SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you would say you need greater power in anointing and being a witness for Christ?
SPEAKER_01: See, that's what the purpose of the filling is.
SPEAKER_01: The purpose is for the presence of God to come upon you since the power of God can pull a free.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from pastor teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: Turning your Bibles to 1 Samuel 16.
SPEAKER_01: And we've been in the life of David.
SPEAKER_01: If you're new today, you're a visitor with us, a guest with us, we're going through the life of David.
SPEAKER_01: We're calling it Worshiper Warrior based on my book, Worshiper Warrior on the Life of David.
SPEAKER_01: And there's this very interesting passage in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to talk about today encountering God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Encountering God through the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Encountering God with the filling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Encountering God with the fire of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I don't really care what you call it.
SPEAKER_01: Every church tradition has a different way to view it.
SPEAKER_01: Some people call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Some call it a baptism by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Some call it a baptism with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Some people don't even use those terms, and they just talk in terms of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care what you call it, I just want you to get it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care what you call it.
SPEAKER_01: I just want you to get it.
SPEAKER_01: And at this church, we don't fight over those things.
SPEAKER_01: We let other churches fight over it and write books about it and debate it.
SPEAKER_01: We just want to live in it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So I've been around enough to be in a very liberal church environment, a very conservative evangelical church environment, which they fight about everything.
SPEAKER_01: And um and then a more charismatic vineyard background environment.
SPEAKER_01: And now I would say a blending of all that.
SPEAKER_01: I would call it kind of a word and spirit environment because I solidly have the conviction that we should teach the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse.
SPEAKER_01: And if you keep hanging out with this church as the years go by, you're gonna know God's word.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna encounter God in His Word.
SPEAKER_01: But I also believe in the power, the anointing, and the healing and the miraculous working power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: All word, no spirit, you dry up.
SPEAKER_01: All spirit, no word, you blow up.
SPEAKER_01: Word and spirit, you grow up.
SPEAKER_01: So this is an experiment.
SPEAKER_01: It's the road less travel.
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy.
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't fall, and our church doesn't fall completely into the Pentecostal camp on everything.
SPEAKER_01: We don't fall into the Bible church conservative evangelical camp on everything.
SPEAKER_01: We kind of we kind of dance between the two.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's a little more spirit in our worship, a little more spirit up front when we're ministering than some of you might be comfortable with.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we don't do enough of the spirit, and it makes others uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: The reality is this that I think we're hitting a balance.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what a balance, by the way, a balance is not the middle point between joy and depression.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some people I think that's what they mean by balance.
SPEAKER_01: It's like you're not balanced.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: To me, you know what balance is?
SPEAKER_01: Passion for the word and passion for the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's balance.
SPEAKER_01: You ask any football player who's trying to be a good football player, you ask any baseball player who's trying to be a good baseball player, the balance isn't single-A baseball and major league baseball, and I want to be somewhere in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: That's sometimes what I think people feel about balance, is to be balance means you're not so extreme as the holy rollers, but you're not as dead as a typical conservative church.
SPEAKER_01: Just be right in the middle, sort of dead, but sort of alive.
SPEAKER_01: That's dumb.
SPEAKER_01: That's bad theology.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be passionate for the Spirit and passionate for the word.
SPEAKER_01: Say amen if you understand half of what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_01: Because in the book, The Godwell Marriage, I wrote this book from Ephesians 5, 18 through 33.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing that unique in this book except that I'm the first guy that I know of that went verse by verse and said God wrote a book on marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And the first chapter is the power to be out of control.
SPEAKER_01: The power to be out of control.
SPEAKER_01: It means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's the starting point of any marriage, in my opinion, is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be baptized with in the fire of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you start getting Holy Spirit power and fire on you, you start to have the ability to change.
SPEAKER_01: You have the ability to love, you have the ability to worship.
SPEAKER_01: You're inviting Christ into your home.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I want to look at.
SPEAKER_01: David is a shepherd boy.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I got a lot of stuff to cover today, and if we don't get to it, we might go into it next week.
SPEAKER_01: But look at verse 13, because David is a shepherd boy who encounters Samuel, who anoints him with oil.
SPEAKER_01: And the spirit comes upon David.
SPEAKER_01: It says, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, meaning David, in the midst of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.
SPEAKER_01: So Samuel arose and went to Ramah.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what's happening here is that David, who has probably already written some of his poetry that becomes our Psalms, is right now experiencing, I believe, something different than the omnipresence of the Spirit, which I think was a part of his life, to now the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit, and that's what comes through the baptism of fire, the baptism of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And it was so significant that David, in 2 Samuel 23, you don't need to turn there, as he is recounting in his last will and testament, the last words before he knows he's about to die, he tips his heart toward this particular event when he says this.
SPEAKER_01: Now these are the last words of David.
SPEAKER_01: Thus says David, the son of Jesse, thus says the man raised up on high, the anointed, same word, of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me and by me, and his word was on my tongue.
SPEAKER_01: Now look at that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the sweet psalmist of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: David is saying that if he had not been anointed by the Spirit, if he had not been empowered by the Spirit, he could have never written all of the poetry and all of the songs and the worship that had happened.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, you out there that desire to be worship leaders, you that desire to be business leaders, you desire to be economic experts, you that want to work on cars, or you want to be a housewife and you can't wait to be married, all of that is the anointing of the spirit to be able to walk in the spirit that God can come in his presence over your business, his presence over your mind, his presence over your heart.
SPEAKER_01: The great stronghold of our life is between the ears.
SPEAKER_01: And when the Spirit comes and he begins to anoint our thinking and empower us with the fire and the work of his spirit, it changes us.
SPEAKER_01: And so something happens to David that day because he's about to have a target on his back.
SPEAKER_01: He's about to have a target on his back.
SPEAKER_01: As here's David, who has known the sublime beauty of the hills of Bethlehem, he's about to be orchestrated into the demonic courts of Saul.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going to bring the presence of God there and the power of God there.
SPEAKER_01: And ladies and gentlemen, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: Most of the church does not know how to walk in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Most Christians do not know how to walk in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And so what we tend to do, we hear messages maybe on it, and maybe for some of you, it's the first time you've heard any message on the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit until I was about 21.
SPEAKER_01: So I never, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01: It was in the antiphonal readings of the Lutheran Church, but I didn't know what that meant.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know who the Holy Spirit was.
SPEAKER_01: But when I began to experience the Holy Spirit, and I'll share a story near the end today about how God, I think, baptized me into a new understanding of his presence, it rocked my world.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to rock your world a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: I hope I do.
SPEAKER_01: I hope I rock your world a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting though, Ethan, the writer of Psalm 89, says this.
SPEAKER_01: I have found my servant David with my holy oil, I have anointed him, with whom my hand shall be established, also my arms shall strengthen him, but my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him, and in my name his horn shall be exalted.
SPEAKER_01: So seventy times in the Old Testament, there's reference to oil being poured out and the Spirit being poured out.
SPEAKER_01: Before the service is over today, we've got anointing oil up here.
SPEAKER_01: And as you hear this message, if there's a longing in your heart to be baptized with, filled by, empowered through the Holy Spirit, our ministry team's gonna come up.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna lay hands on you.
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon your life, your lifestyle, your marriage, your singleness.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna come and he'll be with you in a unique and special way.
SPEAKER_01: I really believe that David could not have had the unnatural courage to take on Goliath if he had not been filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I really believe David could never write the type of poetry that he wrote if he had not been baptized with and by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I really believe that David going into the cave of Abdulum later, we'll look at that later, and all this disgruntled group of men, 400 of them that gathered to him and he became their leader, could not have become the leader that God wanted him to become until he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are at a ceiling.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us here are at a ceiling in your job.
SPEAKER_01: You're at a ceiling in your marriage.
SPEAKER_01: You're at a ceiling in your character.
SPEAKER_01: You can't break out of the jealousy.
SPEAKER_01: You can't break out of the envy.
SPEAKER_01: You can't break out of the of the self-hatred that just bombards your mind every morning when you wake up.
SPEAKER_01: You hate this about yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Or you compare yourself and you're always found wanting.
SPEAKER_01: You will not break through in your own power.
SPEAKER_01: Or Jesus came needlessly.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about the disciples, you guys.
SPEAKER_01: Three years.
SPEAKER_01: Three and a half years every day, 24-7, with Jesus, and yet he tells them to tarry, wait until the Holy Spirit comes because you are not ready.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a ceiling in some of your lives.
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to get that breakthrough until you're filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Because guess who gets the glory when the breakthrough comes if it's the Holy Spirit who does it?
SPEAKER_01: Not you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is just looking for surrendered vessels who know they can't do it, who will admit they can't do it, who are sick of religion, who are sick of trying to make it until they break it, and who want to be filled with the Holy Spirit and give him all the glory.
SPEAKER_01: Because when he finds a young man, a young woman, whatever age, there's no junior Holy Spirit, when they get filled with the Spirit, they're transformed.
SPEAKER_01: And God gets the glory for that.
SPEAKER_01: So even Jesus had to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So turn in your Bibles to Matthew 3.
SPEAKER_01: Even Jesus had to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, his favorite title that he gave himself was Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: Not son of God, but son of man.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the perfect Spirit-anointed man.
SPEAKER_01: Fully man, fully God.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Matthew 3.11.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
SPEAKER_01: This is John the Baptist speaking, and he's talking about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, John never experienced the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: But he's the first one to define why Jesus came to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_01: He says, I indeed baptize you with water into repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.
SPEAKER_01: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
SPEAKER_01: Write this down.
SPEAKER_01: You are born to burn.
SPEAKER_01: You are not born to sit.
SPEAKER_01: You are not born to be comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: You are not born to rest.
SPEAKER_01: There'll be plenty of time up there to rest a lot.
SPEAKER_01: We'll be resting and praising and worshiping God for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: But while we're here, you are born to burn.
SPEAKER_01: And when God gets a person, I don't care what their intelligence is, it doesn't matter what their experience has been, but they want to burn for God, man, God notices them and he starts to move in with his spirit and he starts to release his Holy Spirit in such a way that we think differently, we act differently, and people can see there's an anointing on that guy.
SPEAKER_01: There's an anointing on that gal.
SPEAKER_01: There's something different about them.
SPEAKER_01: Because the presence of God comes through the anointing of God.
SPEAKER_01: The presence of God comes through.
SPEAKER_01: So he says this.
SPEAKER_01: So John makes this statement.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus comes up in verse 12 and 13, 14, and 15, he has to be baptized.
SPEAKER_01: John, knowing that Jesus is gonna baptize with fire and with the Spirit, says he should be the one being baptized.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus responds, verse 15, permit it to be so, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: And then when he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened.
SPEAKER_01: One translation is they were ripped.
SPEAKER_01: The heavens were ripped open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him, and suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased.
SPEAKER_01: I call this a kingdom identity passage.
SPEAKER_01: This is a kingdom identity passage that the belovedness of the Father to the Son, setting the agenda of the heart identity of Jesus before he begins his ministry through the manifest presence of the heavens being ripped open and the spirit coming down like a dove.
SPEAKER_01: We know Isaiah 64.
SPEAKER_01: All the prophets in the Old Testament declared something similar to Isaiah 64, 1.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, rend the heavens and come down.
SPEAKER_01: Rend, rip the heavens, rend, rip the heavens and come down.
SPEAKER_01: Same word as the rending of the curtain at Christ's death, where the curtain was ripped from top to bottom, taking, opening up the holy place to the holy of holies through intimacy we now have with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's happening here as the intimacy of the Father toward his son.
SPEAKER_01: He's opening up the heaven, and there's a funnel, and the Spirit of God comes upon Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it's at that point, look at chapter 4, verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4, verse 23, we see a different Jesus from before.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.
SPEAKER_01: Then his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who are demon-possessed, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them.
SPEAKER_01: So, church.
SPEAKER_01: Before this, Jesus never had healed anyone.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had never cast out a demon.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had never done a miracle.
SPEAKER_01: But now, through the filling of the Holy Spirit, he's released to be a conduit for God's power.
SPEAKER_01: Same in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Now look at Acts chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: So look at Acts chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Three years.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples had been with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Can't get much better than that, folks.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, 24-7, you live with him, you sleep next to him by the fire, you watch the miracle.
SPEAKER_01: He's even released you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if we were one of the 70 or one of the 12, we had actually been released to heal the sick and cast out demons and preach the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: So we had seen, we had seen elements of that.
SPEAKER_01: But this is what he says after his resurrection and before his ascension, and being assembled together with them, verse 4, chapter 1 of Acts, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You've heard from me, for John truly did baptize you with water, but you shall be baptized with, there it is again, exact same phrase, with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: Totally missing the point.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing with certain people when you start talking about the filling of the baptizing with the Holy Spirit, how quickly the subject gets changed.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what do you think about predispensational premillennial eschatology?
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the let's talk about the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: No, let's talk about the pre-Lapterian view of how this particular eschatological perspective can be understood as it relates to the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
SPEAKER_01: For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, when will you restore the kingdom of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: Totally moving into a political argument.
SPEAKER_01: We don't do that here, right?
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority.
SPEAKER_01: So quit worrying so much about the end times, quit worrying so much about political issues of our day.
SPEAKER_01: Wait, get ready for something way bigger than that.
SPEAKER_01: Could it be that it's not so much getting the time?
SPEAKER_01: And the seasons all set up for the last days that we should be focused on.
SPEAKER_01: But what are we doing between now and when those days come?
SPEAKER_01: But you shall receive power.
SPEAKER_01: The word is dunamis, the same root where we get the word dynamite.
SPEAKER_01: When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, remember the anointing oil coming upon David.
SPEAKER_01: He's anointed with oil.
SPEAKER_01: Same phraseology.
SPEAKER_01: When the Spirit has come upon you, you shall suddenly be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, remotest parts of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you would say you need greater power and anointing in being a witness for Christ?
SPEAKER_01: See, that's what the purpose of the filling is.
SPEAKER_01: The purpose is for the presence of God to come upon you so that the power of God can flow through you.
SPEAKER_01: So for ten days they wait on God.
SPEAKER_01: For ten days they seek God.
SPEAKER_01: And then when it's God's timing, he comes.
SPEAKER_01: Look at chapter 2, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
SPEAKER_01: Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.
SPEAKER_01: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
SPEAKER_01: One translation said it was like a wildfire.
SPEAKER_01: Like a wildfire.
SPEAKER_01: It reminds me of the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012.
SPEAKER_01: 32,000 people had to evacuate their homes.
SPEAKER_01: And then the next year, the Black Forest fire, 5,000 people had to evacuate their homes.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that fire started in Black Forest, a quarter of a mile from our house.
SPEAKER_01: And a group of us came up and we just started piling stuff into, you know, into my truck, and we could see the the we couldn't literally see the flames, but we could see the billows of smoke just a quarter of a mile away.
SPEAKER_01: And in church, if if the wind had just blown in a southward direction, we would have been burned up, but it went in a different direction.
SPEAKER_01: But it was right there.
SPEAKER_01: It was right across Shoop Road from where we live on the south side of Shoop Road.
SPEAKER_01: It was right there.
SPEAKER_01: But it was a wildfire with 50 mile an hour winds ripping through in 2012 and in 2013.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit of God is like a wildfire.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a wild goose chase.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Celts called it.
SPEAKER_01: The Celts of Great Britain called it the wild goose chase.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit was called the wild goose.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody ever had geese?
SPEAKER_01: Anybody raised geese?
SPEAKER_01: Chickens are similar.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you saw Creed?
SPEAKER_01: Creed one, the first movie.
SPEAKER_01: The latest.
SPEAKER_01: Creed two just came out in the Rocky series.
SPEAKER_01: Creed.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody see that?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, remember what he does when he's training him?
SPEAKER_01: He puts him in there in that cage with a chicken.
SPEAKER_01: He says, catch the chicken.
SPEAKER_01: Just try to catch the chicken.
SPEAKER_01: One time one of our kids, I think it was Deborah, came back from feeding our chickens with a deep claw mark bleeding.
SPEAKER_01: I think it was on her leg from a rooster.
SPEAKER_01: And when we had ordered our chicks, a lot of times they miss them.
SPEAKER_01: They can miss a rooster, so that's hard, they don't get it perfect every time.
SPEAKER_01: And so we had gotten, I think, 20 hens, and one rooster showed up.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't know till one morning we woke up and we heard him.
SPEAKER_01: But but roosters tend to be very um domineering and protective of their hens.
SPEAKER_01: And isn't it interesting that almost all males of every animal species are protective of their females, but it's all by evolution.
SPEAKER_01: And males and females were all exactly the same.
SPEAKER_01: Poor Darwinist.
SPEAKER_01: I struggle for them.
SPEAKER_01: It's just so out of touch with reality.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know why I got off on that, you know, here.
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, this this rooster scratches my child, and I had had it.
SPEAKER_01: I was torqued off.
SPEAKER_01: And I took a blade that I hunt with, and I went marching out to that pen.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, it would have been a comedy routine if anybody had filmed it, me trying to catch a rooster.
SPEAKER_01: It's flying over my head, it's flying all around, all the hens are flying, feathers are going everywhere, and finally, I won't tell you everything, but I was able to win.
SPEAKER_01: No more rooster.
SPEAKER_01: But the spirit-filled life is like a wild goose chase because you can't control a wildfire and you can't control a rooster and you can't control a goose.
SPEAKER_01: And when you give yourself and surrender yourself to the work of the Holy Spirit, you're in for a wild goose chase.
SPEAKER_01: And my concern is that the institutionalized church has clipped the wings of the goose.
SPEAKER_01: We've clipped the wings of the goose.
SPEAKER_01: And we wonder why our churches aren't growing.
SPEAKER_01: We wonder why the church isn't having a greater impact and influence on society and culture.
SPEAKER_01: It's because we're not filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We're filled with religion.
SPEAKER_01: We're filled with rules.
SPEAKER_01: We're filled with how to be a good Christian instead of how to be a wild Christian.
SPEAKER_01: And we can call it wild.
SPEAKER_01: I like the word adventure.
SPEAKER_01: Church, it's an adventure.
SPEAKER_01: In my first church, we called our kind of our vision statement was experiencing the adventure of an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I still like that sentence.
SPEAKER_01: Experiencing the adventure of an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: David was anointed with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And the Spirit of God led him into courageous acts and signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and he began to go out and heal the sick and set the captives free.
SPEAKER_01: The early church was anointed with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Same thing happened.
SPEAKER_01: So turn to John 14.
SPEAKER_01: So turn to the left, go to John, the Gospel of John, chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: And we see the work of the Spirit in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to start finishing that, wrapping this up.
SPEAKER_01: John 14, 12 through 18.
SPEAKER_01: Most assuredly, this is Jesus speaking.
SPEAKER_01: Most assuredly I say to you, who believe he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater works in these he will do, because I go to my Father.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
SPEAKER_01: If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
SPEAKER_01: So he's saying that the works that Jesus did, we can do, and even greater works.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe those greater works aren't necessarily walking on water, though I guess that could be included, but it was the quantity of the works around the world that the whole church would do that would be so much greater exponentially than he could do when he was at one place at one time.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15 if you love me, keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_01: And I will pray the Father he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.
SPEAKER_01: So he's saying that it's going to be through the Holy Spirit that we're going to see these signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be through the work of his spirit flowing through us that we can do what Jesus did because we have the same spirit that Jesus had.
SPEAKER_01: We can do what Jesus did because we have the same spirit that Jesus had.
SPEAKER_01: The only problem is our surrender to that spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So now turn.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: Don't turn there.
SPEAKER_01: I want to read a quick story.
SPEAKER_01: Charles Finney, the great evangelist and the leader of the second great awakening, in his ministry, preaching revival all over the northeastern part of the United States, was challenged by someone that he needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, that he needed the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And he was already seeing results.
SPEAKER_01: But he captures what happened to him through this baptism of the Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_01: As I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without my recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Ghost descended on me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul.
SPEAKER_01: I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity going through and through me.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love.
SPEAKER_01: For I could not express it in any other way.
SPEAKER_01: It seemed like the very breath of God, I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me like immense wings.
SPEAKER_01: No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I wept aloud with joy and love, and I do not know, but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart.
SPEAKER_01: The waves came over me and over me one after the other until I recollect, I cried out, I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I cannot bear it anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Yet I had no fear of death.
SPEAKER_01: When you look at the saints of old that God has mightily used, virtually every one of them tells a story not dissimilar to this one of an encounter with God where the Spirit of God came upon them and they experienced new power in their life after that.
SPEAKER_01: I was a new believer, and I was learning about the Holy Spirit, and I was hungry for the Holy Spirit, and one day, while walking to biology class at the University of Georgia, the Spirit of God came upon me.
SPEAKER_01: And it was like, all I can say is it was like I had been taken out of this world into another world.
SPEAKER_01: It was like I passed into another dimension.
SPEAKER_01: And my eyes saw everything differently.
SPEAKER_01: Suddenly, the beauty of the trees, the beauty of the leaves, the beauty of the sky, the beauty of the sun just hit me, and I was just filled with passion and love for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Later, as a missionary in Japan, I had an experience of the Holy Spirit coming upon me.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in Okinawa, Japan, I spoke in tongues.
SPEAKER_01: Never never had that experience before.
SPEAKER_01: But God came upon me after searching for probably over a year for a baptism with the Holy Spirit, and he came upon me.
SPEAKER_01: And there was a difference, there was a transformation, there was a new faith, there was a new level of power in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I share that because I don't believe there's just one filling.
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe there's just one encounter.
SPEAKER_01: I believe there can be many encounters in our life, church, where the Spirit of God refreshes you and restores you and comes with His power in new ways where you need more.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you need more right now.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are at that place where you're going, you know, I there's got to be something more than what I've known.
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of doing it my way.
SPEAKER_01: I want God's way.
SPEAKER_01: And I think those disciples in that upper room were freaking out.
SPEAKER_01: I think they were so scared.
SPEAKER_01: The Roman authorities were after them, the Jewish authorities were after them.
SPEAKER_01: That's why they were cowering away in that upper room.
SPEAKER_01: And then something happened, men and women.
SPEAKER_01: Something happened that turned cowards into courageous heroes.
SPEAKER_01: The word witness comes from the word materia, which means martyr.
SPEAKER_01: They were willing to be martyred for their faith because they were filled with power from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
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SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.