SPEAKER_00: Hope you guys are doing incredible tonight.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Zach Hudson.
SPEAKER_00: I have the honor of serving as a college pastor here at Definition Church.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who were not here last week, we missed you.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you didn't get blown away in the tornado.
SPEAKER_00: But we're so glad to see all of your lovely faces back here once again.
SPEAKER_00: Real quick, I just feel this prompting.
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like like I was standing backstage and just could really feel the Holy Spirit just kind of burning within me, which does not happen super often.
SPEAKER_00: And so before I hop in, I just want us for a moment, can we just like sit and just welcome the Holy Spirit into this place?
SPEAKER_00: Just wherever you're at, just settle your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Take a deep breath in.
SPEAKER_00: Breathe out.
SPEAKER_00: Just know that the Holy Spirit is dwelling in this place.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing we've done or could have done.
SPEAKER_00: He's just he's just here because he's good.
SPEAKER_00: He's faithful.
SPEAKER_00: How kind you are to come into the space when we've done things against you.
SPEAKER_00: In awestruck wonder of who you are.
SPEAKER_00: I just pray that you'll be so kind as to draw us even deeper.
SPEAKER_00: In your holy almighty name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, amen.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, I just the series has been incredible.
SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited to be keep preaching about spiritual gifts because I just believe them to be so important and foundational for our life with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because so many things happen with spiritual gifts that are oftentimes impossible to explain and understand.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just the good God we serve, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like He doesn't move on our timeline, like He moves how He wants to move.
SPEAKER_00: And Parker last week just laid an incredible foundation and talked about how we have to have character to move on behalf of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: How we have to learn how to walk before God's gonna make us work.
SPEAKER_00: And how so often we want the benefits of God, but we're not willing to put in the character it takes to get there.
SPEAKER_00: Just really good foundational work, and we're gonna continue laying that foundation tonight.
SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna keep laying foundation and next week, like we're gonna dive straight into just the practical understandings, definitions of spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about it all.
SPEAKER_00: But the foundation is so important because if we get the foundation wrong, the spiritual gifts will be abused.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an if.
SPEAKER_00: They will be abused.
SPEAKER_00: And so often we just allow people with not great character, with no foundation, to just move on behalf of the Holy Spirit because we've completely cut ourselves off from the Holy Spirit in so many of our circles.
SPEAKER_00: And so for all of you, I care more about your foundation that builds into the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts than I do about you actually partaking within them.
SPEAKER_00: It is so important for you guys to understand the foundation.
SPEAKER_00: So let me for a second just invite you guys into my mind.
SPEAKER_00: There's a tension that I have dealt with in my, for most of my faith journey since I got saved at 17 years old.
SPEAKER_00: And that tension is between how I think God should operate and how he actually moves at times.
SPEAKER_00: How I think he should move and how I think he should be doing things, and how oftentimes he does things on his own behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And in the United States, like we've got a lot of denominations.
SPEAKER_00: And denominations cause a lot of different beliefs about how we are called as believers to experience God.
SPEAKER_00: And I grew up and spent most of my life in contexts where the Holy Spirit was not at the forefront of our experience.
SPEAKER_00: He just wasn't really that important to the people I was around.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a lot about Jesus, it was a lot about the cross, it was a lot about God, and the Holy Spirit was talked about, but it was very vague and kind of misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: But my experience in the supernatural side of the Holy Spirit was very, very limited.
SPEAKER_00: And after I got saved, I actually got involved with a church that was very involved with the supernatural side of the Holy Spirit, but truth be told, it was very much abused a lot of the time.
SPEAKER_00: And so genuinely, up until this point in my life at 24 years old, I've had a mediocre experience with the Holy Spirit in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I would even go so far as to say I was afraid of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I was afraid and I was uncomfortable with what the Holy Spirit brought.
SPEAKER_00: My Americanized brain that was wired towards order, control, comfort, did not know how to encounter the Holy Spirit and not believe that it was just a show.
SPEAKER_00: That people were just putting on a performance for the people around them.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem with this is you can only encounter the supernatural move of God so many times before you start asking yourself, Am I missing something here?
SPEAKER_00: Like there's only a handful of times where you can see something supernatural and not ask, Am I missing something here?
SPEAKER_00: And so so many times I would see or I would hear something unexplainable.
SPEAKER_00: And it led me to a place that made me feel like I was missing something in my relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And I have no doubt some of you are often in are in that space tonight.
SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you a story about a time when this happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: So around a year ago, I was at Baylor University because I was working at a church in uh Dallas, Texas, and Baylor has this thing called FM 72.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a 72-hour prayer room right in the middle of campus.
SPEAKER_00: And every single night they have worship services, and they're just like believing and crying out to God for revival.
SPEAKER_00: But the thing that marks FM 72 is their radical encounters with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just unexplainable.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was in this prayer room the last night of FM 72.
SPEAKER_00: Students are leading worship, and this guy comes into the prayer room and he's got a broken leg.
SPEAKER_00: And so he comes in on crutches and he's going in, and I was, I wasn't, I was friends with someone who was friends with this guy, and he claimed to have the supernatural gift of healing.
SPEAKER_00: Like that was his thing.
SPEAKER_00: Was he believed in faith that God could heal people?
SPEAKER_00: And so this dude comes in on these crutches with this cast on his leg, and this guy I'm with just eyeballs him in the middle of the audience, and he comes over and he grabs him and he's like, dude, God told me he's gonna heal your leg tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And so he lays hands on his leg, and I mean you could just feel the power of God just surging in the room, and then something unexplainable happened.
SPEAKER_00: His leg was healed.
SPEAKER_00: His leg was actually healed.
SPEAKER_00: Like, take the cast off, running around the prayer room, healed.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so easy to encounter those things and be like, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Let me go even, let me tell another story.
SPEAKER_00: I went to a charismatic college, and I had, like I said, I had no exposure to the Holy Spirit really until I got to college.
SPEAKER_00: And one night we were in our worship service, in our worship gathering at our university, and we were worshiping, and it was awesome, and you could just feel the Holy Spirit in the room.
SPEAKER_00: And then some guy that I trusted very deeply, I love him, he stood up and he started speaking in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: And I know y'all get intimidated by tongues, and I was intimidated by tongues at that time.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is complete utterance, this is nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: But listen, after that, somebody got on the stage and said, Behold, the Lord is speaking.
SPEAKER_00: And they interpreted what he said.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, anybody can make up an interpretation, but check this out.
SPEAKER_00: I went to ten people who claimed to have the gift of interpretation, they all said the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Word for word, verse for verse.
SPEAKER_00: This guy made an utterance in the Holy Spirit, and ten people translated it in the exact same fashion.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can only encounter those things so many times before you start asking, God, am I missing something?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I not experiencing that you're inviting me into?
SPEAKER_00: And this is what led me to a supernatural encounter with the Holy Spirit in the second half of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Was because I was like, for a long time, I just kind of kept God in my box of comfort and wasn't willing to be a little uncomfortable with God at times and not be able to explain Him or Americanize Him into my own formula and my own fashion.
SPEAKER_00: But this didn't last.
SPEAKER_00: Because, like I said, you can only encounter it so many times before you just got to start asking, God, what am I missing here?
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I want us to ask tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I want us as college students to be so bold as to say, God, maybe there's more of you that I've never experienced, I've never encountered, and I just want to be willing and able to whatever you have for me.
SPEAKER_00: Because so often what happens is we'll quote this verse from 1 Corinthians that says, God is not a God, wait, God is a God of control, He's not a God of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: But listen to me, that does not say that God is not a God who makes you uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what that verse is saying.
SPEAKER_00: That is in reference, and it's crazy because that verse is in 1 Corinthians, which the entire point of 1 Corinthians is about the Holy Spirit and people speaking in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: And so the point of that is that God is a God of control, but spiritual gifts are under God's control.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can trust them, we can move within them.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I want to talk about today.
SPEAKER_00: And so, much like Parker was talking about last week, how we have to learn to walk before we can work, we have to know the giver before we can use the gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Being a full disciple of Jesus means I balance my understanding of God in one hand and my experience with God in the other hand, and together they create a full disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How I like to say it is like this if I am a Christian who is just rooted in knowledge, then I am a tree with deep roots but no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But if I am rooted in just experience, then I am a tree with no roots and small fruit.
SPEAKER_00: It's the combining of these things together that unifies us into the Holy Spirit and makes us full disciples of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why the early church in Acts 2 was so compelling.
SPEAKER_00: Because it was marked by the literal presence of a supernatural God.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, that supernatural God drew them towards fellowship with each other and knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just a Holy Spirit throw down, we're speaking in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: Those things did happen, but if you read the book of Acts, it also drew them into the study of the Word.
SPEAKER_00: So they balanced together both this supernatural encounter with God and this holy knowledge of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And together they became disciples of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of that happened because of what we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is exactly what I want to talk about tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I guarantee you, I know for a fact, some of you in this room, the moment you hear the phrase baptism in the Holy Spirit, you tense up a little.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, for most of my life, I was in the same boat.
SPEAKER_00: But now I'm on the other side of things, and I really think the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a beautiful product that has just been presented poorly.
SPEAKER_00: Like we have we have kind of diminished it and made it this type of thing where if you're not doing X, Y, Z work or you're not moving in XYZ fashion, then you're not truly baptized in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of churches believe a lot of different things about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just gonna preach what I believe and what I see the text saying here in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: That's just where I'm gonna, that's just where I'm gonna be tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an invitation for you guys to a journey.
SPEAKER_00: We're not stop, this is not a destination sermon.
SPEAKER_00: We're not stopping and drawing hard lines around us.
SPEAKER_00: This is an invitation for you to begin to learn to understand who the Holy Spirit is even more.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you want to go ahead, we're gonna be in Acts 1, 4 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to turn there in your Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, got the tradition here at the collective.
SPEAKER_00: Hold your Bibles up.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see them.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see those beautiful books.
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, we're getting closer and closer to 100%.
SPEAKER_00: I love it, I love it.
SPEAKER_00: All right, Acts 1, 4 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be on the screen behind me if you don't have a physical Bible with you.
SPEAKER_00: But if you need one, let me know.
SPEAKER_00: We got tons of free ones.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, that's Jesus, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
SPEAKER_00: So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusal Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, thank you for the living, active, breathing word of God that is sharper than any double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00: God, use me as a vessel to pierce the hearts of these students, and God, I just pray that it not be my words, but your words alone that pierce these students' hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, thank you for just being so kind to dwell with us tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I just and just keep reflecting on the kindness that you have for me and for all these students.
SPEAKER_00: In your holy, righteous name, amen.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so when we read, we gotta make sure we read in wait, say it one more time.
SPEAKER_00: Context.
SPEAKER_00: Context is so important for everything that we do.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the context of what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has just risen from the dead, and he goes to the disciples, and he's like, here I am, and they're like, There you are.
SPEAKER_00: And then they spend 40 days just learning and being taught from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But what's important to understand is the disciples, the entire time that Jesus was alive, thought that he was gonna kind of take a sword and go after the Roman Empire and overthrow it and create a heavenly government there on earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how they thought.
SPEAKER_00: They thought the Messiah was gonna be this war general who came through and kind of cut the heads off Roman soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus was so unlike that.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, he was born out of a poor family in Bethlehem, and so there's just a lot of confusion about why Jesus really rose from the dead, what he was going to do next, and like Jesus does in Jesus fashion, instead of answering directly, he just is kind of like, I don't know, you'll see.
SPEAKER_00: Which is like so typical if you read the gospels.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's kind of the context for what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is about to ascend to heaven, and the disciples are like, wait, wait, wait, this was not part of the plan here.
SPEAKER_00: The plan was supposed to be, were your foot soldiers right by your side, conquering Rome?
SPEAKER_00: Now you're talking about leaving us?
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't understand what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And so often in our church experiences, we will do this with God, where we present him in a way where it's our context that we expect him to move upon and not his own.
SPEAKER_00: Where we expect him to move on our behalf and our understanding instead of his own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to point out here, like so often in our church experiences, the resurrection of Jesus will solely be presented as the focal point of the entire gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And like that's for good reason.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection is important, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians, with no resurrection, we are in trouble, our faith is in jeopardy.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection is super important, but I just don't believe it when I read to be the only climax of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I believe the resurrection kind of has a part two or part A B, which is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: And if we miss this, if we miss how important the fact is that the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us, we become like the disciples in this passage, like I said, trying to fit God in our timeline, in our understanding of how we think he's supposed to move and he's supposed to operate.
SPEAKER_00: We'll settle for an understanding of God without ever experiencing God.
SPEAKER_00: We're okay with knowing the power presented in the New Testament, but we'll never live out that power in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: God coming to live inside of his followers is the exact thing that separates us from every other major religion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just the fact that we serve a great God, it's the fact that that great, perfect, almighty, holy God chose to come and dwell within his own creation.
SPEAKER_00: The cross, Jesus' life, the Old Testament, the resurrection, all those things are pointing to Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: All those things are pointing to the fact that this powerful God who can raise from the dead doesn't stop the story there, but instead decides to dwell in the creation that has sinned against him.
SPEAKER_00: And it sets us apart from every other major religion.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't work for God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we just get to live in the presence of our God.
SPEAKER_00: And he lives within us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to ask ourselves before we talk about baptism of the Spirit have I been saved by doctrine or have I been saved by God?
SPEAKER_00: Have I been saved by doctrine or have I been saved by God?
SPEAKER_00: I have no doubt in this room, so many of you know a lot about God.
SPEAKER_00: You can name the 66 books in the Bible, you know every major biblical character, you can trace the canon from Genesis to Revelation, you can do it all.
SPEAKER_00: You know so much about theology and all those things, and all those things are great things.
SPEAKER_00: I love those things, but I also guarantee so many of you have yet to actually experience the living God.
SPEAKER_00: You know a lot about God, but you've never experienced his power over your addiction.
SPEAKER_00: You've never experienced his power over your identity.
SPEAKER_00: You've never experienced his power over your fears and your insecurities and your worries and your doubts.
SPEAKER_00: You know a lot about God.
SPEAKER_00: You know the verses that point to the facts that you're not supposed to be anxious, but you've never experienced the God that we can actually cast all our anxieties onto.
SPEAKER_00: We know a lot, but we've never experienced God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's crazy because this is something that we just reserve for the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: In the Christian faith, there's so many people who are just okay knowing God but never experiencing him.
SPEAKER_00: But if Jesus, if God is a reflection of our human relationships, can you imagine for a moment if my entire relationships with the people in my life were just based on me knowing them and not experiencing them?
SPEAKER_00: My mom and sister are here right here in the front row.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all give it up for them.
SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason I'm so close with my family is because I know them and we have experienced things together.
SPEAKER_00: That's what unifies me to them and makes me, I'm still a mama's boy at heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's what makes me those things.
SPEAKER_00: Because I've experienced things with my mom.
SPEAKER_00: If I just know her favorite color, if I just know her favorite movie, if I just know what she likes, if I know she likes me to have my room clean and my bathroom clean.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: If I know those things but never experience them, then we just have a shallow relationship.
SPEAKER_00: We have a one-sided relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine if in your future, your wife or your husband, if you just knew a lot of things about them but never moved on their behalf, but never sacrificed for them, but never experienced who they are?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, nowhere in Scripture, Genesis to Revelation, will you find a single person who knew God but did not experience him.
SPEAKER_00: No one, not a single person.
SPEAKER_00: Adam knew God, experienced him in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Moses knew about God, got given the Ten Commandments, got given all the laws, but also saw his backside and experienced him at the burning bush.
SPEAKER_00: You can't find a character in Scripture who did not experience God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in Scripture too, I mean Psalm 34.8, I don't think I don't have this on the screens, but Psalm 34.8, it says this, O taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: Tasting and seeing are inward experiences.
SPEAKER_00: You can't know that you're tasting something.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to taste it.
SPEAKER_00: You can know a lot about a food.
SPEAKER_00: You can see it's beautiful, you can read the reviews about it, but until you taste that, you've never experienced it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are called to taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: If we never experience God, if we never encounter Him in supernatural experiences, then we have not experienced all that Jesus died for.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't just die for your head knowledge of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: He died for you to experience Him moving in your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's why He died.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we get to the gate, walk in, and realize we never experienced God, you may have gotten to the gate, but you got there half-heartedly.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want that for us.
SPEAKER_00: For us.
SPEAKER_00: We can't put God in a box.
SPEAKER_00: And so I need you to ask yourself am I putting God in my box?
SPEAKER_00: Like honestly, ask yourself, have I reached my max capacity of what I'm willing to encounter with God?
SPEAKER_00: Have I put limits on him?
SPEAKER_00: Is he gonna move supernaturally, but I'm not willing to accept it because I believe in a God that moves on my own confines, my own beliefs, my own definitions?
SPEAKER_00: What box are you putting God in?
SPEAKER_00: Being saved by doctrine means we have tasted and saw past tense that the Lord was good.
SPEAKER_00: But being saved by God means we are continually tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: Time and time and time and time again, over and over.
SPEAKER_00: That's what not being saved by doctrine means.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in continually encountering God.
SPEAKER_00: And so many people, this is so true in America, guys.
SPEAKER_00: We will build our salvation, our life, our faith, our marriage off a one-time experience with God, and we'll coast off of it for the rest of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, that may save you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not discrediting those things.
SPEAKER_00: They save you.
SPEAKER_00: You will get to heaven if you confess that Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They will save you, but they will not transform you.
SPEAKER_00: Experiences transform your relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: You can know he's a God who moves over your sins, but when you experience him moving over your sins, it changes the entire game.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we do confession every single week at the collective.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, God doesn't just want you to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't just want you to be saved, he wants you to be transformed more than you want it for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to be transformed.
SPEAKER_00: So with all of that, with us, we're gonna be people who are open and willing to walk in unison with experience and knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be humble and we're gonna say, I may not have all the answers, but scripture tells me that this thing is good.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture tells me that this thing draws me closer to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Or listen to this, other people have told me they have encountered God through this way.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I don't I don't speak in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be vulnerable with you.
SPEAKER_00: I've been praying for the gift of tongues for this entire year.
SPEAKER_00: God has not granted it to me yet.
SPEAKER_00: I'm believing he will.
SPEAKER_00: But listen, the reason that I'm willing to pray for that is because I serve under a pastor here named Pastor Steve, who radically encounters God and moves on his behalf and prophesies regularly and has done supernatural things.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what he says to me?
SPEAKER_00: When I speak in tongues, I draw closer to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so if I choose to be prideful and say Steve's got it all wrong, then I'll never have an invitation for the Lord to just move and bless me with something that may not fit in my timeline or understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Jonathan says this all the time, and I love it.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Jonathan is not a charismatic, he's not Pentecostal, he's not speaking in tongues on the regular.
SPEAKER_00: He's the type of guy who, when he encounters God, it's a lot more in the kind of written prayer type of things.
SPEAKER_00: And you may be in that world.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I encounter God in written prayers, but in my secret place, I try to speak in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: Because I trust the people that God has put in my space, that they would not lie to me.
SPEAKER_00: That the Holy Spirit is as real for them as he is for me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing tongues because that's such a drastic, that's like an extreme.
SPEAKER_00: But this goes for every other spiritual gift.
SPEAKER_00: If we're not willing, you'll never have it.
SPEAKER_00: You'll never have it.
SPEAKER_00: You will never, if you're never willing to be uncomfortable, you will never experience the fullness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Ever.
SPEAKER_00: I'm j I hate to break it to you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you that because I lived that way for so long.
SPEAKER_00: For a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I reached my limit with God and said, alright, I'm done, I'm tapping out, I think I've got enough to coast by.
SPEAKER_00: But God encountered me and He told me to start asking, what if?
SPEAKER_00: What if there's more for me?
SPEAKER_00: What if there's more from me?
SPEAKER_00: What if there's more for me to encounter the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: And so, with all of that, with that humility in mind, we can define what is baptism in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: What is baptism in the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: It says it right here in the text.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism in the Spirit is where in moments we are given power to be a witness.
SPEAKER_00: Is moments when we are given power to be a witness.
SPEAKER_00: I'll go over what it means to for what power and witness means here in a second.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the basic definition.
SPEAKER_00: And it's what Jesus says here in verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I can't say Jerusalem right.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But this creates a tension point that I know a lot of you may be feeling, and honestly has been miscommunicated in a lot of churches.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the tension point.
SPEAKER_00: Because Scripture tells me that when I get saved, I am sealed with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: And that is true.
SPEAKER_00: But it also tells me that I can be baptized in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So how does that work?
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to think of it like this: Baptism in the Spirit is a lot like salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We are saved, we are being saved, and we will be fully saved.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism in the Spirit is the same way.
SPEAKER_00: We are filled with the Spirit, we are being filled with the Spirit, and we will be fully filled with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you have the fullness of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: You are sealed in the Lamb's book of life when you do when you confess that Christ is Lord, but you're also being saved, and you're also being sanctified, and you're also being filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We live continually with the Spirit in us at all times, but there are also times like in sanctification where there just seems to be moments where there's more boldness, more of a power as I continue on this path of following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually the gap between these moments becomes smaller and smaller and smaller to where eventually I'm just living in full unison with the Spirit and full power of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There's a level of mystery to it that I just fully can't explain to you tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in these moments of baptism of the Spirit where spiritual gifts are oftentimes produced.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we see them a lot of times.
SPEAKER_00: And these can happen in prayer rooms, they can happen in services, they can happen in small groups, they can happen in your secret place.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a full-fledged formula.
SPEAKER_00: I wish there was.
SPEAKER_00: I would have done it a million times already.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God just moves.
SPEAKER_00: And we just are willing and open to what he has for us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can look in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: There's times where the disciples are praying, God send your spirit in this moment, and he does, and he blesses them, and they're doing supernatural things.
SPEAKER_00: There's other times, like I think specifically of Stephen, where God's just like, here's my Holy Spirit, and just fills them in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: And Stephen's like, Okay, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready.
SPEAKER_00: It's just this continual learning to understand how the Holy Spirit is and how he works, and how to be sensitive to him.
SPEAKER_00: And this idea of baptism, the reason this is used is because it's a complete immersion in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So literally think of it like when you are baptized.
SPEAKER_00: You go into the water, you come out, but you are still immersed in the salvation of God.
SPEAKER_00: Baptism in the Spirit's the same way.
SPEAKER_00: There are moments where we just fully get engulfed with the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I wish I had the exact formula of when, where, why, and how, but I don't.
SPEAKER_00: It just happens sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: And all I know is we are called to ask.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What good father, when his son asks for bread, will hand him a stone.
SPEAKER_00: So what good father when his son asks for it?
SPEAKER_00: If you evil people can give your son a gift, how much more will your good father in heaven bless you?
SPEAKER_00: God wants us to ask for these things.
SPEAKER_00: So look, here's the reality: yes, there are tons of people who will never encounter more of God because they're unwilling to ask or they don't have an environment to ask.
SPEAKER_00: And I refuse for that to be true.
SPEAKER_00: I refuse for that to be true for us.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure a lot of you in this room, you're like, okay, Zach, this is pointless.
SPEAKER_00: This is all just communication overload.
SPEAKER_00: But the reason we need to talk about this is because if we don't, it's like trying to drive a car with no gas.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's we might as well hang it up and go home.
SPEAKER_00: If we start from the end where we want the spiritual gifts, but we don't know the giver, it's pointless.
SPEAKER_00: Like we might as well give up and go home.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, if we don't know where the gifts come from, we'll start to abuse or idolize them.
SPEAKER_00: This is so true in American context.
SPEAKER_00: There is so much controversy right now in the Christian media world because we have so pushed down the Holy Spirit in our American churches that when someone with not good character, someone with moral failures, when they move on behalf of the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden we've got to protect them and we've got to make sure they're protected.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to make sure that, oh, there's nothing they could do.
SPEAKER_00: They're moving on behalf of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the call of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's called to create unity with the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Every spiritual gift is called to create unity with the body.
SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to idolize the hands.
SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to idolize the feet.
SPEAKER_00: We are all called to be one body of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it says it says it in 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul's like, if you speak in tongues, or you if I speak in tongues of men or angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.
SPEAKER_00: You can move as many spiritual gifts as you want, but if you've got no love, you're pointless.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not worried about you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you care more about speaking in tongues than loving your neighbor, you've missed it.
SPEAKER_00: You've missed it.
SPEAKER_00: You have completely missed it.
SPEAKER_00: If you care more about dreams and prophecy and healing than loving your neighbor, then you have missed it.
SPEAKER_00: You have completely missed it.
SPEAKER_00: The gifts are important.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that, I'm just trying to get our frame correct.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, what the baptism of the Spirit is, is about love, unity, and dwelling with God.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just unify us to others, it unifies us to God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's about us being unified with God in love to dwell with him.
SPEAKER_00: These are all gifts that God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: So now we know what it is.
SPEAKER_00: Let me close this out by talking about power and witnessing.
SPEAKER_00: Let's define what power is that Jesus has given us.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do I mean when I say we have received power?
SPEAKER_00: What is the reception of power?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first and foremost, we gotta understand that baptism of the spirit is not limited to just spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: You can be baptized in the spirit and walk away more peaceful.
SPEAKER_00: You can be baptized in the spirit and walk away more kind.
SPEAKER_00: You can be baptized in the spirit and walk away with more fruits of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all things that the Holy Spirit has given us that are as equally as important as us prophesying or moving in spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: And so just because you walk up and you get baptized in the spirit and you feel more love, you feel more love in your body does not mean that you missed it.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit moves in multiple ways in multiple fashions.
SPEAKER_00: So the baptism of the Spirit is not just limited to gifts, but he gifts.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what power is power is just surrender.
SPEAKER_00: It's surrender.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus is so transformative, because his power is not physical power, it's not swords and clubs and guns, it's none of that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus conquered Rome without ever lifting a sword.
SPEAKER_00: He did it through the power of the Holy Spirit through other people on his behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And so what power is, as I can get it in the most simple terms as I can, you could preach a million sermons on this, but how I see power is boldness, transformation, and demonstration.
SPEAKER_00: Boldness, transformation, demonstration.
SPEAKER_00: What do I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Boldness.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're looking at a case in point example of this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm an introvert.
SPEAKER_00: I lean introverted.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go home tonight and I'm gonna lay in my bed for two hours because I gotta rest.
SPEAKER_00: But look, listen, I say that jokingly.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit entered my life and gave me the power and boldness to stand up and proclaim the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: I would be a shell without it.
SPEAKER_00: I would have folded under the pressure.
SPEAKER_00: But the Holy Spirit gave a boldness within me to be willing to get up and speak the word of God, no matter what everyone else said my personality test was.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit gave me that boldness.
SPEAKER_00: Today we had uh one of our students, Sol, I don't think he's here tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Is he here?
SPEAKER_00: Soul, are you here?
SPEAKER_00: He's not here.
SPEAKER_00: So, Soul tonight or this morning, he was on campus and he did live apologetics in front of the fountain at UNCG.
SPEAKER_00: He just put up a sign with a question on it and just answered questions about God.
SPEAKER_00: Look, a lot of you go to UNCG.
SPEAKER_00: It's not crazy for me to say that that is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of people at UNCG who don't believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: But Soul didn't care about that because the Holy Spirit gave him a supernatural boldness.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you may be thinking, I can't do all that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a public speaker, I'm not called to do all that.
SPEAKER_00: God may be giving you boldness to rewrite your family history.
SPEAKER_00: God may be giving you boldness to be the first person in your family to not get divorced.
SPEAKER_00: God may give give you boldness to be the first person in your family to be have a kid that looks back on their father and has nothing but joy and adoration for them.
SPEAKER_00: God may be giving you a boldness to not be anxious anymore.
SPEAKER_00: God may be giving you a boldness to break free from that addiction, from that sin, from that relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That may be boldness for you.
SPEAKER_00: Next is transformation, transforming your character.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you were hateful people, and God has transformed you into a loving person.
SPEAKER_00: You may were anxious, but he has transformed you into peace.
SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
SPEAKER_00: That's the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He has transformed you.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, his demonstration, which is spiritual gifts, supernatural things that God does that we can't explain.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm just willing to surrender and be open to them.
SPEAKER_00: I know people who have the gift of healing, I know people who have the gift of tongues, I know people who have to prophesy, who have visions, who have dreams, who have all those things.
SPEAKER_00: Those are ways that God moves as well.
SPEAKER_00: Those are powerful things that God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: And all of it is for this reason to go to Judea, Samaria, and all the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason Jesus says this is because that's our local context, that's our city, that's our state, and that's our world.
SPEAKER_00: God has given us power to spread his gospel all throughout the world.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to speak in tongues to do it, you don't have to heal people to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Your testimony is powerful enough to step into hell and pull somebody out.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know the power that you have.
SPEAKER_00: The fact you've came from what you came from is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Believe that, trust that, and let it be an invitation into more and more and more and more.
SPEAKER_00: God, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: More and more.
SPEAKER_00: God, give me even more of you.
SPEAKER_00: Give me even more of you.
SPEAKER_00: And the temptation in this is to think that this is only reserved for mature Christians, that things like spiritual gifts are only reserved for people who have been Christians for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Let me set the reality for you.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples had been Christians for 60 days when Pentecost happened.
SPEAKER_00: 60 days.
SPEAKER_00: Some ancient accounts say they were still teenagers.
SPEAKER_00: They were still teenagers and they moved on behalf of God.
SPEAKER_00: The difference was they were being they were willing to ask and believe in faith that God was doing something supernatural with them.
SPEAKER_00: There's this verse that's used so many times.
SPEAKER_00: Just have faith like a mustard seed, and God can do something supernatural.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what that verse means.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus pairs it with the verse he says, you can say to this mountain to be cast into the ocean, and it'll be cast into the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: What that verse means is not that it'll be cast in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: What it means is I'm gonna have the full faith that if I pray for that mountain to be cast into the sea, that it will happen eventually, even if I never see it.
SPEAKER_00: That is faith.
SPEAKER_00: Being willing to say, God, you say in scripture that this is for me, so give it to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna trust that as I just keep coming back to the Father day after day after day, that eventually he's gonna give it to me.
SPEAKER_00: I am praying in my own personal prayer life for supernatural moves of God.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't granted them yet.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't granted them yet, but I'm not losing faith.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, I'm just believing there's a reason he hasn't given to given them to me yet.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna be willing and able and I'm gonna be open for when he does.
SPEAKER_00: That's true faith.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that we can even do this is because we serve a God who died on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: All these things are invitations to know God more, not for him to love us more.
SPEAKER_00: That's simple for that.
SPEAKER_00: God proved everything he could on the day on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: When he died and rose again, he proved it all.
SPEAKER_00: He proved his love for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so, spiritual gifts, all these things, the Holy Spirit is not for God to love us more.
SPEAKER_00: It's for us to understand God's love for us even more.
SPEAKER_00: All those things are for that.
SPEAKER_00: And so tonight, we're gonna do something weird and uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to ask yourself, is God inviting me into something here?
SPEAKER_00: Lay down your pride, your desire for control, your desire for comfort, your fear of man, lay that all down and ask yourself, is God inviting me into something here?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna open the floor for people who want to be baptized in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen.
SPEAKER_00: This does not mean we're all gonna be like falling out on the floor speaking in tongues.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, God moves how He wants to move, and so we're just gonna trust and believe in faith that if I give Prayed for the baptism of the Spirit, and I don't feel it that it's not today, but it may be tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna trust that and I'm gonna believe that and I'm gonna walk in faith with that.
SPEAKER_00: So it may be weird for some of you, but let me ask you, man, like, why would you not want more of God?
SPEAKER_00: If you don't, that just makes me think you want a God who fits in your timeline, in your box, and your understanding.
SPEAKER_00: If there is more for you, why would you not want it?
SPEAKER_00: And so, for those who are gonna be uh praying, can y'all go ahead and come to the front?
SPEAKER_00: So here's how this is gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna do, we'll do confession type stuff in small group, but we're just gonna open the floor for people who feel like they want to be baptized in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Um and they all have anointing oil.
SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm gonna be straight.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what anointing oil does, but scripture says it works.
SPEAKER_00: So I believe in faith that it's a vessel for something.
SPEAKER_00: That even if my eyes can't see or understand, that it's a vessel for something beyond my control.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're gonna trust that they all have anointing oil, and they're gonna anoint you.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna anoint you, and then I'm gonna pray the prayer of baptism in the spirit over you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Praise God that we get to be uncomfortable with the creator of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.