5/17/2026 Sunday morning service

Sunday morning service 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Hang on a second, before we start, let's keep going. Right? Let's get some hands together. Cause I don't know about y'all, but that's kind of groovy.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Now you're sounding like Christians. But I'm begging please again I need you. Oh I need you Walking down these desires roads for my thirsty soul I need you Oh I need you to take the forgiveness It's like sweet, sweet honey on my lips like the sound of the symphony might only walk a little slave to stand I wanna know about being born again I need you Oh god I need you Take me to the river Take me on the red I need you Oh god I need you I sweep on me on my hand I only wonder on that I don't wanna use your grace God I need it every day It's the only thing that ever really makes me want to shake I don't wanna use your friends God I need it every day It's the only thing that ever really makes me want to check I don't wanna use your friends God I mean every day It's the only thing that everything makes me want to take I don't wanna use your friends God I mean every day It's the only thing that everybody makes me want to take your butting It's like Tweak sweet on me on eyes It's like a sound of different need of my ear It's like all the water your butting It's like Tweak Tweak on my It's like a sound of different need of my ears It's like only the water on the skin Oh it's like only the water on maskin It's like only water generations falling down in worship to sing the song of angels to the land Don't come before us don't we'll believe to see the song of angels to them your name is a highest your name is a greatest your name stands above them all intermediates all found and positions your name stands above them all and the angels cry Only Creation you elited I forever if you've been forgiven if you've been redeemed sing the song forever to the land if you walk in freedom Tif you very slave sing the song forever to the land sing the song forever and the gate jails cry Only Create only forever to the key of king You will always be only coming so I guess the race on the stands above the balls and house and possessions of the mall it's a highest long day, John May, stands above the balls and house and stands above the mall and we get children's crypto crypto, you will always be only for and you will always be only for every letter and fear of Jesus have you seen me just such and it's just Jesus Castro Have you all Jesus have feel badly with the sea of my sin? Come be the fire of me until you die. That's your heart's cry singing out you won't relent until you have you draw my dish you won't relate until you have you draws my short sea. It may be water quish, wish love it out, the fire, of me, come be the flame, my heart, come and die, oh it's die, of me, come be the flame, my heart, come be the

SPEAKER_04 24:28

Good morning.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

How is everybody this morning? All right. Let's try that again. How is everybody this morning? All right. Um, this morning we're gonna continue our sermon series on Empowered. Um, before I do, if you guys will do me a favor. Um, take out your phones, go to Facebook. My name's Carla Bragg. Give me a follow, and then share that live stream because the more we share it, the more people we reach. The more people we reach. Okay. So have you had a good week? Medium week? A bad week? A good week. All right, all right. You know, I've had a pretty good week too. Had a pretty good week too. And to top it all off, we're starting this new week in the Lord's house.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Y'all hear that?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

We're starting the week off in the Lord's house, and today, how many of you in this room use GPS to get the places? All right, I see. A couple hands. You use your GPS to try to get you places, right? And uh I had some of you raise your hands. Well, me, I have a love-hate relationship with my GPS. Sometimes I actually argue with my GPS, right? Okay, so when I'm in an unfamiliar city, I genuinely need it. And with my job, I have to travel quite a bit, and that thing comes in handy for me. Uh sometimes I think it's taking me into nowhere, but it always ends up getting me where I need to go. But there's all there's those days when like I will turn it on and I actually know where I'm going, and it tries to take me a different way, and then I get aggravated, and I why are you trying to take me that way? I know that it's better if I go this way. So what I end up doing is ignoring it lots of times or just turning it off, and I take my own route anyway, because I always figure I know better than the GPS. And sometimes, you know, I guess I do. But but lots of times when I ignore it, I end up stuck in traffic, or there's a uh wreck or something that I could have avoided if I'd have listened to it, went a different way. Um the GPS was talking the whole time, trying to tell me what was up ahead of me, what I was running into, but I chose not to listen. But the thing is that GPS never gave up on me because even if I ignore it, it kept talking, it kept recalculating. How many have had yours do that? It keeps recalculating and it keeps trying to get my attention. And it can't it keeps saying please make you turn if I'm wrong. It tries to put me back on the track. I want you to hold on to that image for a minute of that GPS system, and I want you to think about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a lot like our GPS system. The Holy Spirit is a lot like our GPS systems. He's been speaking, he's been guiding, and he has been present every single day in every single circumstance that we face. But many of us will turn down the volume.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

We turn down the volume.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

And his presence and everything. But I don't want you to get me wrong, those are awesome times to have with the Spirit moving, they're real and they're powerful, and God is that there are people in this room today who are missing the presence of the Holy Spirit in ordinary moments. Because they always expect Him to be in dramatic moments. But you know, he is in the quiet moments, he's in the middle of your work day. All right? He helps the decisions that you've been wrestling with, he will help you through those. And in the grief that's not known to other people, the Holy Spirit is always right there by your side, taking care of you and trying to direct you through it. So this morning, I want to talk about turning up the volume of the Holy Spirit in those quiet and smaller moments. Not louder church services, not more emotion in our worship, though I'm never against that. I would love the day that all of you just start shouting during worship. That would be awesome. But I'm talking about how we need to turn in, tune in the Holy Spirit who's already present, already speaking to us, and already working in our lives. So before we can learn to listen better, we have to make sure that we know who it is that we're listening to. Right? You need to know who you're listening to. Uh I uh got tickled last night or yesterday. We were downstairs, we were doing Operation Lifeline, and uh I had asked one of the youth if they would do some recreation activities in vacation bible school that's coming up. And this particular youth said, But I don't know if the kids will listen to me. I don't know, I'm just a youth myself. How do I handle them? What do I do? And I said, It's real simple. And and Casen and Hate were were or Hudson were sitting back in the back and I said, Watch. And they both flipped around in a heartbeat. They they both I said, see, they know your voice and they listen to it. They know me. I'm with them a lot. And when I said their name, they instantly turned around and looked at me. They knew who they were listening to. And that's how we need to be with the Holy Spirit. We need to develop such a relationship with the Holy Spirit that when he speaks to you ever so quietly that you say yes, and you listen to what it is that he has to say to you. Here's the thing a lot of people in the church today have a very small picture of who the Holy Spirit is. And when your picture of something is small, your expectation is also small. When your picture's small, your expectation's small. So let's start right here. We're gonna go to John 14, verses 16 and 17. John 14 verses 16 and 17. And 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. I want you to notice something in this verse. Jesus didn't say the Father will send you a force. All right? He never said, I'll send you a force, and he never said, You're gonna receive a feeling. You're gonna receive a feeling. He said, He will give you another advocate. The Holy Spirit is not a force, the Holy Spirit is not a feeling, the Holy Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is a person. He's the third person in the Trinity, coequal with God the Father and Jesus the Son. He has a mind, he has a will, and he has emotions. Ephesians 4.30. It tells us. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. So you can grieve him. He has emotions if he can grieve, and we're plainly told, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. How about Acts 5, 3? It tells us that he can be lied to. It says, then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you receive for the Lord? So he can uh be lied to. He can be lied to. Now, what about Romans 8, 26? It tells us that he intercedes for us. It states, in the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. So when you don't know what to pray for, when you've had, have you ever been just so tired at the end of the day, so emotionally drained, things have not been going your way, that you you might lay down at night and your mind's just spinning and you can't stop and and concentrate on one single thought. So at the moment that you believed in Jesus Christ, at the moment of your salvation, you were marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. When you gave your life to Jesus, in that moment, he moved in. He didn't just visit, he took up residence inside of each and every one of us. Now, here's the question that I want you to sit with for a moment. If the Holy Spirit lives in every believer, if he's a person, not a force, not a feeling, not just a Sunday experience, then why are so many of us living as if he's not here? Why do we live like the Holy Spirit doesn't exist? Why? Because I think as a culture, as a society, we have reduced him. We've reduced his importance. We talk about how many of us talk about the Holy Spirit? We have reduced him. We've put him in a box that only gets open on Sunday mornings or at camp meetings, maybe in moments of crisis when we don't know what else to do. But the Holy Spirit is more, he's much more than you have seen him be. He's not just a presence that moves in worship service, as wonderful as that does get, but he's your helper, he's your comforter, and he's your convictor. And we're going to talk about those three things uh briefly this morning. He's your helper, your comforter, and your convictor. He's with you in the morning when your alarm clock goes off. We've talked about alarm clocks in here before. How many does it take to wake you up in the morning? Well, when it goes off, the Holy Spirit is already there and He's waiting for you. He is with you in the conversation that you know that you have to have today. He's with you when the diagnosis comes back and the world goes quiet. He is more than you have seen, and it's time, church, that we learn to turn up the volume. He helps you, he's your helper. The first role is your helper and your God. Let's go back to John 14, verse 26. John 14, verse 26. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. This has happened to me before. I don't know if it's happened to any of you, but sometimes I'll get in a situation and all of a sudden some verses that I've read start coming to mind. Have you ever done that? You might be in a difficult time in your life. We are trying to teach the youth right now, and we use this every week. We are trying to teach them that what the world tells you you are is not what God says you are. And we're trying to tell them that bullies and that hate speech, and when people say you'll never amount to anything, and nobody likes you, and and not even God could love you. And when when the kids or the even adults in today's culture start throwing that at them, we're teaching them to fight that with scripture. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God loves you. And we're trying to make sure that they learn how to fight modern culture and their ideas by using scripture. And that's one of the things that the Holy Spirit is tasked with doing. Once you read it, once you know it, he will bring it back to your mind so that in times of difficultness, in times of confusion, in times of sadness, in times of despair, he will throw that scripture back up to you as an encourager, as a helper to you to be able to make it through the day. Now, how about John 16, verses 12 and 13? It says, I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. The Spirit will tell you what is yet to come. That means that he will guide you into all truth and tell you what's coming. He'll tell you what's coming. Now let's go back to the GPS for a second, okay? All right. One of the things that I love about a GPS when I actually am using it as I'm supposed to, is that it does not react to where you are. All right? It doesn't react to where you are. A good GPS will tell you in advance where you're going. Have you ever been driving down the road and it says police presence up ahead? Right? You're driving down the road and it says there's a road up ahead. I was driving the other day for my job and it said something is laying in the road up ahead. Now how it knew that, I have no idea, but sure enough, somebody had lost a big box off the back of their truck or something. And I knew ahead of time to look out because there was trouble ahead. If you get really in tune with the Holy Spirit, he is like that GPS. He will warn you what's ahead. If you decide to make a bad decision, he's going to tell you, I don't think I'd do that. Here's what's going to happen if you follow through with what you're doing right now. If you stay on the course that you have put yourself on currently, you are headed towards bad times ahead. A good GPS predicts where you're going. Just like the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit, when you listen to him, will tell you what is coming up ahead. He guides you before you make the wrong move. He speaks ahead of time before you sign that contract. Before you say yes to a wrong relationship. How about that one? Before you walk through a door that looks good on the outside, but leads somewhere you were never meant to go. He's already speaking and he's already directing. And think about this the GPS doesn't give up when you make a wrong turn. The GPS don't give up. But the other day I had the GPS set. I was in one of those towns I wasn't familiar with, and and I'd been in a meeting since morning. It was like one o'clock, and I thought, boy, I'm hungry. So I saw this Wendy's over on the side of the road, and I thought, I'm gonna turn into Wendy's. The second I turned into Wendy's, that GPS started saying please proceed back to the route. Please make a new turn. Please proceed. Turn left this next turn. That GPS, when I got off the course, did not say last time. I can't believe you did that. I'm just gonna shut myself off. You don't deserve my guidance if you're not gonna listen to what I'm gonna say. And that's what the Holy Spirit He says, All right, I tried to tell you, but you took that wrong turn. Now gently, let's get back on track. And He will guide you back to where you need to be. That's how the GPS is like the Holy Spirit. You can make wrong turns, and we all do, and we all still will, because we're human, and that's what we do. When we get in the flesh instead of in the spirit, we make wrong turns, and the Holy Spirit is there to guide us gently back. It says recalculating. When you went the wrong way, recalculating. When you ignore instruction, recalculating. When you've been going in the wrong direction for at least the last 20 minutes, that GPS is still saying recalculating. He recalculates, he finds a new route, he stays with you. He doesn't leave you, and he keeps on speaking. Are you listening? Now here is the practical question. How do you actually hear his guidance? Well, you have to slow down and listen. You have to slow down and listen. That's just the simple fact of it. So many of us are moving so fast in today's time that we are so stuck into our screen. We are so stuck that we are either in our phone, in our laptop, and our iPad, and listening to all of this in the world. Y'all, did you know that everything on Facebook and Google is not true? Did y'all know that? Right? So this week I read something that was going around on Facebook. I read the whole thing, and at the bottom it clearly said, if you've read this far, the joke's on you, this is a scam, it's not true. Okay? But where I work at the DOHS, people were calling in, panic over what that said on Facebook. Because they believed it. They believed it. And what it said was, and y'all may have seen this, West Virginia had signed this new bill that all drivers had to retake their like their written test and their driving test and their vision test. And people were panicked. People were panicked. They were calling in. Is that true? Is that true? Nope. If you had read it all the way to the end, you would have seen that it said it was a scam and that it wasn't true, but it caused panic. What people need to do is slow down, get out of the world, get out of what the world is telling us to do, get out of what the world says is right, get out of what the world says is wrong, and listen. Listen for the words of the Holy Spirit, because he will guide you in spirit and in truth. He doesn't typically shout over your noise. He expects you to take the initiative and listen to what he has to say. He's described in 1 Kings 19 as a still small voice or as a gentle whisper. This means that you have to be intentional in creating space in order to hear him. That's why time in the word every day matters. Time in the word matters. He guides through prayer. Not just your talking, but your listening. How many of you, and I'm guilty of this, guys, how many of you bow, say your prayers, amen, up and gone? How many of you do that? How about once in a while bow, say your prayers, and then carry there with him and let him talk back to you. A conversation is a two-way street. But other than that, you're just being a dictator. Tell God what you want. Well, I need this today and this today, this today. Thank you for this yesterday. I love you. Um I'll be waiting for uh you to do something wonderful for me today. Amen. Goodbye. But you don't spend time letting him talk to you. You don't spend time slowing down and getting to truly know the Holy Spirit and to worship him. And to worship him. So he speaks through prayer. He guides through the body of Christ, like through wise counsel or confirmation of other believers. I love when confirmation happens. He guides through that sense of peace or unease. When you sense peace, thank him. When you speak, when you experience unease, ask him what he's trying to tell you. Have you ever woke up at like three in the morning and you don't know why you woke up but you can't go back to sleep? You're kind of just sitting there thinking, Why am I awake? So, what you normally do is go to your refrigerator, grab you something to eat, turn on the TV. Have you ever thought that maybe the Holy Spirit is trying to get you at your quiet time so that he can talk to you for a little bit? Next time you do that, next time you wake up, try praying for a few minutes and then listen and see what the Holy Spirit is trying to get your attention for. Alright? See what he's trying to get your attention for. All right, all right, all right, all right. The Holy Spirit will guide you. He is not silent, but what do you need to do? Turn up the volume, right? Listen, turn up the volume now. The second role that I'm talking about today is the fact that he comforts you. He comforts you in John 14. He uses the word advocate in the NIV. And that comes from a Greek word, which I have no idea how to say, but it's like paracletos. That's just me putting an English language to it, okay? That's the word that he uses for adding advocate. And you see right there, but the advocate. He's using this word. And while advocate captures the legal dimension of that word, it also carries the meaning of one who is called alongside to help, to strengthen, or to comfort. In some older translations, it's even rendered simply as comfort. The Holy Spirit will comfort you. He will be your comforter. Now I want to talk to the people in this room today who are desperately in need of comfort. Maybe you're carrying something heavy right now that you've not told anyone else about. All right? Because people do that. They don't like to share what's going on in their lives. Maybe you're grieving. Maybe you've lost a spouse or a relationship, maybe a dream that you had that hasn't worked out, and you've had to give up on that dream and take a new direction. Maybe you've been strong for everyone around you for so long that you had forgotten that you're allowed to need strength yourself. That happens a lot in a pastoral. I spend so much time talking to everybody else when they come to me with their problems, and y'all don't realize it, but but I have people say, I need to talk to you for a minute, and I'll help them through their problem. And then I'll have someone else say, Well, can I talk to you for a minute and I'll help them through their problem? And then I'll come over here and something else will happen. But then when I get home, there's no one there. Well, my husband's there on the weekends, but he works out of town during the week. I go home. Who listens to my problems? The dogs, you're right. And the cats. They listen every evening. Okay. But the thing is, I have to make sure that my relationship with the Holy Spirit is always spot on because I need him in those quiet moments to comfort me. Sometimes a person will be so strong for everybody else that they're allowed to be weak. And I do sometimes when something bad happens, I have learned and y'all it's hard to make me cry. Hard to make me cry. You've done something if you make me cry. And the reason is I have through years of practice learned to keep a face that doesn't judge you. You can tell me anything, and I'm not going to look at you and go, I'm not going through that. Because we all go through terrible things from time to time. And I have had to learn not to let my face show my surprise. And by doing that, sometimes when something does really hit me hard and hit me at my core, I will hold it in. Because I've learned that I'm I can't be weak. But guys, the truth is we're all weak time to time, every single one of us. And we need to rely on the Holy Spirit as our comforter because that is one of his roles. Jesus said in Matthew 11, 28, He says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Come to me and I will give you rest. That's not just about salvation, which that's a wonderful thing. Do always go to him and he'll give you rest. But in every single moment that you face in your life, the Holy Spirit, if you will give it to him, he will give you rest. That's an invitation to a life of ongoing rest. Comfort in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All of you who are exhausted, who are overwhelmed, who are carrying more than you were designed to carry, take it to the Holy Spirit, and He will give you rest. Romans 8 11 says, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you. Now think about that. We all know that Jesus was crucified, that he died, and that he was buried, and on the third day he rose again. It was the Holy Spirit's power that caused that. You have that same power living inside of you every single day. The thing is, we've minimized him to the point that we never tap into that power. If the power of the Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives inside of me, think of the power that I have over the circumstances in my life. That's some pretty strong power. In youth class, we were trying to show them about power. Ben had a remote control and he handed it to one of the youth and he said, Turn the TV on. Well, they couldn't. And they kept trying and they kept trying and they couldn't. Well, we had taken the batteries out of the remote control. We took their power source away. Without the batteries, that remote control was useless. Why? Because they weren't tapping into the power. Always make sure that your spiritual batteries are full. Always make sure that you tap into the power of the Holy Spirit because that is what He is there for. That's what He's there for.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

I think about what it looks like.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

When a parent comforts a child that's frightened. And you parents, you've experienced this before. Have you ever had a frightened child and they just come and wrap their arms around you? Maybe when they're sick and they don't feel good, they come and lay their head on your shoulder or lay down in your lap. Because you make everything feel better. You make everything okay. That's how you need to look at the Holy Spirit. When you're feeling bad, when you need him, he's there for you. But he's not going to force himself upon you. He's going to wait for you to come to him. And then he will comfort you. He will comfort you. He comes alongside. He's present in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. He's present when anxiety is loud in your soul. He's present with you when you're in a hospital waiting room. And he's present with you in the loneliness that no one else can see. And here's that GPS thing again. It works by staying in constant contact. It works by staying in constant contact. It is in unbroken communication with satellites that track your exact location. That's how that GPS works. Uninterrupted communication with satellites. Here's what we need to have: uninterrupted communication with our Father. So that we always have the power of the Holy Spirit right there at our fingertips. You're never outside God's reach. You are never so lost that He can't find you. And you're never so broken that His comfort cannot meet you exactly where you are. And He always knows where you are. Stop trying to white knuckle your way through things. Stop pretending you're fine when you're not. How do we hear him? Turn up the volume. You need to turn up the volume. And lastly, real quick, he convicts you. The third role. Now, this makes people a little uncomfortable and they get a little quiet when you get to the conviction part. But stay with me because I'm about to tell you the most loving thing that I've said to you all morning. John 16, verses 7 through 8. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judge. He will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin. What the world is telling you is okay today is not okay. What the world is telling you is fine, and God will overlook it today is not okay. The Bible tells you exactly what sin is, exactly when you're doing it, and exactly what you need to do when you start sinning. He proves the world to be wrong. Now I need to be very clear about something right here because I want you guys to understand what I'm saying. Conviction and condemnation are two different things. Conviction and condemnation are two totally separate things. Condemnation beats you down. All right? Condemnation says you're terrible, you're beyond hope. God's done with you. There's no way He can forgive you for the things you've done. You are a bad person. That's condemnation. It's the voice of the enemy and not the voice of the Holy Spirit. Spirit conviction says something completely different. Conviction says what you are doing is not who you were created to be. What you are doing is not who you are. You were made for more than this. Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back because you were made for more than this. This is the voice of God who loves you too much to leave you where you are. Think about it this way. Imagine you're driving that GPS and it's telling you to turn right, but you keep on going straight, straight. And there's a reason that the GPS is directing you to turn because straight ahead, the bridge is out. The bridge is out. The GPS is not trying to ruin your drive. It's not. It's not trying to take you away from the beautiful scenery. It's not trying to just irritate you and frustrate you and make you late for a meeting. It's not criticizing your driving ability. It's trying to save you from something dangerous. Trying to save you from something dangerous. When the Bible says that you are not to laugh, that you are not to laugh, that you are murder. Murder not to commit adultery. You're not to have homosexual relationships, you're not to gossip, you're not to have sex outside of marriage. You're not to slander somebody else. When the Bible tells you this, when God's telling you this, he's not trying to ruin your life. He's not being condemnation at you. He is saying because if you go down that road, it leads you into something dangerous. He loves you too much to let you go down that road. Today culture says, Oh, those Christians, they hate us. No, we don't hate you, just the opposite. We love you so much that we don't want you to go down that road. The road that's dangerous, the road that God tells you not to take. God's not shaking his head at you in disappointment. He's not doing that. He's saying, I love you too much to let you drive off that bridge. Turn around. There's still time. There's still time. As Jesus said in John 12, 31, that the Holy Spirit's work includes exposing the judgment of the world. That system of thinking and living that is opposed to God. Right here, it tells us about it. God is love, and God loves everybody the same, and he loves you so much, but God's also a wrathful God, and he tells you how to live. There is a system, and it says that this system of thinking and living is opposed to God, and the Holy Spirit's work is trying to expose that to you. It's trying to expose to you what's wrong so that you stay out of the sin. That's love, guys. That's love. He loves you too much to leave you where you are. And when that happens, his job is to shine a light in the areas of everybody's life that's brought us into the world's way of thinking. The world's values, the world's way of doing things. And he gently and lovingly says, This is not the way I made you. I didn't make you for this. And what's the right response? Surrender. Surrender. It's simply saying, You're right, Lord. I don't want to live that way anymore. I want to follow you. Conviction is the Holy Spirit's way of saying, I see you, I know where you are, and I'm not leaving you. I'm going to love you until you come back. So don't run away from it. Don't argue with it. Don't medicate it. Don't medicate it. When the Holy Spirit puts his finger on something in your life, that's grace. That's him showing you love. That is his love, and that's the voice of the one who knows the way, trying to tell you that the Let him evade you and let him restore you.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

What does it actually look like to turn up the volume?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

It starts with acknowledgement. It starts with acknowledgement. Acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is a person who lives in you, not just the power that you can access on Sundays, but a person who's been present with you all week. He was there. Whether you said you had a good week, or whether you said you had a bad week, a mediocre week, or the Holy Spirit was with you the whole time. He knows what kind of week you had. Start talking to him like you was there all week. Don't put on a fake persona on Sunday mornings because he knows what you went through. He knows what you're thinking. I was praying yesterday. And I didn't know how to put into words what I was trying to pray. And finally, I just said, God, you already know what I'm thinking. I can't put it into words. But since you know me better than I know myself, you know what I'm thinking right now. Please help me with devotion. That's all I had to say. I didn't have God doesn't look at you and say, if you don't put the right words into this prayer, I'm not going to answer you. He doesn't do that. Because he already knows what you need. You just need to surrender and let him work in your life. Turn up the volume requires intentional silence. You can't hear what you're not listening for. You can't hear. Don't isolate. Stay in church. Why? Because there's some people here going through the same problems. Not because we're perfect people. You'll never find a church that has a perfect person in it. You'll never find a church that meets that problem. We all mess up from the back all the way up through me. We're going to mess up. But you don't judge the church by the people in it. You judge the church by the God you came to worship. You judge the church by the God you came to worship. You lay it all on the altar. You confess, God, I am an imperfect person. I'm with imperfect people. We are trying and doing the best we can to serve you. Help us be stronger. Flood this place. Talk to us. Tell us what we need to change. And then lovingly surrender it to God. Lovingly surrender it to God. So I want to close this morning with an invitation. The very reason that Jesus left was so that the accident, the Holy Spirit, could come and could be with you. Jesus said it was better that he leaves, so that the Holy Spirit could be there with you every single day, every single second. And he's not just with you, he's in you. He's in you. And that same spirit's available for you today. 1 Corinthians 12 3b tells us no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. He's already been important in you, or you wouldn't be here today. He's already working in you or you wouldn't be here today. All you have to do is receive. So I'm going to ask everyone to close your eyes, bow your head. If you have never accepted Jesus Christ into your heart and you would like to do so this morning, I want you to just raise your hand and put it right back down. Okay? Now, if you have accepted Jesus Christ into your heart, but you've not been turning up the volume on the Holy Spirit, you want me to pray for you throughout this week that you're able to do that. Just raise your hand and put it right back down. Amen. Hands all over the place, Lord. And that's what we're going to pray. If you will join me in prayer this morning. Heavenly Father God, we come before you this morning and we thank you for your grace, your love, and your mercy. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you love us too much to leave us. We know that we weren't created to be the people that we sometimes are. God, forgive us for our sins and our failures and our shortcomings. We ask that you guide us back to the right way, Lord. Help us to learn to listen to you, to learn to rely upon the power of the Holy Spirit that's in our life every single second of every single day. Help us never to put the Holy Spirit into a small little box, but to get him out in the open where he can do miraculous things. Help us to tap into his power. Thank you, Jesus, for loving us. Thank you, Jesus, for leaving us an advocate that lives inside of us. In the precious name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Alright. I'm going to go over the announcements real quick, but I'm going to sit down while I do it because my back's hurting today. So tonight, are they, you think we have a whole row of youth that aren't here this morning because they went to a formal last night. And I hear from one family that their son got home so excited that he couldn't stop talking, and he kept the whole family up all night talking. So they couldn't get up to be here this morning. Tonight at six o'clock is youth. Tonight at six o'clock is youth. You know any youth? Send them this way. Um because they have a great Sunday night youth service. Ben is our youth director, and he's doing great with the um on Tuesday night is our outreach team. We meet here at six o'clock and we go out into the community and we talk to people. Our job is not to try to shame people into going to church, but to let them know we love them and to offer them if they don't have a home church to be able to come to this church. And then on Wednesday night, and that's kind of like a family night. Uh we call it family night, but there's a lot of people that might be single uh their night too. So we have a ladies' group on Wednesday night that meets at six o'clock. Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about. What are you talking about? The fruit of the spirit is what the ladies' group is talking about. Parsons, the leader, um, her little backup is is Ruby here. They're both doing a wonderful job, and we think they're doing awesome. Um, so ladies, if you're not doing anything on Wednesday nights at six o'clock, come join this group. It's a wonderful group. Men is led by Mark. He's in the back. Mark won't be here this Wednesday. I think Ben is gonna cover for Mark this Wednesday. Um, but the men meet at 6 o'clock as well. Uh, and Mark's desire is to teach the men to be men, real men, as the Bible uh defines what a man is and what a man's role is. So y'all be here for that on Wednesday nights, and then we have kids and youth on Wednesday night too. Kids any age up through 18, okay? Kids and youth. And y'all this past week, and I might post it on Facebook today. Y'all look for it. I got some video. They played Hungry Hippo. Now, they didn't play the game Hungry Hippo. We had these kids down in the floor on cardboard, and we were scooting them by their legs, and they were trying to grab balls and put them into a basket. So it was real life hungry hippo. They had a blast, and then we started teaching them how not to listen to what the bullies and what the world tells them they are, but to listen to what the Bible says they are today. That's on Wednesday nights. Then Friday nights we have celebrate recovery. Oh, you're not like John. Come on. John had to work today, he works one weekend a month, and normally he gives me a big loud woo when I say Friday nights or celebrate recovery. Um, celebrate recovery, it's for any hurt, habit, or hang up. It does not have to be addiction. It could be pride, it could be grief, it could be anything that isn't hanging you up in life, a hurt, habit, or hang up. 5 30 is a hot meal for free, 6 30 is the meeting, so make sure you come for that. We fed 94 households. 96 96 households yesterday. We we provided food boxes for 96 households yesterday. I haven't figured up how many individuals that is yet, but that was a wonderful day in the Lord, and I think everyone who came out and volunteered yesterday to help us make that happen. Um, anybody have anything? All right. Brian, well, you just missed us this morning.