We're reading from Acts chapter 1, verses 1 through 12. In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then they gathered around him and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority, 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. After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go to heaven. Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city.

Awesome. Thank you, Mary Ann. Coming in hot. So good morning. If we haven't a chance to meet, my name is Matt, the lead pastor here. And we are starting a brand new series for the next 20 weeks, uh, going through um really what chronicles the beginning of the most influential movement that's ever happened in history. Uh, in this the book of Acts. In this story, it begins with a Jewish Messiah, a promised king that was crucified and then rose from the dead, which is what no one expected. And immediately what Jesus does, he raises from the dead, and it says in the beginning of Acts, he begins to teach his followers. And he says he shows them uh reasons and proofs that he had really actually risen from the dead. And he teaches about his kingdom and the spirit and power and the power that they'll need and the mission that they're called to. And the story of Acts tells this community about this 120 followers at the very beginning, and how these 120 men and women actually began to turn the world upside down. But when people look at the book of Acts, there's oftentimes two questions that pop up. There's more questions, I'm sure, but two of them that pop up. And the first one is this How do we see the book of Acts translate into 2026 here in Northeast Ohio? Like what kind of impact should Jesus rising from the dead have on us? Because we can see the impact it had on these earliest followers of Jesus, but what does that say to us living now? And what should the church look like in relation to what we see in the book of Acts as well, too? Because this is a lot different world than it was 2,000 years ago. And so how do we see that translate? What does it mean for us? But second, and not disconnect from this, is a question of this. In the book of Acts, if you're familiar, and if not, there's a lot of supernatural things that happen. There's a lot of uh miracles and ways that God speaks, and you just see God working in these really incredible ways. And the question that comes up is this something we should expect today? Is this something we should encounter today? Because in this book we see ordinary followers of Jesus doing extraordinary things. Why? Because the book of Acts at least says they were empowered by God's Spirit. So the second question is what does that mean for us? Was it just something God did back then to kind of get the Christian movement started? Kind of like a rocket, you know, you have to have like all this power to get out of the atmosphere. Then once you get out, it's like not as much energy needed now. You just kind of go on the momentum that was started, or is there more? Well, here's a way that I would think about the book of Acts. Now, the book of Acts in the Bible, you have the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament, and then you have the Gospels, and those are the stories about Jesus, the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then you have Acts. But you can think about the story of the Bible because it really is a grand story of God that weaves together from Genesis to Revelation. And N. T. Wright, a great theologian, biblical scholar, he talks about thinking about the Bible and the story of God as like a five-act play, as a five-act play. And the first act is creation, where God makes a good world. He makes a good world. And we're created for unbroken relationship with him, with other humans, and with creation. But then act two comes. And act two is the fall. Act two is the fall where there's a serpent that we look at as the devil, and he deceives the first humans. And they choose to say, I'm gonna do things my own way, God. I'm gonna figure out life on my own, apart from your wisdom, apart from your love. And all of a sudden, everything breaks apart. Relationship between humanity and God, relationship between humans and creation, between humans as well, too. And we see things begin to fracture everywhere. Then there's the third act of this play, and you could say it's Israel. What happens here is that God starts his rescue plan through a family. He chooses a person, Abraham, and to say, I'm gonna choose you, not because you're better than anyone else, but to be a light to the world so the world can see who I am. They're meant to be a light to the world, but the people of Israel mostly fail at this. They mostly fail. There's high points, but mostly low points. And there's people called prophets that come and speak to them for God and say, Come back to me. But they also say one day God is going to do something. He's gonna send a king that's gonna make everything right. And they begin to look forward to that day. And then you have Act 4. The king arrives. Jesus is born in a humble way, but he comes. And there's this awareness that something is different as he turns 30 years old and he begins to preach. The kingdom has come. The kingdom of God has come, and we see these miracles happen, and we see him love in ways that no one's ever shown before and serve in ways that still transform the world today. But then he dies. He's killed, and no one expected that, and he raises from the dead, rises from the dead, and even more people didn't expect that. And we see that in the Bible he's enthroned as king, the king of this kingdom that he had just proclaimed was coming. And that's Act 4, but then we get to Act Five, and that's the book of Acts. That's where it begins. But it's not just the book of Acts, it's actually where we step into the story. Act five of the story of God is actually our story. May 2026, on this beautiful day in Cleveland, Ohio. If you're thinking about moving to Cleveland, this is what it's always like. This is your Act Five. But this is the story of the church, this fifth act in the Bible. And this is crucial for us to understand because the story's not over. It's not all the exciting stuff happened in the Bible, and now we just kind of like that rocket ship, we've breaking through the broken through the atmosphere, and now we just kind of use inertia to keep going. We're not reading just history in the book of Acts. We're invited into that very same story, that same drama, that same adventure. And one day Jesus is gonna return, just like he came, he's gonna return. And there'll be an end to this act. But until then, God's spirit is moving and we're invited into Act 5 of this story. So here's my hope for this series over these next several months is that we're gonna answer the question of how much of God's spirit and God's power should we actually see in the world today, in our lives today? What should we expect as someone who, if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, what should you expect? And how do we live in light of a very different context 2,000 years ago today? And what is this beautiful invitation of partnering with God on his mission in the world? So let's dive into our passage today that Marianne so wonderfully read. So here's the context of what Marianne was reading. Jesus had just risen from the dead, and again, complete surprise to everyone. No one had it on their bingo card, like, hey, you know what there might happen? We might follow this guy, he might die, but you know what? There's always a chance he'll come back to life. Right? Like, no one had that on the possibility list. And in Acts 1, like I said, we see that after this, after he raises from the dead, he invites his followers, he shows up all over the place and he and he says, Hey, I'm I'm alive. And it says that he gave convincing proofs that he wasn't dead or that he wasn't a ghost. Um, it says in verse 4, they were eating a meal together. So that might have been one of those proofs. I don't know. Uh, you know, it's like, hey, I'm not a ghost because watch me eat this food with you. Uh he's shown himself over and over again. This isn't just a grand hysteria or uh just something that they made up in their minds over and over again. So these 120 disciples, they're convinced that Jesus rose from the dead over these 40 days of being uh taught by Jesus. And he begins to teach them about the kingdom of God, his kingdom, and what it looks like to live in it. He saw they had had all this time with him, and now he's saying, Hey, on in light of me rising from the dead, this has really changed everything. And let me tell you what it looks like now. But it's not just like these kind of lectures or seminars, like, hey, come to a workshop, find some best practices on how to follow me. He begins to give them commands. Commands, not like suggestions or opinions. He says, These are the things you must do in light of the resurrection. So as we get into Acts chapter one, the disciples, they're wondering, what's next? Okay, you've rose from the dead. Now, what's next for us? And as we step into that moment, I want us to look at a few things this morning that Jesus shows us and that we see in this passage. And the first thing we see is that Jesus talks about our need for power. As the disciples are living in this tension of how do we live after the resurrection forward, what do we need? And Jesus says, We need power. On in verse 4, it says this. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. He says, Don't leave Jerusalem until this happens. In other words, this isn't optional. This isn't like an add-on. He's like, Don't leave where you are. He's getting serious with him. He's sitting here and he's saying, Listen, he's giving a command. He's not saying, hey, here's some good advice, here's here's a suggestion, here's a helpful tip, hey, when you're going out, make sure. No, he says, Don't leave Jerusalem. He says, Because what I've been talking to you about, what's gonna happen? It's gonna happen. And it's life or death. Jesus is saying to these disciples, these 120, you don't have what you need. You don't have what you need. What I'm calling you to do and I'm inviting you to do, you don't have what you need. You need to wait for this. There's a gift coming that's essential for you. Which is interesting for Jesus to say, let's just think about it for a second. These people, Jesus has spent, especially the disciples, there's 11 of them at this point. Judas is gone. And uh Jesus has spent three years investing closely with them, like life on life, right? Whatever Jesus did, they did. They saw him pray, they heard him teach, like big crowds, but also he would pull them aside and go, hey, they don't really know what's happening. You guys are kind of confused too, but let me explain it to you. He like they saw him do miracles, and then there was even points where he would say, Hey, go out and do the things I've shown you to do. Like, I don't know about you, but I have not physically sat down with Jesus in that way. Like, I haven't seen him do that up close. I haven't been mentored in that way. Even by a human person, I haven't been discipled in that way. And these disciples, they saw the resurrection. And after resurrection, they see him teach for 40 days. They're convinced of who Jesus is, that he's the Son of God. This kind of investment from Jesus is unparalleled. I don't know about you, have you ever thought about if you consider yourself a Christian? Maybe not, even as you're exploring, you're like, well, if I could actually meet Jesus, if I could actually hear him teach, if I could ask him questions, then I could really do this following Jesus thing right. I could really be a Christian then. If I could just like if I could just have lived in the same time as him, if I could have been a disciple, then I could have done it. Then I'd really change. But here's the thing: these guys believed the right things. They were committed and devoted to him. Many left their jobs, their families, their homes, risked so much to follow him. And what does Jesus say to them? Don't leave Jerusalem. Don't leave Jerusalem because you don't have enough. You don't have what you need. You're missing something. He might say to them, I see how devoted you are. I see your intensity. Especially Peter, I see you make big swings. Like you're like, I'm never gonna fail you. Like I'm gonna follow you. But you're missing something. I'm not questioning your sincerity or your devotion. But Jesus might have said, I see your attempts and they're sincere, but man, follow-through stuff. Jesus is saying, don't try to do this on your own. Pastor John Tyson says this. The disciples were sincere in their desire to obey, but low in the power to obey. Have you ever felt that way? Strong in your desire, maybe, to follow Jesus. But you feel like you're low in your power to do it. And that should make us pause. Because if you grew up around church or Christians and you've made any attempt to kind of grow spiritually, oftentimes what we, and even we can do this at our church as well too, but we want to make sure that people believe the right things. An important belief. That's it's true. You should know and believe the right things. You can't have a relationship with a God that you believe things that like that are not true about him. And we focus on people doing the right things, like, hey, live your life the right way, live ethically, live morally. And yes, those are good. There's best ways to live. And we want to make sure that people are sincere and and devoted, and but we kind of make that the whole deal. But Jesus says, there's so much more. Think about the disciples, all they experienced, all they learned, all that they taught, all they had believed, all they had done, and Jesus saying, You're missing something. And honestly, this has been hitting me recently, too. Like over the past months and even over the past year. I'm someone who I really focus on wanting to make the best choices, the wisest choices, the best strategy, the best plans. And those are good. You shouldn't intentionally make bad plans. It's not like, you know what, God will really use me if I make dumb choices. Um, that's not the case. But I'm like someone who that's that's my I'm like, I want to do it right. I want to do it well, I want to make the right decisions. Trying hard, praying my best prayers. But to be honest, one thing I can often forget is how much I need God's power. I need the Holy Spirit. That I can't just do it if I just know the right things or do the right things or have the best plans. I can often forget that it's not that that what God wants to do in the world, in me and through me, doesn't primarily come through me choosing the right sermon series or the right class to do, or the just right way that I wake up in the morning and read my Bible and pray with just the right consistency. Those are all good things, by the way. None of those are bad things, they're great things. But I often default to my best plans and my best strategy, my best ideas. John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Movement, he tells a moment where things were going really well in his ministry life as a pastor, and yet he felt dry inside, and he felt like God spoke to him and spoke this to him. He said, I've seen your ministry. This is God saying this to John. I've seen your ministry. Now I want to show you mine. Wow. I don't know how that hits you. As a pastor, who like my job and vocation and calling is to do ministry, it's like cool, but also it creates this contrast of like, oh, so kind of I've been kind of doing my thing, and you're like, hey, I've got I've got my thing that I'd really love to do. Will you let me do it? Will you let me do it? Like, not just your ideas, but me. This is a challenge, and it's clear, and it's not just to those who have jobs as pastors, but maybe in your life, God might be saying to you, I've seen, I've seen your best, I've seen your best trying to to to reconcile your marriage or or connect with your neighbor or overcome that addiction and that struggle. I I I see your best intention and it's so good. But would you let me? Would you let me work? Would you would you let me work in your life? Would you let me come and do what only I can do? And I wonder over this next 20 weeks as we go through this series, I wonder if this is something that God might be challenging all of us in different areas of our own lives individually, but also as a whole church. What might it look like to not just do things out of our own strength and our own power and our own wisdom? We need to use those, by the way. But we say, God, I need your wisdom and your power and your strength so much more. But here's the incredible thing. Here's what I love is that God, and this is how God is, he doesn't just point out our needs and our failures and then go, leave us there. And if you ever feel that way, by the way, that's probably shame and probably not God's voice. If you just like, if you just feel like God's like, you're failing, you're not doing enough. And it just stops there. It's like, that's not God's voice, you what God would say is how he would speak to us and say, Here's your need, and he can be real clear about it and real challenging. And then it's an invitation to, and here's what I want to offer. Here's what I want to do. Here's what I'm inviting you into. Because what happens next is um God doesn't just point out their need, he promises to give them what they need. So in verses four and five in verse eight, it says, Jesus says this wait for the gift my Father promised. In a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And I think there's lots of parts. If you're familiar with this passage or the story, we can kind of skip over different parts. But one of the things that kind of caught me was that Jesus says it's a gift. It's a gift. That the power that God wants to give is a gift. I know for me, when I fall short or I fail, I often think about I need to try harder, I need to do more. But Jesus is saying, I've got you. Yeah, you you fell short. Yeah, you don't have what it takes, but I've got you. I've got you. It's my turn to do, it's my turn to give to you. And here are some things when God promises, when Jesus talks about the promise of the Holy Spirit, there's lots of things we can talk about what the Holy Spirit does, but I want to talk about a few this morning. And first, it's the power of a new heart. It's the power of a new heart. In Ezekiel 36, verse 26 to 27, it says this I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. The Holy Spirit comes to change our hearts, to change us from the inside out. Not just to change the way we act. This isn't just behavior modification, right? We can modify people's behaviors a lot of different ways. You can use guilt, you can use shame, you can use fear of punishment. There's lots of unhealthy ways to modify people's behavior, to get them to do different things. But God said, that's not what I'm trying to do. He said, I want to give you a new heart. God actually promises to give us his spirit and to change us from the inside out that we want to obey his commandments. It was always the original purpose. Like in the beginning, the story of God creating Adam and Eve, like the first humans, it was an invitation to relationship and trust. When he said, Hey, don't eat this fruit, it wasn't like, hey, I need to be afraid that God's gonna be mad at me. It's like the invitation was to trust and say, I trust that God knows what's best for me. And so if he says that's not good, then it's not good. But our hearts are no longer like that. Apart from God, our hearts begin to be like stone and cold and kind of like and quieting God's voice. But what he wants to do by giving us his spirit is to make us alive again, to give us a new heart. It says that he'll move us to follow his decrees. In other words, he'll move us to follow. Isn't that incredible? It's like you can't actually make someone else want something. You can like we can and again, there's all kinds of unhealthy ways you do that. But God says, I actually want, like when I hear you pray and say, God, would you change me to want something different? He actually wants to begin to do that. That's crazy. Like I wish I I knew how in a healthy Jesus-loving way to change, like that my kids would want to do the things I asked them to do. Goodness. Be really great. And they just don't a lot of times. And they usually have a good reason for it. They're like, well, I thought about this, and here's the reason why. Every time, especially William, I'll like say, Hey buddy, why didn't you listen? And he, it's never like, well, I just didn't want to. He's always got a reason. I think he got that from somewhere. I'm not sure who he got that from. I think honestly, he probably got it from me and Aaron. I'm just more outward in my uh expression of that. But um, but yeah, there's always a reason, right? But God says, I want to give you a new heart where you desire the good things that I have for you. You believe me when I say this is real life. But this is hard because life happens and pain happens. Sometimes because of our own sin, because sometimes the sin of others. And what can happen and what does happen to all of us. And maybe it's someone hurts us. Maybe over and over again. Think about that kind of experience in your heart and when you've been hurt, and especially when it's repeated. And what happens is your heart can begin to grow cold towards that person, right? It can begin to feel less like a beating heart and more like a heart of stone because it just hurts. And it's like I just I've got to protect myself. And maybe you've tried and you go, I just I want to change though. I don't want to be like that towards this person. I don't want to have these feelings towards them, but you just feel stuck. You don't know how to wake your heart up again. It just feels like it's dead inside. Like, I wish my heart would start again. I would like, I just wish like I would have my heart back. And Jesus says, This I want to give you a new heart. Whatever. And it's oftentimes it's our own choices and sin where we've kind of made we've like pushed God out in lots of different ways, and so our hearts begin to get cold towards him. And he says, I want to make your heart beat again. I want to make your heart beat again. Or maybe your story in your life is like, to be honest, I've never really had a relationship with God. And so there's this idea of God, but I wouldn't say like I'm I'm super open or like I've never hadn't really connected with him. What God wants to do is make your heart alive to him, alive the way he created it to be, like to beat and not just to exist. God says, Let my spirit come and make your heart alive again. You can trust me. And here's what's really cool is that again, we all focused on what we'll do, right? To change. But in that passage in Ezekiel, Don, if you can throw that back up there again, it's what God keeps saying, I will. He doesn't say, Here's what I need you to do. Hey, here's your three steps. And I love steps and they're helpful practical tools. But he says, I will give you a new heart. I will remove your heart. I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow me. This is not the watchmaker God. This is not the God who sets it and forgets it and says, Hey, kind of made things spin. Best of luck. This is the God who says, I will do this. I will come to you. I want to change you. I want to heal you. I want to give you life. So God gives us power for a new heart. What else does he do? Well, we see this is that God's power spirit is power, not just for special people, but the whole community. There's this really clear place in Joel. Joel was a prophet, and he spoke about the one day when God's spirit will be poured out on everybody, which we're going to talk about next week in Acts chapter 2. But in Joel chapter 2, verse 28 through 29, he says this. He says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days. You see, in the Old Testament, up to this point in Acts, is that here's here's how the Spirit worked. We see the Holy Spirit at the beginning in creation with God creating. But then the Holy Spirit would just kind of like um empower certain people at certain times. Like we talk about Moses. Like Moses was empowered and like got into God's presence where God's spirit was. And then we would see other people that would have God's spirit empower them to do special things, even like artists and things. But most of the Old Testament, the idea of God's presence in his spirit was in a temple, was in a building where there was like a holy place, the most holy place where only a high priest could go in once a year to be in God's presence, to be with God's spirit. But here in Joel in the Old Testament, we get a glimpse of what God's desire has always been that his spirit, his power would be for all people. It was never the ultimate plan, just for high priests or special people to encounter God's presence and experience his power, his closeness. It was always meant to be for everyone: old and young, rich and poor, women, men. It's not just extraordinary people. It's not just people who are on a stage, it's not just people who are outgoing or extroverted, who go really like have really clear ideas of like how to win the world for Jesus. It's for everybody in relationship with God. In the vineyard, we uh use this phrase to talk about that is that everyone gets to play. Everyone gets to play. Which means this: everyone gets to join in with what God is doing in the world. Everyone gets to join in. Everyone gets to receive the power of God's Spirit. So when he talks about power, he's saying, so we talk about a power for a new heart, a power for new desires, a power that's for everyone. It's just what is expected for God's people. Throughout the Bible in the New Testament, it's expected. Like this is what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, to be empowered by God's Spirit. It's not enough just to believe the right things or just to try to do our best. And that's not meant to be a shaming thing to you or me. It's not meant to be a guilt like, oh gosh, I knew there was something I wasn't doing right. That's not what it is. It's meant to say, if you feel stuck, if you feel frustrated, if you feel like I can't move forward, like in your faith, it might be that you're relying on all that you can do. And God's saying, Would you invite me to move in those places? Would you invite me to move in your life in those ways? To say, God, I need your power and your spirit to work through me. But it's not just power. Because in when we look at Acts and the gift of the Spirit, his Spirit doesn't just come to empower, it's the Spirit has come to be with us. God has come to be with us. And this is why we talk about in the Old Testament where God was just in certain places at certain times, but he came, the Holy Spirit comes now to be with us. Jesus actually says this crazy thing. He says, It's good for me to go, because if I go, the Holy Spirit will come. And you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. But remember what I just talked about earlier. The people who had Jesus invest in them like the closest that a person could. And Jesus is saying, You're still lacking something. You're still there's still still something missing. And it was the spirit that could be with you always, not just with you, but in you. Because that temple that housed God's spirit in the Old Testament, you know what the New Testament says? This is crazy. We were talking about this yesterday in our rooted class. Is that God now says that we are temples of the spirit? That means like the place that only high priests could go once a year where God's presence dwelt. Like that it was like only once a year, one person, special person, all these different rituals. Because of Jesus, his spirit lives in us. If we invite him in, and that's a mystical thing, it's like, how does that work exactly? But he empowers us. He has promised to give him himself. And that's amazing. And here's why it's amazing. It's not just because God wants to change you and heal you and form you and call you. He just wants to be with you. He just wants to be with you. Like it's not just, he's not just like a superpower, like a charge up, you know, like, oh, now I can do things better. Now I'm a better preacher. Now I'm a better husband, a better wife, a better teacher, a better whatever it is. He's saying, I just want to be with you. I created you for relationship. You know, one day, when he when Jesus returns, there's no more mission, there's no more ministry, there's no more like sharing, it's just we're just with him and each other in this incredible creation. He wants to be with us. So if all this is true, if the Father has promised his spirit, if Jesus has become king and he announced all authorities given to me, and I'm telling you the spirit's coming, and the spirit has come to be in us, then why don't we seem to experience this kind of power?

Right?

I mean, that's a question. I mean, some of you are probably thinking, like, okay, got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, so why don't we experience that? Right? How come the church oftentimes in our lives don't look like what we see in the book of Acts that we're gonna see in the coming weeks? There's lots of things we're gonna talk about. That's the great why we have 19 more weeks after today to journey through. But can I give you one reason? Because it's in the text here. In the text here, because what Jesus says is this He says, I'm gonna give you power to be my witnesses. Power to be my witnesses. One of the reasons we don't see God's power, why I don't see God's power all the time in the way I would hope, is because we separate his power from the purpose that he gives us, his power. Because the purpose of God's power isn't just power, and it's not just for us. I know about you, but for me, oftentimes, I like I'm like crying out for God's help for me. And that's good. That's good. It's not selfish to ask for your needs. It's in the Lord's Prayer, like it's right there. Don't stop asking for your own needs, but we stop there and we don't ask for God's power outside of our maybe our own selves or maybe our immediate family, right? But what Jesus says in verse 8, he says this, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jesus ties the power of his spirit to the mission that God has called them to. They're to be witnesses for Jesus, to tell Jesus' story, to invite other people into his kingdom, to receive the same grace and forgiveness and new life that you've received or I've received, receive the Spirit. The Spirit's power is given for mission. But to where? Well, you know, it says in that in the passage, it says, Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and the end of the earth. Well, here's the deal: Jerusalem is where they are. So he's saying, Okay, I've called you to be witnesses right where you are. So where are you? Because that's somewhere that God says, I want to empower you to be my witness where you are. Where you are, where you work, your neighbor. Maybe it is a family member. Maybe it's at the gym. Maybe it's at the skate park. Wherever it is. But then you have Judea and you go a little farther out. It's a broader area. And then you have Samaria, which is like, oh man, they don't even want to go there. Those are the people that are not like them. Like the Samaritans are like, we don't go to them. Like they're like others. You know, who do you think are others? Like, who are the people that you're like, no, no, no, they they they're not gonna follow Jesus. Like they don't want to hear my story. They don't want to hear, like, that's Samaria. And then to the ends of the earth, because some of us are called to the ends of the earth to like take the witness of Jesus, like globally. Some of us are called to do that. But God's spirit is being poured out so that we can be witnesses wherever we find ourselves and wherever God has called us to. And it's when we step into God's mission that He's called us to, into the places that He's called us to love and serve. This is when, at least for me, I've seen God's power unleashed in ways that often doesn't happen just in the walls of a church. Like, I don't know about some of your experience, but like when you go to like, I don't just mean like you can certainly do it however you want to. Some of us like really have gifts of just going out there and just striking up conversations with people we don't know. But like when you take a risk and share a little about Jesus, it's like, man, you become aware, like, I need you. God, I need you. I have no idea what to say right now. This past week, uh, I was I was in a place where I had no thought that I would have a conversation about Jesus, and yet I did. And person shared their story with me and ended up praying for them. And the whole time I'm like, God, I don't even know what to say right now. I have no idea like what to do right now. And I'm like, but I need you. And when you get in those moments, it's like uh you realize my best thoughts and wisdom is like not gonna make it, it's not gonna cut it here. Like my best argument, my best person, like my personality, keeping it cool, you know, whatever, like is not gonna cut it. We actually need God's spirit and God's power. And when we take risks, this is oftentimes where we see God's power come in new and fresh ways. It's in times when I become most aware of my need, is when I often see God answer prayer in the most incredible ways. And we're called to be witnesses. Witnesses of what? What Jesus has done. We're called to be witnesses of what Jesus has done, like what he's done in the world, but also what he's done in your life. Like, what is the story of God that's right he's writing in your life? And be ready to share that. Like it doesn't have you don't have to have all the answers. You know, oftentimes what I tell people is like if someone like tries to stump you with a question about your faith, you can just say, hey man, I don't know. All I know is, and then you can share what God means to you, what Jesus has done for you. Like, I don't know. That's a great question. I mean, that's a great question about this, the about this thing in the Bible or that thing about this, whatever. Like, hey, what about Christians and politics? All that you go, I I honestly don't know. But here's what I do know. We're called to be witnesses. And unfortunately, oftentimes, I don't know where I ran across this, I would have quote the person if I did, but the reading this week, and it was saying, oftentimes, Christians, what we think is we think we're called to be prosecutors instead of witnesses. We think we're like called to like call, like what do prosecutors do? And prosecutors, we need prosecutors in the world, by the way, but let's not as Christians. Uh, to like say, here's what you've done wrong and call it out. Like, we think as Christians, we're supposed to call other people's stuff out. But Jesus doesn't call us to be prosecutors, he calls us to be witnesses. And witnesses are different. We just tell our story. We just tell our story. And this is where God's power wants to come and meet us. And this is what the calling of the first Christians was, and it's our calling for today as well, too. And it's what the Spirit empowered them to do, and we're gonna journey with them as we talk about that. Ordinary people and extraordinary God, and the world gets turned upside down. And again, friends, this is our story. We're in the fifth act of the story of God. It's the same act that we read in the book of Acts. There's nowhere that talks about that was a special time and that we're not expected to discontinue. Like we can ask questions, we can wrestle with it, but we're in the same act. God has promised his spirit, Jesus is the king over everything. And I think this morning, what God wants us to do, he's asking me to do, is get honest about our need for his power. Just to be honest. Like, God, I can't do this. I need your power. And here's the deal, that doesn't make you a failure, it makes you honest. That's different. It doesn't make you a failure, it makes you honest. It makes you honest about where you are. And I think for some of us, what we need his power for is courage. It's courage. Because the question that we could ask is like, do the people around us know if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, they know that you're following Jesus. I don't mean if they know you go to church. That's a pretty safe thing to know. Like, do they know that you actually believe the stuff? Like, I don't mean because you like wrote it out and they're like, here's what I believe. Like they, you know what I mean? Like you could say I go to church, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and then you meet someone, you go, oh, they actually believe like they're like a like a real Jesus follower kind of person. Like they actually like mean it. Like, you know, they don't just you know, do people know that? I think sometimes we need God's power just to be courageous, just to be courageous. This just uh the last month I found myself in a conversation with a friend and uh who who isn't connected to Jesus, I don't think he has a relationship with God. And I was talking about something, and I like um kind of said this dismissive thing because I was trying to like not make him feel awkward, and I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, we did something like God loves you, whatever, you know, and he goes, God loves you or whatever. And I was like, Oh. Because I was just like, because I was like, I didn't, I in my words, I would have been like, uh, like I didn't like make him feel awkward. But really, it was like in that moment I just didn't want to feel awkward. Instead of just saying, like, yeah, we were, you know, it was talking about hitting out that coffee. And I was like, Yeah, we're we were saying that people like God loves you and so do we. But I hedged it because I'm like, I don't want to make this awkward, but really it's about me being awkward. You know, I I need courage. I need courage to just say, man, not to be like standing on a corner and screaming at people, but just to live authentically as one whose life has been changed by Jesus. And I need God's power to do that. I need God's power to do that. I need you can ask me tough questions, you can challenge me, accountability is good, all that stuff, but I need God's power to do that. For some of you, you need courage this morning. For others of us, I think maybe we've we've been around church or we've been around Jesus stuff, and and honestly, we've just allowed our heart, or maybe not even allow, but slowly our heart's grown cold. We're like stone. And there's this reality of like, I don't know if I can believe again, like that God really can do powerful things, like that he really can work in my life in significant ways. Like, I don't know. I've tried it, I've prayed it, and it doesn't seem like it works. And I'm not saying that like if you just pray a simple prayer, like God zaps you and everything's taken care of in your life. That's not how life works, but God's invitation is saying, I want to do more in your life than you can do on your own. I have so much more for you. And so this morning, an invitation is say, God, would you give me a heart of flesh again? Would you wake my heart up again to you? And finally, this morning, maybe you're just somebody who said, Man, I just want more of God. Like, I'm hearing this, and like I'm not coming from a I'm not a challenging place, a struggling place. I'm just like, God, I want you. I want more of your power, I want more of your spirit. And that might be you this morning. All three of those groups we love to pray for this morning. So I'm gonna invite our band up and our prayer team up. Because for this morning, and this is just the beginning of a journey, but I think if we can get in touch, and we can all stand this. Great, thanks, Miss Terry. Trailblazer. She's already got the courage. But this morning, the invitation is are those things to get real about our need for God's power. Maybe it's for courage. Maybe it's for witness. Maybe it's just saying, God, I my heart's grown cold. Would you wake it up again? We'd love to have you come forward. We'd love to pray for you this morning.