be explained, and in ways that cannot be attributed to human thought, power, or action.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure we are operating by the Spirit of the church?
SPEAKER_00: How are we a supernatural church instead of a natural church?
SPEAKER_00: Number one, supernatural churches pray, believing that their prayers are as powerful as the prayers of the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that?
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that your prayers are as powerful as Daniel's prayers, who shut the mouths of lions?
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that your prayers are as powerful as Elijah's prayers who stopped the rain from falling?
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that your prayers are as powerful as David's prayers, who God saw through just tremendous difficulty and challenge after challenge?
SPEAKER_00: Do you think those guys had an advantage over you or resources that you don't have?
SPEAKER_00: There's a great scripture in James chapter 5, 17 that reminds us Elijah was a man just like us.
SPEAKER_00: He had no advantages over us.
SPEAKER_00: He was not special.
SPEAKER_00: He was a human being.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what made him powerful.
SPEAKER_00: He prayed earnestly.
SPEAKER_00: And it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel and David and Moses and all of these people, Paul and Peter, they don't have advantages over us.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Bible teaches that, as far as as comparison between us and the Old Testament prophets, that we actually have advantages over them.
SPEAKER_00: Over the Old Testament prophets, we have a risen Savior.
SPEAKER_00: We understand the fullness of God's plan, what he was leading the world to through the birth of his son and his death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: We have the Holy Spirit that is available to every single believer, not the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament that came upon people occasionally and then came and then went back up to heaven, but the Holy Spirit that indwells in us every single day of our life, every single moment.
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones with the advantages.
SPEAKER_00: And supernatural Christians and supernatural churches understand that.
SPEAKER_00: And they pray fervently.
SPEAKER_00: Weak prayer life of a church will make a church that operates on human strength.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that your leaders do every single week, we get together and we have prayer time among the elders and Dale and myself, and we pray about God's will for the church, and we pray for God's direction, and we pray for individuals who are hurting within the church, and and we pray for different ministries that are starting up, and we pray for God to raise up people within the church to serve in various areas because the Bible says to pray for workers for the harvest, for the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe, we do this because we believe that as a leadership, the most important job that we have is prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You remember the apostles in Acts chapter 6?
SPEAKER_00: They were busying themselves with a lot of different ministries, and and there were some Grecian widows that were in need, and and uh they were so busy with ministry that they didn't have uh enough time to pray and to do the ministry of the word.
SPEAKER_00: And so they delegated that responsibility to other people who were capable within the church so that they could focus on the first priority prayer and the ministry of the word.
SPEAKER_00: Supernatural churches have extreme faith in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: There's a booklet called Master of Prayer by Cameron V.
SPEAKER_00: Thompson, and he gave the illustration of the trolley.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a trolley has a large pole that reaches up to a wire where it gains contact with electricity.
SPEAKER_00: And if that pole is a few inches from the wire, it will not have electricity.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no power, it has to be touching.
SPEAKER_00: And so if it's not touching the wire, people can enter the trolley and they can sing a lot of songs and they can have a good talk and and uh you know they could have good fellowship time together, and yet when they walk out of the trolley, they will be in the exact same space they were when they walked in.
SPEAKER_00: They will not have moved an inch.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, churches, we can come together and and we can have a good meeting and we can have a good message some of the time, you know, and we can have a good worship service and we can have good time with our friends and talking to one another.
SPEAKER_00: But if our time in the body of Christ, in the church as Christians, if we have not bathed it in prayer and asked God to work in our lives, we will walk out of these doors, not having made an inch of progress in our spiritual walk.
SPEAKER_00: Do you pray before you come to church?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, work, work in me.
SPEAKER_00: Show me what you want me to see, show me what you want me to know, work in my family, draw us together, work in our church.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you'd work powerfully through our church.
SPEAKER_00: Because a church will only be as supernatural as the Christians in that church.
SPEAKER_00: The church will only be as spiritually driven as the Christians in that body.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm asking you, please, keep praying for your family, keep praying for your health, keep praying for your finances, but would you also join me on a daily basis praying for God to move in Journey Christian church?
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray for God's kingdom to advance through the ministry here?
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in that, please?
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is the essential for God to work.
SPEAKER_00: John Hyde was a 20th century missionary, and he was called into ministry when he was a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: He grew up in a preacher's preacher's home, and and uh he felt called to oversee missions, overseas missions.
SPEAKER_00: And so he went to India uh after he went graduated from Bible college as a very young man, and and he started going from village to village in India and preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But in the first few years of his ministry, he realized that not very many people were converted.
SPEAKER_00: There were not very many people that were saved through his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And then he stumbled across a verse of scripture in Isaiah that changed his life.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 62, verse 6, it says, You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Give yourselves no rest and give him no rest.
SPEAKER_00: And he realized he never really considered the idea that we are to wear God out with our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: Just exhaust him.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let him sleep, don't let him rest.
SPEAKER_00: You pray and you pray and you pray until he gives you an answer.
SPEAKER_00: And so he started doing that.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Lord, this year would you please through me lead one soul to Christ every single day?
SPEAKER_00: At the end of that year, 400 people had came to faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The second year he said, Lord, would you lead through me two souls to Christ every single day?
SPEAKER_00: And again that prayer was answered.
SPEAKER_00: The third year he said, Lord, lead four souls to Christ through me every single day, with similar results.
SPEAKER_00: One day he was in a village and he uh saw a household and he prayed, Lord, I pray that you would give me ten souls for Christ in this household today.
SPEAKER_00: And so he introduces himself, he shares the gospel with the family, and all nine members of the family came to faith.
SPEAKER_00: And he was excited about that, but he prayed, Lord, what about the tenth one?
SPEAKER_00: And just then a nephew came bursting through the doors.
SPEAKER_00: He shared the gospel with the nephew, and he came to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He prayed bold prayers, and he became known as Praying Hide.
SPEAKER_00: John Hyde's nickname, praying hide.
SPEAKER_00: Christians, prayer is our energy source, it is our strength, it is our lifeline, and if we want to see God work powerfully, prayer has to be our priority.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be.
SPEAKER_00: Supernatural churches pray fervently, believing.
SPEAKER_00: The prophets have nothing on us.
SPEAKER_00: The prophets wish that they could have experienced the life that we have available to us.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, supernatural churches become families sharing all aspects of life together.
SPEAKER_00: Francis Chan wrote the excellent book, Forgotten God, um, about the Holy Spirit, and I'd encourage you to read it.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a fantastic book.
SPEAKER_00: And in the book, he told about a biker that started coming to his church, and the biker was really rough around the edges, had a very, very rough background, but he was a believer in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he really got involved.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was all in right from the start, but then after a few months, he quit attending church.
SPEAKER_00: And when asked why, he said, Well, I think I just had the wrong idea about church.
SPEAKER_00: He said, When I was in a gang, um we were with one another and in each other's lives every single day.
SPEAKER_00: We weren't just nice to each other once a week.
SPEAKER_00: And Chan said he mourned after he heard that because he realized what he was describing is exactly what the Holy Spirit intended when the church was first formed.
SPEAKER_00: That the church be a family.
SPEAKER_00: And in Acts chapter 2, right after the Holy Spirit is made available to all believers, we see the first spirit-filled community formed.
SPEAKER_00: And it is amazing what the first spirit-filled community looked like.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 2, verse 42, it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: All the believers were together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as he had need.
SPEAKER_00: Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts, they broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people, and the Lord added to their number daily those who are being saved.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Chan writes, I know in my own life I don't want to just do what my mentors do.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I need to be with the people that I respect in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I need them to rub off on me.
SPEAKER_00: I need my relationship with them to change me.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want to spend time with my mentors.
SPEAKER_00: I have found that through spending time with those I respect, I become more like them than I would by simply trying to do what they do.
SPEAKER_00: Grunting and saying through clinched teeth, I will be patient, hasn't worked yet, and that isn't likely to change.
SPEAKER_00: But what does affect change is when we begin to ask God to make these fruit manifest in our lives by the power of his Spirit, and when we spend time in communion with our God and with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is one of the reasons we've been pushing for home groups.
SPEAKER_00: We had three home groups that were meeting together at the beginning of the year.
SPEAKER_00: We now have about ten home groups that are meeting together, and it is so important.
SPEAKER_00: Our new mission statement at Journey is Journey.
SPEAKER_00: Journey's purpose is making followers of Jesus who gather together on Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_00: We gather together in worship, who grow together, we grow together in the Lord in our home groups, and who go together.
SPEAKER_00: We want our home groups to go in ministry together, to do evangelism together, to do charity work together, but to go together.
SPEAKER_00: It is essential to your Christian walk.
SPEAKER_00: That you are meeting with other Christians, growing in relationships with them.
SPEAKER_00: These home groups are essential to your growth in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It matters.
SPEAKER_00: It matters profoundly.
SPEAKER_00: Chan realized that his church did not look very much like the church in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And so he and his elders met together to start praying about how we can change that?
SPEAKER_00: How can we become more like the first spirit-filled community?
SPEAKER_00: And they wrestled with that idea for some time.
SPEAKER_00: Chan writes in one of their meetings: what followed was a beautiful time of sharing as our elders laid everything at one another's feet.
SPEAKER_00: We surrendered the keys to our cars, homes, and bank accounts.
SPEAKER_00: The elders looked me in the eyes and said, What's mine is yours.
SPEAKER_00: If anything ever happens to you, I will support and care for your kids as much as I would care for my own.
SPEAKER_00: I will be your life insurance.
SPEAKER_00: And because they had a history of genuine sacrifice for the sake of the gospel, I believed what they said.
SPEAKER_00: From there, we began to go to some of our families in the congregation and expressing our commitment to them.
SPEAKER_00: And now this mentality is spreading.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus intended the church to be.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we grow together in Christian community, we don't throw out our wisdom, we don't act foolhardy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the spirit is called the spirit of wisdom in Scripture as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so we continue to act wisely.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord intended there to be such a commitment between believers that we were family.
SPEAKER_00: This is his desire.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons that I came to Journey Christian Church was my sister was already down here and serving, and she said, you know, this church, it reminds me of my home church, of our home church.
SPEAKER_00: Our home church was just incredibly loving, and uh it was a wonderful place to grow up.
SPEAKER_00: My dad served there as the preacher for um almost 50 years, and and uh the church is just family.
SPEAKER_00: It just is.
SPEAKER_00: And Aaron said, this church is a lot like that.
SPEAKER_00: Um of the things that I love about journey, I hear this from visitors all the time.
SPEAKER_00: People will visit our church, and I'll I'll talk with them, and they'll say, everybody is just so welcoming and so friendly.
SPEAKER_00: Lean into that.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure that that is our story always.
SPEAKER_00: That is just so, so very important.
SPEAKER_00: Churches can be human-led, human-powered, completely natural organizations, or they can be God-led, spirit-powered, supernatural bodies of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Supernatural churches are praying churches, and supernatural churches look and act like family.
SPEAKER_00: And so commit with me.
SPEAKER_00: Let's commit together to being constant in prayer and constantly loving one another.
SPEAKER_00: Pray with me, please.