5/24/2026 Sunday morning service

5/24/2026 Sunday morning service 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

One two. One two rain. You become the show up to lay. So here I am, the ten of my heart. Feel you all my fingers, my son, my mother's feeling, I used to see you on two. I began to say it's your secret place. I can't fail you. All around me, all she wants to water, feeling I can feel you can be pretty holding on to what a feeling safe are feeling. I can feel you all pretty holding on. What a feeling they are feeling walking away.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

How is everybody this morning? Like we're a little down this morning, so I think you could be a little louder. How is everybody this morning? Alright, thank you. Alright, we come to that time in our worship service where we take up the offering. Um, so I want to say a quick prayer over the offering. Please remember that God loves a charitable giver. If you don't feel right to give it, then we don't want you to. We don't want you to feel pressure. But we're gonna go ahead and pray over the offering now. Heavenly Father, God, we come before you this morning. We thank you for your presence in this place. We thank you for the Spirit, God, that has been provided to us as a comforter, as a healer, as a protector, God. And we pray, Lord, that as we move throughout the service, Lord, hearts would be open, lives would be changed. And now as we take up the offering of play, I pray that you uh bless the gifted Lord. I pray that you would stretch their bodies, God, their hearts would last longer, their washes would last longer. Blessings just poured out abundantly upon top of each of them in the precious name of Jesus. I pray. Amen. Amen. All right, so this morning we're gonna continue our sermon series called Empowered. But before we get started, if you haven't already, if you've never filled out a connection card, they're on the back of the pews in front of you. You can see them there. Um hey, hold up one, John or Gary. You see when they're there? This is what I'm talking about. There's no card right here. If you can fill one of those out, um, that just gives me a little bit of information so I can reach out to you and talk to you a little bit. Um, so if you can do that also, we are live streaming on Facebook. If you have a Facebook, go to Carla Bragg and you'll see the stream. I ask that you follow, like, and share. All right? Follow, like, and share. Do your part to stretch that gospel out there. So we're continuing today in our series called Empower. And I want to tell you, I really like this series. I really do, because it is letting us um talk about a little bit of theology. Um, and it's not just about church tradition, it's about the living Holy Spirit that moves inside each and every one of us. It is an act of power that God made available to every single one of us. Last week we talked about the Holy Spirit as a comforter. We talked about him as a helper and as a convictor. Today we're going to take it just a little bit further. We're going to go that next step, and we're going to talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, what they are, how they work, and how you are empowered to be able to walk in those gifts. Before Jesus returned to heaven, he made a promise. I'm going to have to get my drink, guys. I'm sorry. I have been under the weather this week. I thought I was going to pass out when we went uh witnessing out on Tuesday nights. It's just been one of those weeks where you go to bed early and then you're still tired when you get up with uh sinus infection or something. All right, so before Jesus returned to heaven, he made us a promise. And if you'll look in John 14, verses 16 and 17, it says, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. So Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would live inside of all believers. When you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, at that moment, the Holy Spirit will come and he will live inside of you. And we talked last week about how when that happens, he can be your convictor, he can be your comforter, he can be your helper. There's a lot of things that the Holy Spirit can be for you, but it's not just the apostles that got the Holy Spirit, right? It's not just pastors, it's not just the people who've been in church like for their whole lives, but all believers, when they accept Jesus Christ, they get the gift of the Holy Spirit. And in Romans 8, 11, it says, the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, and just as God raised Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same spirit living within you. I want you to stop and think about how powerful that statement actually is for just a moment. The same power that was able to raise Jesus when he died lives inside of you. That's a lot of power. But it is amazing to me how we do not tap into that power as much as we could, as much as we should. There is so much there available for us. Yet some of us will go through life living depressed, living downtrodden, living just day-to-day when the Bible says that you are to have life and have it more abundantly. You can do that by getting into the word of God and learning what the Holy Spirit offers you in the form of gifts. It's not a small thing, it's something that we should not take for granted, that we should not ignore, though a lot of times we do. That's the most powerful force in the universe is living inside of you right now. Right now, and Jesus told us in Acts 1 and 8. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Power, real power is what we're talking about. Not just a feeling. We've talked about feelings, feelings come and go, emotions come and go. I might feel like I'm in a really good mood one day and I'm really happy in the next. I might feel crummy and I don't want to talk to anybody, but that does not change the power that lives inside of me each and every single day. That's why I've got to stop looking at the gift that the Holy Spirit gives me as something that is emotional or a special feeling. It is a power. Every single day. What does that supernatural power enable you to do as individuals? It lets you witness boldly, it lets you operate in gifts that reveal God to a world that desperately needs Him. That desperately needs Him. That's what we're talking about today. So we're going to dive in. And the first thing I want to know, if you guys notice, was dear in praise and worship. And I hope I don't embarrass her, but during praise and worship this morning, did you notice that when Emily sang her song, she dropped to her knees? Did y'all notice that? So she was doing that in practice too, and I kept thinking, why is she going to her knees? And then she had told me about a blister or something that she had, and I thought, well, maybe her foot's hurting, so that's why. But then Ben said she's on her knees because she's wanting to worship and not perform. She's wanting to worship and not perform. And that right there is the work of the Holy Spirit moving in the life of this teenager. She gets it. She gets it. And that's how we need to be. We don't want to perform to the world, though many of us go around through life, and that's what we're doing, is we try to perform. We try to look happy all the time. We don't want people to know that there's things bothering us. We hide behind fake faces. We're performing to people. We need to learn to be real because the Holy Spirit shows up in spirit and in truth. Truth. Amen. Truth. Now, before we get into the gifts themselves, I want to address something that I believe is one of the greatest problems in the church today. And I'm not talking about any particular church, I'm talking about the church. All right. Paul opens his teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 with these words. Now, about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. I do not want you to be uninformed. So this tells me that being uninformed about the Holy Spirit and his gifts is a real problem. If he has to specifically say that, I don't want you to be uninformed, then that must have been a real problem even back then. And if it was a problem in the early church, how much more is it a problem today? The problem of being uninformed. So here's what I've seen happen. Instead of going to the Word of God to learn about the Holy Spirit, too many believers gather their information from people who are just as uninformed as they are. They gather their information from what they hear. From what they hear. Guys, I'm telling you, when you listen to me up here, I look out and I see many of you taking notes. I encourage you to go home and look it up yourself. Because I am human just like everybody else. And there's going to be times when I don't understand, and I might say the wrong thing. Do not ever take at face value what you hear. Get in the word and study it for yourself. Study it for yourself. But the result of people being uninformed and listening to uninformed other people is that Christians are now living far below the level of power and purpose that God intended for us to live because they've listened to all the watered-down versions, generation after generation after generation after generation. And that has made us put God and put Jesus, put the Holy Spirit inside of a box that we open only when we get in trouble, only when we think we need him, instead of letting him work in our lives every single day. Guys, we belong to him. And he needs to direct our steps. The teachings out there say that the gifts of the Spirit stopped functioning after the apostles died. I've heard that before. I don't know if y'all heard that before. Says that the gifts of the apostles stopped after they died. Well, there are teachings that say the gifts were only for a certain period of time and not for today. That's what you hear. Guys, none of that's in the Bible. If you get to looking, none of that is in the Bible. And here's something important: God is perfectly capable of communicating exactly what he means when he means it. And when he wants it to stop, he can tell you that too. We shouldn't have to hunt through isolated verses to twist them to fit a personal opinion to come up with that conclusion. Right? If the gifts were supposed to stop, God of what He'd have said plainly, now these are going to stop once the apostles die. But he didn't say that. He didn't say that. Why? Because they weren't meant to stop. Here's what the Bible says. Look at Acts 2 39. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off. As many as the Lord God will call. That tells us right there. It wasn't just for the people of those times. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are for them, for their children, their children, their children, for all people afar off. That's who these gifts are for. The promise of the Holy Spirit. Let's look at Hebrews 13 and 8. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if he wanted them to have the gifts of the Holy Spirit to help them, to comfort them, to convict them, to help them to reach the lost, he didn't change. He doesn't operate inside of time. We do. We operate inside of time. There's a time we get up, there's a time we lay down, there's a time the sun shines, there's a time the sun goes down. God's not like that. God transcends time. He transcends time. So for him, he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. If Jesus doesn't change, then his promises don't change. He still operates the same today as he always has. So today, we're not going to base our understanding of the Holy Spirit on what other people say. Okay? We're not going to base it on how we feel or whether something makes us uncomfortable. We're going to go straight to the Word of God and let it speak for itself. All right? In this church, the Bible is our final authority. In this church, we do not water it down, we speak it as it is, we don't add to it, and we listen to it. We follow it. It tells us in Second Timothy three sixteen. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Sometimes that happens.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

That's nice that it's useful to teaching, right? What about rebuking? We don't like it though, do we? We hate it when the scripture rebukes something that we do. Correcting and training in righteousness. Training in righteousness. All scripture. It says, not just the parts that are comfortable or not just the parts that are easy to explain, all of it, every bit of it. And that includes everything Paul writes about the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, which is what we're looking at today. So now that we have established that the gifts are still for us today, let's look at what Paul says about how they work. 1 Corinthians 12, 4 through 7.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Is that it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

There are different gifts, there are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone, it is the same God at work. Now, to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. Now I want you to notice a few things here. First, there are different kinds of gifts. All right, they're different. Not everyone operates in the same gift. What your gift may be, mine may not be. What mine may be, yours may not be. That's why we work together as a body. That's why we work together as a family because it's a teamwork. It's a teamwork. And we have a team here at Lifeline, Peter's Town. So he gave you what he intended for you to have. I used to get tickled at my dad. He would take me singing, and I love to sing, guys. I just love to sing. And I always wanted a high voice. I wanted one of them way up there in the rafters, them pretty high voices, but my voice was so low. My voice is still low. When I sang in choir, guys, I was between tenor and baritone. That's how low my voice is. And one day I said, Daddy, I sure wish God would have given me a higher voice. And he said, Why? You don't use the one you have. And that hit me hard. God gave each of us a gift. It's up to us to use it, not to wish we had someone else's. Second, it's all the same spirit. Whether it's wisdom, healing, prophecies, the speaking in tongues, it all comes from the same Holy Spirit. There's no hierarchy of gifts where you start at the bottom and you work your way through them until you build up to the big one. That's not how it works. It isn't. They all come from God and they all serve a particular purpose in His kingdom. Third, and this is so important, to each one. To each one. That means that every believer, not just pastors, not just evangelists, not just people who've been in church for decades, each one, and that includes each and every person that's sitting here in this service this morning or watching us online right now. Every single person has a gift that the Holy Spirit gives you to work for the kingdom of God. And finally, the gifts are given for the common good. God don't give you a gift so that you can boast and be built up. God gives you a gift for the common good of his church. For the common good of his church. They aren't given so we can show off, which Emily showed us this morning, right? They aren't given so we can feel special, right? They are given to build up the body of Christ and to reveal God to those who don't know him. God manifests these gifts through believers to draw the lost into the flock, to draw the lost into a relationship with him. And think about it. If the gifts of the Spirit were meant to end with the apostles, why would God inspire Paul to spend so much time writing out detailed instructions about the Holy Spirit and the gifts and how much we should use them, how much power that they have. The answer's simple. So as we go through each one, I want you to think about that for just a minute. The gifts. Here's walking through them. Let's get into the gifts themselves. We're going to start in 1 Corinthians 12, 8 through 11. All right. To one, there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom. To another, a message of knowledge by means of the same spirit. To another, faith by the same spirit, to another, gifts of healing by that one spirit. To another, miraculous powers, to another, prophecy, to another, distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of those tongues. All these are the work of one and the same spirit, and he distributes them to each one just as he determines. Right? Nine gifts, guys. There's nine. Let's walk through each one. We're going to start with the gift of wisdom. Now, this is not the kind of wisdom that you wished your husband had or your wife, or it's not the kind of wisdom that helps you when you have earthly troubles. We're talking about supernatural ability here. All right. The gift of wisdom is a supernatural ability through the Holy Spirit to understand mysteries related to God's purposes and divine will. It's the ability to know what to do and when, not by human reasoning, but by the direct inspiration of God. Direct inspiration of God. So our main church up in Princeton, Pastor Hurt first decided to buy the Lowe's building. All right. And JB, his son, often says, I thought that was crazy. All right? How would you cut a Lowe's building to build a church? Um it's too big. It was too big. But God gave Pastor Hurt a moment of wisdom that that church was going to grow and that he better start preparing for it. So he had to find the right contractors, he had to find the right leaders, he had victories from God, and he let God speak to him. And look where they are today. The divine gift of wisdom has made this church building possible. Because through the growth of Princeton Church of God, we now have Lifeline Peterstown, Lifeline Hinton, Lifeline Anstead, and Lifeline Christiansburg. It's growing. Now just think of Pastor Hurt wouldn't have listened when God gave him that piece of wisdom. So when God gives you a piece of wisdom, it's so that you can use it, right? All right, of knowledge. That's the supernatural ability to know something by inspiration that could not be known otherwise. It's information that comes directly from the Holy Spirit. Things you couldn't possibly know by natural means. Now I think this has happened to all of us. This has happened to all of us, right? Things that we wouldn't know by supernatural means. There are times when I am up here and I'm preaching, and I'm not preaching any different than I preach any other time. But all of a sudden I might look at one of you, and the thought might enter my mind, that person is struggling right now. That person has this problem right now. That person needs you to talk to them about this. Now, sometimes I listen and I run right to them. Sometimes I run kicking and screaming. But when God tells me to go, I go. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. You don't know how uncomfortable it is to set someone down and say, hey, I need to talk to you because tell me a little bit about what's going on with such and structure. But that is because of knowledge that I otherwise wouldn't have changed had I not listened to the Holy Spirit when he spoke to me. When he spoke to me. So that is an example of knowledge. How about the gift of faith? This gift is different from the faith we exercise to believe in Jesus as our Savior. This gift of faith is a miraculous, supernatural faith that the Holy Spirit measures out to an individual in a time of special need. When this gift is in operation, there is a divine certainty working in a person's heart that absolutely refuses to accept defeat or failure. I'm going to use those two young fellas at Princeton for this one. I don't know how many of you know, you probably do. The two young guys that were going to school the other morning and died in the car wreck on their way to school, it's a set of brothers. Yeah, Christ, it was Christ and uh Aiden King. Yeah. They were on their way to school at Princeton High School, and as they was going up the hill, they got in a car wreck and died instantly, both of them, brothers. And I cannot imagine a mother's heart. I read on her Facebook page that she said it's been 152 hours now since my Life 360 app made the most horrible noise I've ever heard. She talked about how it alerted her of the accident and how she could see tennis shoes in the spot where they wrecked. She said she jumped in her car and she took off flying to get to where they were. And she said that she got there and the traffic was so backed up that she couldn't get that way, so she went around another way, and it was still so backed up. So she got out and she took off running. And she said she'll never forget the look on Chief Rubel's face when he saw her coming and ran to stop her from going and seeing the devastation of that wreck. She said it's been 152 days, and the sound of that Life 360 is etched in my memory forever. That is a mother's heart. But she got on Facebook after the funeral talking about how good God is. She started talking about how wonderful God is, how He had called her boys home, how they weren't suffering anymore. Guys, that right there is faith that gets you through any circumstance. Faith that keeps you trudging and keeps you digging in and keeps you moving forward when you think your life has just ended, when everything's going wrong.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

That's the faith that this is talking about. The gift of healing.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

This gift of healing refers to miraculous cure in the body, mind, and spirit that came in answer to prayer and faith in God. Healings take place all the time, guys. Lots of times we don't give God credit for them. You recover from a flu, God. You recover from pneumonia, God, right? God heals us. Healings take place all the time in this church, and through the prayers of this church. There's been several. John had a tumor removed, and here he is. Back to John, right? There have been people in this very congregation that have experienced healings. Dave, I don't know how many of you remember Dave. Dave had cancer, and Dave was cured from his cancer. And it's been years since Dave has had to mess with that. We had Verna, she sat right in this area. Verna, she had to end up having quadruple heart bypass surgery. And she was back singing on the praise team in no time. God does miraculous healings. He does. We need to have the faith to believe that and to know that God is still in the healing business. I myself, I had I was having some trouble, so I went to the doctor and they said that my liver enzymes were really up. And they were worried about non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. So they sent me for this I scan or something like that. I can't remember what that one was called. And sure enough it was functioning in that level. They said, Well, we can control the device. One thing that they really got on to about was my sweet tea. I don't know why that's so bad. It's my sweet tea. So they took the sweet tea from me and a couple other things. And so I came before the church when I started praying. Don't ask me what's in my cup. So I came before the church and I had the church start praying for me. And you know, the next appointment I went to, it was all the way down to the lowest level that it could be. I didn't have it anymore. Didn't have it anymore. That's because God is still in the healing business. He's still in the healing business.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

That is another gift that is from the Holy Spirit, the gift of healing. All right.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

The gift of miracles. Let's go to that one next. The gift of miracles demonstrates God's power to save, heal, and deliver. It demonstrates his power over nature, over sin, and over evil. Alright? So I like this story. So I'm gonna I'm gonna read this story just like it is right here. Now, this is something that happened um one of Pastor Hurt, the dad of Pastor Hurt, one of his mentors, he was a man from the British Honduras. Alright? And years ago, a Church of God missionary went up into the jungle to share the message of Jesus with an unbreached tribe. He paid one of the villagers to prepare his food and give him a place to stay. And every night he held a service, but no one came. During the day, the villagers watched him, particularly when he sat down to eat and prayed over his food. When the missionary didn't know, what he didn't know was that every single day the villagers had been poisoning his food. They wanted to see what this God he served could do. And every single day he ate food, he prayed over it, nothing happened to him. While the others, if they would eat the same food, they would die. On the last night he planned to be there, the entire village showed up for his service that night. At the end, the leader of the tribe came forward and gave his life to Jesus, along with the rest of his village. When the missionary asked why they all came that night, they said, All week long we poisoned you. All week long, your food should have killed you. But you prayed over it and your God saved you. All the others died, but you live, so we know your God is God. Now, this actually happened to a mentor, Pastor Hurt. That's a miracle, and God still does that today.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Have you ever been driving down the road and for some reason you stopped for whatever reason you have to use the bathroom or whatever, and find out if you went on, you'd have probably been involved in a big wreck that happened up the way. That's God.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

That's God. Little things like that that lots of people like to call coincidences. I don't believe in coincidences. It's God. And God keeps his hand upon you, and he does those little miracles, lots that we don't even know about, in your everyday life. So that when the time comes, it's evident to you you're saved. What about the gift of prophecy? It's divinely inspired words given to encourage and share God's will for us. It's God speaking through a person to deliver a message. He wants his people to hear. He wants his people to hear. Guys, that still happens today. I've had people speak words over me. I don't know if any of y'all have had people speak words over you, but sometimes God will lay it upon the heart of some people to speak words over someone else. I'll never forget when uh we were in a Chick-fil-A line, me and my daughter, and this woman kept staring at her, she kept staring at her, she kept staring at her, and I was getting a little uncomfortable. And so I moved myself to where I was in between the two. And she said, Honey, I just got to feel your hands, she said to my daughter. And she reached out, she touched my daughter's hands, and she said, just as I figured, you're a healer. You're a healer. She said, As you grow, stay with the Lord, and your hands will have the ability to heal. That is a word that that woman spoke over my daughter. She spoke that. Guys, you know what she does today? Well, right now she's a stay-at-home mom, she has a new baby. But her her degree is in music therapy where she teaches people who have strokes or who have seizures or who have autism. She teaches them to speak through music. Isn't that great? She does things like that. You say, well, that's not miraculously like that is the gift of healing.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

That is a prophecy. That's prophecy. All right.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

So there is now the gift of distinguishing between spirits. Distinguishing between spirits. This gift is a supernatural ability to distinguish between the spirit of man, evil spirits, and the holy spirit. It's the ability to discern what is truly at work in a situation or in a person.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Discernment. Now I like to think I have that gift.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

I like to think I have that gift. And as a pastor, that's a pretty good gift to have. Because sometimes you need to know when someone comes in your back door, are they coming in your back door for good or are they coming in your back door for evil, right? So I like to think I have that. And I have good vibes about all of y'all in here today. My spirit of discernment has told me we're all cool in here today. But there have been times. There have been times. And as soon as that person comes through the door, I can feel it. I can sense it. That is being able to discern between spirits. It's just a gift. It's not something you can practice. It's have you ever heard of gut feeling? Have you ever heard someone say it's a gut feeling? It's a discernment of the spirit. Okay? When the spirit, when the Holy Spirit tells you there's something not right. There's something not right. Be careful, beware. Or when he says, Hey, this person is all in for you. I remember I started talking to Ben and uh I started talking to Ben and kind of Emily in between, you know, I was back and forth between them both. I was on a business trip for work, and I was trying to talk to Ben, but the cell phone service in that area was absolutely horrible. And so during the day, while I could use the work wife on my phone, um, when I went to lunch and stuff, I was looking him up and looking about him and stuff like that. There's a lot, there's a lot to look up at when it comes to to Ben over here. Um and I was trying to debate whether or not I wanted to ask him to be my praise and worship leader and to leave the youth on Sunday nights. And the photo that popped up of Ben was Ben in red with a fireball in his hand with his shirt off had this look on his face.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

And I showed it to charity and she said, Are you sure you know what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Are you sure you know what you're doing? Did you vet him first? My daughter told me the same thing. Are you sure? And I said, I am 100% sure this one is from God, and this one is who we need. And he's doing a wonderful job. He's doing a wonderful job with the youth, he's doing a wonderful job with the praise team. He's doing wonderful. I think who are you, the hanging hymen or something like that. Am I getting too personal? He he's a he's a heavy metal Christian rock artist, guys. That's what he does. You can look him up. Um, that's what he does. And he's pushing us towards having a skillet day here at church. So uh Tony this morning, our drummer, when I said we was gonna have a skillet day, he said, what? Beat bots and fans? I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Skillet, you know, he's like, no, he had never heard of them before. So he's a wrestler too.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Uh that's the firewall picture. Johnny Heartbreak, I think, is your name. Johnny Heartbreak. All right. Moving on to be it. He's basically getting red. But that right there is the gift of discernment. I was able to discern when I talked to Ben, when I heard his passion for God, when I heard his vision for how he wanted to teach the youth about Jesus, to be able to combat the things that they hear in the heart, to be able to stand up for Jesus no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

I I felt sure in my spirit that this was from God. This was from God. So and I've jumped a bunch here for you in the words.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

If you're wondering why we allow spirit to work freely, I want you to look at Corinthians 14, 39 through 40.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

This is the one we're going to talk about next week.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

It's about speaking in tongues.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Now, speaking in tongues is not a mystery. Some people think that it was only for back in the day. It's not. Some people think it's only for special people, it's not. It's at all the people that were gathered in the room. Next week we're going to spend a lot of time on speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues. I just wanted to touch on it for a second here. So, my dear brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy and don't forbid speaking in tongues, but be sure that everything is done properly and in order. So it has to be done and it has to be done in order. And that is our standard and exactly what we follow here at Life Wine Church. And I will get more into those two next week, okay, because I think that they deserve a little more time than working them into the other year. So here's what I want to land with you this morning. Everything that we've talked about today, the wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between the spirits and next week, tongues and the interpretation, these are not just gifts for people in the Bible, not just gifts for pastors or evangelists or Sunday school teachers or people like that.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

In Ephesians 1, 13 and 14.

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And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the good news that God saved you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised, and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. And then in Mark 16 and 17, and these signs will accompany those who believe in my name. They will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues. For everyone that believes in Jesus, this is for you. These gifts are for you. All of these gifts are to be distributed between us. Between us. Romans 15, 13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit. So I'm going to close out this morning and I'm going to ask you all to stand with me for a moment.

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And then if you'll come on up.

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Heavenly Father, I come before you this morning. And I thank you that you live in my life. God, I'm sorry for all my sins. Please forgive me and wash me clean. And Lord, come live. Holy Spirit, I want you to use your power to reach those around you. Amen. All right, now you want to start using the power of the Holy Spirit, maybe you know, maybe you're even there, but you have it only into the power that you have with the Holy Spirit. You'll raise your hand. Okay. Alright. All right. Heavenly Father God, I come before you this morning. For those that raise their hands, for those that maybe were thinking about it but don't feel quite comfortable yet. God, I pray that this week as we go through it this week, Lord, that you would make the gifts of the Holy Spirit evident in our life. Help us to have wisdom. Help us to have knowledge. Help us to have the power of discernment, God. Help us with each and every walk that we take. Help us on Tuesday nights as we witness to those out of the community. Help us on Wednesday night as our small friends be. Help us on Friday night, God, as we minister to those that have worked happens in hangups, Lord. I just pray that you be with us, God, all through this week and help us to recognize the power of the Spirit and not just know it's there, but cast our eyes on it, Lord. In the precious name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Announcements for the week tonight, six o'clock news. If you have a child that is 12 years or older, they need to be abused. Um Tuesday night. It's called Love Your Town. And we go out into the areas in the town and just give them information on how to pray, um, that we're here if they need any help. Um, we just give them some information about the church and we witness for Jesus. Then on Wednesday night, we have groups. We have men of faith who meet up here, and it's about the men becoming men, and Mark back here teaches that. And then we have lifeline ladies, and Carson here teaches that for all you ladies, and then we have youth group, which Ben is here, and then I'm here, and Charity's here, and then we also have the kids on Wednesday nights too. These are great opportunities, great gifts for everyone uh lightside these messages that you guys are learning. So please come out on Wednesday night. And then we have Friday night. Celebrate recovery Friday nights. It's not just for drug and alcohol addiction, it's for grief, pride, it's for non-free, it's for anything that tries to take the place of God in your life, but it's a hurt, a habit, or a hang up. So come 5 30 for a free meal. 6 30 is the um lesson time, and then it's group shares after that. And I don't think we have anything Saturday or Sunday of this week, but let me make an announcement, if you will, please. We now have Bible schools coming up, guys. Bible school. That's a big witnessing opportunity. Big witnessing opportunity, okay? We have we're going all the way through youth. We're going all the way through youth. Most Bible schools stop at 12. We're going all the way through 18 because they didn't care about Jesus during the summer, too, right? So you probably saw our sign kingdom seekers is what we're doing this year. We have Charity and Crystal are teaching the young ones. Carson's doing 11, 19 and 11, and Ben's doing 12 and up. Uh Bob and I is doing crafts. So I need steel. Oh, Chelsea, the one that's at our beautiful Mother's Day table, she's doing snacks. Chelsea could use some help with snacks that week. We need people to just watch kids, like to go outside and play with them and stuff like that. We just need people to help us work that week and keep up with the kids. If you're interested, please see me or charity after class after church this morning. Okay, let's make this a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for kids to learn about Jesus. Well, you just miss us, John.