SPEAKER_01: We are continuing on another series where we are looking at the four different roles that Jesus plays in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: The four different squares of uh our denomination four square.
SPEAKER_01: So we um can we get the uh slides up?
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: So our denomination is called Four Square, and we get the name because there's four different roles, four different symbols that are actually here.
SPEAKER_01: Each one of these roles are roles that Jesus actually plays in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Last week we talked about Jesus' savior, and we talked about how Jesus didn't just come to improve us, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's not just a self-help guru that just came along and uh showed us how to live a different life, but we actually were deeply and are deeply flawed, and we need a savior.
SPEAKER_01: We need someone to actually help us, that Jesus did something for us that we can't do on our own.
SPEAKER_01: And we looked at a powerful passage in Romans 5, and this passage talks about how while we were sinners, while we were at the worst we ever were, that's when Jesus decided to die for us.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing in life how I know for me, I a lot of the times think that Jesus is happier with me the better that I am, or the less sin I have in my life.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus said that it was at your darkest and the time of your life that you felt the most broken.
SPEAKER_01: It was at that moment that Jesus decided to save you.
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful picture of his, how much he actually loves us.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the great part about Jesus is he doesn't just save us and kind of send us on our way and say, all right, you are saved.
SPEAKER_01: Try not to get into the same problems you were in before.
SPEAKER_01: But instead, Jesus, he also uh fills us up with the presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're gonna talk about today, that Jesus is also our baptizer.
SPEAKER_01: Woo! Good job.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is baptizer.
SPEAKER_01: This is the second tenet of Foursquare, and something that we just believe is super important, that Jesus fills us with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Now, depending upon your background, the Holy Spirit may be something that you may be very familiar with.
SPEAKER_01: If you grew up in church, you may have heard of the Holy Spirit every week.
SPEAKER_01: It may be something that is talked about quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01: Or it may be something that you don't really have ever heard before.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you called things like the Holy Ghost, and you're like, what is that?
SPEAKER_01: Is that, you know, God is Casper?
SPEAKER_01: Or like what it is?
SPEAKER_01: Like it can be something that can be very uncomfortable or very like, what is this?
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest with you, that there's lots of different denominations and lots of different churches that have different views on what the Holy Spirit actually is.
SPEAKER_01: For some people, it uh encountering um the Holy Spirit is incredibly beautiful and incredibly meaningful.
SPEAKER_01: For some people, maybe it's something where you've seen weird things or heard weird things or not even sure what it is.
SPEAKER_01: So, what is the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: When we say that Jesus is baptizer in the Holy Spirit, what is that?
SPEAKER_01: To put simply, the Holy Spirit is the presence of God that we actually feel.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had a time where you have just felt God's presence in a strong way?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's during worship.
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hand if you've done that.
SPEAKER_01: If you just kind of felt like I just feel like this presence, right?
SPEAKER_01: That right there is the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That right there is the Holy Spirit that you actually feel.
SPEAKER_01: It's God close to us.
SPEAKER_01: Many times in life, I know we think that God can reside in places, right?
SPEAKER_01: We may see a church and feel like, okay, God is more in that church building than not in the church building, right?
SPEAKER_01: Or God is in nature and everything else.
SPEAKER_01: But what the Holy Spirit is, is that the Holy Spirit is actually inside of us.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go somewhere to experience God.
SPEAKER_01: That any place that we go, any place we move, God's presence moves along with us.
SPEAKER_01: An incredibly powerful thing.
SPEAKER_01: Another thing the Holy Spirit does is it convicts us of sin.
SPEAKER_01: You ever like, you begin to sin and you're kind of like, yeah, I don't really feel like this is how I should be living my life.
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of brings you to this, you know, brings you back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And you'd be like, Jesus, I really need help here.
SPEAKER_01: It's very distinct from shame because what can happen is the Holy Spirit isn't shame, he convicts.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit brings us, wants to bring us close to Jesus, and what we do and are human is we tend to screw everything up, and so we can turn that conviction into shame, and then somehow create barriers between us and God, with the entire point of that conviction, of feeling, you know, sorrowful about your sin, is to bring us closer to God and to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Another thing that the Holy Spirit does is I don't know if you've ever experienced this, or maybe you just have somebody on your mind or somebody else, and you'll just reach out to that person.
SPEAKER_01: And that person just goes, Oh, I can't, like, I've just been struggling.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you the I've started just calling people, just saying, if God brings someone to my mind, I'll just call them or text them.
SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing how many times people like, I've just been waiting for that exact thing, someone to reach out to me.
SPEAKER_01: It's this, you know, idea or prompting, or sometimes it's a Bible verse or anything else.
SPEAKER_01: All of that is kind of the work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So what the Holy Spirit is, it's whenever it reminds us that God, we don't worship a faraway God.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship a God that is far away from us or place.
SPEAKER_01: The God we worship is inside of us.
SPEAKER_01: We, you know, a lot of the times, you ever heard the uh idea of like accepting Jesus into your heart?
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: Uh something that sometimes we'll tell the kids, very wrong theologically.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I like the picture of that, but what we actually do is we do invite the Holy Spirit into our heart.
SPEAKER_01: That through Jesus, once you believe in him, that the Holy Spirit comes and enters kind of your uh innermost being.
SPEAKER_01: So the Holy Spirit is not something that's like an add-on.
SPEAKER_01: If you follow Jesus or you're a Christian, it's not like, hey, I'm down with Jesus, but I'm not down with the Holy Spirit, or I'm not down with, you know, God's presence.
SPEAKER_01: It's not an optional thing that we do, it's how God decides to move close to us and that experience that we actually feel close.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we say the term baptizer in the Holy Spirit, um this term comes from John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus was on earth, you had John the Baptist who would baptize people, still a practice that we do today, and he would baptize people in water, and that was a baptism of repentance.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have been baptized, right, or seen a baptise a baptism before.
SPEAKER_01: That was a baptism of repentance and coming out.
SPEAKER_01: But then John actually said in Mark 1.8, he says, I baptize you with water, but Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: This picture of that, there's this other baptism there.
SPEAKER_01: And what baptism is, the it's a Greek word baptismo, and it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean like lightly like set something in, it means to like dunk and thrash.
SPEAKER_01: It was actually a term that you would uh one of the um one of the first like uh recipes that we see in this culture was you would get like you would make like these pickles, and it says that you would baptize the pickles, and what it meant by that is like you get it in and you fully immerse and like shake them up, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not just kind of like lightly setting or sprinkling, it's this full immersion.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what happens.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, whenever I like to baptize people, we uh have to borrow baptism tanks.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you've been here before and you've seen it, we have different tanks that we use.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember talking to one pastor who's like, hey, you can use our tank, and I'll tell you what, the tank that we have is actually the best because it's it's tall and long and skinny, so you can baptize somebody, but you don't have to get in the water and get wet.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't want that one.
SPEAKER_01: I want the one where I have to get in the tank and baptize.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you have seen me, right?
SPEAKER_01: Some of these people that I've that we baptize, I'm like, I, if you're getting wet, I'm getting wet too.
SPEAKER_01: Like, this is not some little sprinkling that we do.
SPEAKER_01: It's this picture of that.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the same thing when we talk about baptism of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's not this idea of like, it's this idea of just being fully immersed and surrounded with God's presence.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't, it's not, it doesn't have to be just this thing that is difficult to experience.
SPEAKER_01: When we are baptized, we are just fully surrounded by it.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be this crazy experience, but it just you just feel that presence.
SPEAKER_01: You guys know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_01: Where you have those times where you're just like, I just feel God's presence strongly in here.
SPEAKER_01: There are times that we definitely feel that.
SPEAKER_01: I was talking to Gina um recently.
SPEAKER_01: You ever go to certain places or like towns or whatever else, and you just sometimes will feel like a darkness, or you just feel something that's kind of off.
SPEAKER_01: I remember there's one specific town in Colorado that we would go to, and it was really odd.
SPEAKER_01: It was like you would just feel this, like almost like this spiritual oppression.
SPEAKER_01: There's sometimes we feel that, and we become sensitive to that.
SPEAKER_01: And the Holy Spirit, that's part of what the Holy Spirit does.
SPEAKER_01: It's this idea of like, man, this just something isn't right.
SPEAKER_01: Something is off.
SPEAKER_01: My mom has experienced that where she's talked about just feeling like a heaviness and burden for us and our family, and something, of course, will have happened, and you know, everything else.
SPEAKER_01: And so John the Baptist promised that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And we see in Acts chapter one, after Jesus was crucified, he was killed and he was brought back from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is beginning to speak about this promise in Acts chapter 1, verse 4, where Jesus is now beginning to kind of do the fulfillment of that promise.
SPEAKER_01: So it says, one, so this is Jesus, he was after he was killed and resurrected.
SPEAKER_01: It says, um, one day Jesus was eating with them, and he gave them this command do not leave Jerusalem, he said, wait for the gift my father promised.
SPEAKER_01: You have heard me talk about it.
SPEAKER_01: John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So he's connecting back to what John said.
SPEAKER_01: And he says here, this idea of baptism.
SPEAKER_01: Baptism of the Holy Spirit is something that's really important to all of us.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're also part of a denomination.
SPEAKER_01: Our denomination is called the Pentecostal Church.
SPEAKER_01: And we get that name because right after this, in Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapters 2, you begin to see the Holy Spirit kind of pour out in a miraculous way.
SPEAKER_01: And it happened to be during a Jewish festival called Pentecost.
SPEAKER_01: And uh our denomination started, our movement started about 125 years ago, where God's people for the last 2,000 years have felt the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit has been around this entire time.
SPEAKER_01: But there was a unique, just kind of miraculous revival that began to happen where you begin to see people get healed.
SPEAKER_01: People were, you know, doing prophecy and speaking in tongues and doing these other things.
SPEAKER_01: And because of ever since then, you've had this massive movement, the fastest growing church um movement that's going on even today in the past hundred or so years.
SPEAKER_01: So it's really important to us.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said earlier, there are some Christian denominations that believe different things.
SPEAKER_01: There are some that believe that the spiritual gifts and baptism of the Holy Spirit and healing, that was for a specific time, that when Jesus came and on earth and then he went up to heaven, that it was the apostles, the first Christians, that they were the one who experienced healings.
SPEAKER_01: They were the one that experienced miracles and prophecy and some of this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And then after they went away, that that uh the gifts of the Spirit and how God uh pours out just stopped happening.
SPEAKER_01: So God doesn't do miracles today, He doesn't heal, He doesn't do some of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And for us and our movement, we just respectfully disagree.
SPEAKER_01: We believe that God, that we can pray and He will heal us, amen.
SPEAKER_01: Like we believe that God heals us today, that He can give us that word, that I can look at somebody and say, Man, I just feel like God is just speaking this to you.
SPEAKER_01: We believe that God is just as active as He is today as back then, and that God, in His miraculous nature, comes and rests upon us, and we can do great, powerful things through Him.
SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to these spiritual gifts, it's important for us to be wise.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we see uh often, one of the reasons that we believe that spiritual gifts are important for us today as it was back then, is large portions of our Bible talk about the right ways and wrong ways to do spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that's kind of ironic is spiritual gifts, the point of them is to bring the church together.
SPEAKER_01: It's to help bring the church and to help empower the church.
SPEAKER_01: So how ironic, I mean, that many times churches can fight over the very thing that was meant to bind us together.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing how many times just the things that are meant to bring us together and the things that are meant to bring us close actually end up cause fighting and division.
SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing thing that sometimes we see.
SPEAKER_01: They're supposed to build us up, they're supposed to allow us to draw near to God and near to each other.
SPEAKER_01: Well, right here in Acts, I'll keep going.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus kind of talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit that just he was like, hey, just wait for it.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the first thing that we actually see that Jesus asked his disciples to wait.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 5, um, as we continue to read, it says, John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Then the apostles gathered around Jesus and asked him a question Lord, are you going to give the kingdom back to Israel now?
SPEAKER_01: He said to him, You should not be concerned about times or dates.
SPEAKER_01: The Father has sent them by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
SPEAKER_01: Then you will tell my people, you will tell people about me in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and you will even tell other people about me from one end of the earth to the other.
SPEAKER_01: So what actually happens here is hilarious.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, actually, you see, so Jesus is talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: He has been teaching about the kingdom of God over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: He spoke about the kingdom of God more than anything else.
SPEAKER_01: And every single time we talked about the kingdom of God, he talked about how it was important that the kingdom of God enter our own hearts and that we need to make sure that we conquer our own sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that the kingdom of God belongs to children.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of God belongs to the outcast, to the weak, to the least among you, the people that nobody would expect, that that's who the kingdom belongs to.
SPEAKER_01: And so, right here, when all of a sudden you have the disciples say you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, immediately they're concerned with something that we, I think, are just as concerned with today.
SPEAKER_01: They are concerned with their own power.
SPEAKER_01: And they say, Lord, at this time, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: What they're basically saying is, hey, I get that, Jesus, but are you now going at the point where we had Rome, who's over us, who conquered us?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, by the way, was a political execution.
SPEAKER_01: Like he was killed by Rome, by this foreign power, saying, Are you now going to restore, put Israel at the top, and kick out the Romans?
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to win the election?
SPEAKER_01: Of course, back then they didn't have elections, they had uprisings and they had battles and they had fighting, and that is what they were concerned with.
SPEAKER_01: It's so fascinating with me that in the middle of the question about the Holy Spirit, about conquering our own sin, that they're immediately concerned with what power they have.
SPEAKER_01: And it makes sense because in the Old Testament we see that it talked about a Messiah who would come down and would restore Israel to its rightful place, that it would be a kingdom ruled with justice and peace and holiness, and God's spirit would go over the entire earth.
SPEAKER_01: And it was this beautiful picture, except the way that they interpreted that was different than the way God intended.
SPEAKER_01: See, they interpreted that, that Israel would be at the center, that they would be the number one tier, that they would be the people that would rule over everyone else.
SPEAKER_01: And that they would be at the top of the pecking order.
SPEAKER_01: But what Jesus has spent his entire life showing is that the kingdom of God is not about building earthly kingdoms.
SPEAKER_01: It is not about conquering others, it's about conquering your own sin.
SPEAKER_01: It's about conquering yourself.
SPEAKER_01: That's how the kingdom of God spreads.
SPEAKER_01: And I find that fascinating because we are so consumed with power and moving up, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's just the way that we work.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't think it's true, join a homeowners association board.
SPEAKER_01: I say that joking, but we are in the middle of it in our homeowners association board right now, right?
SPEAKER_01: This idea of being getting power and being in charge of those over us and how we are more right than somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: It's the focus is always on other people.
SPEAKER_01: The point what Jesus is trying to say of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit inside of us is that like you instead of using that power to conquer, instead you use it to conquer yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same knee-jerk reaction that we have that is the way to advance the kingdom of God comes through earthly conquest.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, in his love, even though he's been talking about this for years, we even see that there are times in the New Testament where literally the disciples are coming saying, Hey, can I be your right hand person?
SPEAKER_01: Can you make me the greatest in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Can I sit at my your right hand and my and can my brother sit at your left hand?
SPEAKER_01: Can I be the ones?
SPEAKER_01: Can I can I just be the best?
SPEAKER_01: Can I just be the top?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Can I be the C CFO or C whatever it is, right?
SPEAKER_01: Can I be the vice president?
SPEAKER_01: And it was in that moment that Jesus even said, No, the greatest belongs to the least of you.
SPEAKER_01: And they still don't get it.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus has this here.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason I go into this is it's important to remember because Jesus uses this, is that instead, Jesus in his gentleness basically says, you should not be concerned about times or dates.
SPEAKER_01: The Father has sent them by his own authority.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, that isn't up to you.
SPEAKER_01: That's not up to you.
SPEAKER_01: But you will receive power, and I can imagine the disciples salivating of that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, great! When is the power?
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
SPEAKER_01: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
SPEAKER_01: Then what will you do?
SPEAKER_01: You will go and you will be my witness to the world.
SPEAKER_01: The power is a different type.
SPEAKER_01: It's a power that goes out and is simply a witness to the goodness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: What an amazing way that God is choosing to have his power move through us.
SPEAKER_01: That our role is to simply be a witness.
SPEAKER_01: And that word witness is important to understand, because like what exactly does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: If we're supposed to go and to witness about Jesus, a witness is simply somebody that tells them what they saw or what they heard.
SPEAKER_01: For my job, I work in insurance and I investigate claims.
SPEAKER_01: Just about any type of claim you can imagine, I've had it.
SPEAKER_01: I had a raccoon bite in a claim recently in this past week.
SPEAKER_01: Pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Someone got bit by a raccoon while on a boat.
SPEAKER_01: It happens.
SPEAKER_01: Just you can't be safe anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And I've interviewed witnesses before.
SPEAKER_01: And when I ask somebody about a witness, what do you do if you ask somebody who's a witness or something?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, what did you see and what happened?
SPEAKER_01: I do boat claims.
SPEAKER_01: I don't all of a sudden, when I ask somebody, I say, okay, what happened?
SPEAKER_01: Well, this boat hit that boat.
SPEAKER_01: The witness doesn't have to know every single thing about what happened, right?
SPEAKER_01: They just simply say what they saw and what they experienced.
SPEAKER_01: I think in the same way, when we hear that, like, hey, we should be witnesses for Jesus, sometimes we can get in our own heads to feel like I have to know everything.
SPEAKER_01: I have to know every single theological point.
SPEAKER_01: I have to know everything.
SPEAKER_01: You simply just say, hey, this is what Jesus did in my life, and let me tell you about it.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm interviewing a witness about a boat accident, I say, well, how many horsepower was in that engine?
SPEAKER_01: When was the last time that boat was serviced?
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I simply just saw what happened.
SPEAKER_01: What's important for us is that when we are empowered to be witnesses of Jesus, first and foremost, we have to make sure that we had a one on one experience with the Holy Spirit, that we were changed.
SPEAKER_01: If we were changed and if we're not better people than we were before, what better?
SPEAKER_01: Business, do we have going out there and trying to spread the good news or anything else?
SPEAKER_01: It comes from us and saying, Hey, let me tell you what God did in my own life.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we have the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells us.
SPEAKER_01: We have the Holy Spirit, we have that, so we can experience his presence that he's there, but it's for a purpose is to go out and just say, just simply just say what Jesus did for you.
SPEAKER_01: This is the way I was, and this is the way I am now.
SPEAKER_01: And the great part is that we don't we receive a power.
SPEAKER_01: We don't do that through our own strength.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many things that we can't that we do with our own strength, right?
SPEAKER_01: We're in the middle, like this is week two of us meeting in this new building and figuring things out.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we're we saw a lot of people who were here at eight o'clock to help unload the trailer and getting things up and getting our sound equipment and cameras and getting the benches the way they should go.
SPEAKER_01: Like that's all with like our own strength, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like our own wisdom and know-how.
SPEAKER_01: And even still with all the brains in the room, we still can't get the stinking drum set to work.
SPEAKER_01: But that's fine.
SPEAKER_01: We're figuring it out.
SPEAKER_01: You could even get a worship set together.
SPEAKER_01: You could sound really good as a worship leader.
SPEAKER_01: I could throw together a sermon and go and sound really good.
SPEAKER_01: But see, there's something different that needs to happen that when we bear witness to Jesus, there's power involved in that.
SPEAKER_01: There's a power that I receive, that we receive, that does not come from us.
SPEAKER_01: And it's so tempting, so tempting for us in our own lives to try to do things with our own power.
SPEAKER_01: How many people like asking for help for stuff?
SPEAKER_01: I don't like asking for help.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like to be the person that says, like, hey, you know what, I can't figure this out.
SPEAKER_01: Thank God for Google.
SPEAKER_01: But even for that, if you're having a if you're having a difficult time, a difficult day, having trouble with whatever, as you're there, it's hard for us to ask for help, to be in a position where we say, God, I need your help.
SPEAKER_01: It's so much easier for us just to be the ones to do the thing.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit isn't just a doctrine that we believe because it's part of our denomination.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just, oh, it's a Pentecostal distinctive, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's the gift that Jesus gives us so we can actually live the life he has called us to live.
SPEAKER_01: The word says that the Holy Spirit kind of corrects us and guides us.
SPEAKER_01: That as we spend time with the Holy Spirit in our lives, it helps us from tripping into the same holes that we needed for the first place.
SPEAKER_01: If we need a savior and we immediately get saved, we need somebody to come alongside of us and say, hey, let's not do that again.
SPEAKER_01: Let's do something different.
SPEAKER_01: And the Holy Spirit helps us in that.
SPEAKER_01: It brings us near and brings us close.
SPEAKER_01: And this is where we get into this idea too of spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives us.
SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned before, we've actually done sermon series the last three years on different spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Every fall we've done a different sermon series on this.
SPEAKER_01: So you can go back and listen to them on our on our website.
SPEAKER_01: You can get to our podcast.
SPEAKER_01: But we know that God gives us these gifts and gives us these, He's given us great personalities, and sometimes we have these supernatural abilities and gifts that we have.
SPEAKER_01: Prophecy, healing, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, even speaking in tongues, which if you're not surrounded with it, it starts very can be very odd.
SPEAKER_01: We see that gift first show up in Acts 2.
SPEAKER_01: It was a miraculous thing that was there where people were speaking in a language that they didn't know, and somebody else spoke that language.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, wow.
SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine if you are praying and speaking a different language, and you have somebody else who speaks that language try to talk with you, like, I don't know, man, I don't know what I was doing.
SPEAKER_01: But that was a way that God used to actually bring the gospel to the entire world because people would hear the good news of Jesus in their own language, and then you began to see that in the New Testament that a change where you Paul even talks about how you can begin to pray in a language that isn't your own, and you can pray to God, and it's this incredibly beautiful thing that you do personally.
SPEAKER_01: It's some of the mysteries of the Holy Spirit that are supernatural.
SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting when we see God work because there are times I felt in my own life like God's presence in a strong and powerful way, but there are also times where I just feel like God tells me to call somebody and I call them and they just break down, and it's incredibly powerful.
SPEAKER_01: God meets them, and it was just me just answering the question and saying yes to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That God can choose to use through just everyday life in this powerful way.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's part of the beauty that I love about God choosing to work with us.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we believe in our denomination too, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have certain pastoral staff, you know, I'm up here and preach.
SPEAKER_01: We have other people who will sit and to preach, but we believe that every single person can speak God's truth and word and love to somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just us that does it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's unique.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout history, there were times where it's like, hey, no, God only flows through this one person, right?
SPEAKER_01: You have this priest or pastor or everything else, and if you want to hear God's word, it comes through that person.
SPEAKER_01: And we believe, no, that God has given every single person a word to share to somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: We have to make sure that we are sharing things because everything that pops into my head isn't always right or good.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: You ever have something like that pops into your head and you think you're justified, and then you say it, and then about 20 minutes later you're like, actually, I don't think I should have said that out loud.
SPEAKER_01: I felt so strong in that moment that I should have said what I said.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01: It sounded way better in my head, and I was expecting that person to have a much different reaction than they ended up having, and then it's like, oh no, I'm the dum-dumb.
SPEAKER_01: So we believe that that this idea of spiritual gifts needed to happen in a place where you feel safe, where we begin to speak, but we believe that God works among his people.
SPEAKER_01: The point really of why I love Christ as baptizer is that it is the sign that gee, like, he's alive.
SPEAKER_01: God is alive and he's working in all of our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship a dead God, we don't worship just some symbol that happened thousands of years ago.
SPEAKER_01: He's not a faraway God, he's close to us.
SPEAKER_01: And we want to hold that with humility.
SPEAKER_01: We want to be open to what God does, but we also want to be wise.
SPEAKER_01: I love in in 1 Corinthians 13, it even talks about Paul says that if you speak in these uh gifts, if he gives prophecy, everything else, but if it's not found in love, it's like a clanging symbol.
SPEAKER_01: It's just like nothing.
SPEAKER_01: That if you just all of a sudden get some like, I wish I would have brought like a cowbell or something.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a cowbell, but if you just like use this thing that just makes noise and it's just an annoying sound, that that is exactly if you try to use the spiritual gifts, if you try to speak on God's behalf, but you don't have love in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: There are times in my own life where I have tried to speak God's truth with something other than love in my own heart.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone else?
SPEAKER_01: I hope from those chuckles, it's you too, right?
SPEAKER_01: Where and that's hard.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01: The goal is to be a spirit-filled people who love Jesus, love one another, and are available for God to use us.
SPEAKER_01: So when we ask Jesus to fill us with the Holy Spirit, really what we're saying is, Lord, I'm available and I want you to flow through me.
SPEAKER_01: Give me what I need in order to give to somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: As people who experience God's spiritual gifts, what we really are is a bunch of hoses.
SPEAKER_01: A hose brings water from one location to another.
SPEAKER_01: The hose doesn't do really much other thing than that.
SPEAKER_01: The hose is not responsible for turning on the water, right?
SPEAKER_01: The hose is not even responsible for where the water goes.
SPEAKER_01: It just simply takes, hey, the water is here, I'm gonna move it here.
SPEAKER_01: And it's such a simple application, but I just feel like for us as baptizers in the Holy Spirit, as as we go out into the world, that's really what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_01: We're simply God asked to bring God's presence from one place to somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: We say, This is what I experienced, and let me tell you what I experienced.
SPEAKER_01: So then the question becomes, how do we receive this gift?
SPEAKER_01: What is it that we do in order to receive it?
SPEAKER_01: It could be in many different ways, but what I love about Acts 1 the first time is that it's not this group of people trying to manufacture something that isn't there.
SPEAKER_01: It's a group of people who are just simply sitting and waiting.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus even said, I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit in a couple of days.
SPEAKER_01: They were just simply sitting and waiting for God's presence to show up.
SPEAKER_01: They made themselves available and God decided to show up.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the perfect picture of to be baptized, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, is to simply sit there and wait.
SPEAKER_01: I know I will talk with people who will be like, man, I just feel like I don't feel I've not really been feeling God's presence.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, how much time have you just spent sit waiting for God's presence to show up?
SPEAKER_01: And be like, oh, I haven't done that at all.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't we try that?
SPEAKER_01: Sitting and waiting for God's presence is something.
SPEAKER_01: I know sometimes I even feel that where it's like, God, I don't feel you speaking to me.
SPEAKER_01: But then I look at my life and I look at my calendar and I'm like, how much time have I actually sat waiting for God to speak to me?
SPEAKER_01: Say, God, I'm not gonna choose to move until you speak.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of times God has a relationship like any other times.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are times, you know, if I'm moving at a mile a minute and Gina's moving at a mile a minute and I'm on a business trip and we don't see each other for a couple of days, it's like I just feel like we don't talk anymore.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, you've been in a different state, and I've been in a different state.
SPEAKER_01: We've not made time to spend together.
SPEAKER_01: We receive the Holy Spirit by coming to Jesus with open hands where we ask, we make space, and we say, Jesus, you're the one who baptized in the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to do anything other than just simply ask.
SPEAKER_01: God, I want to feel your presence in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: I want to actually add, James, if you can come up, we're gonna end with a song that I'm gonna do here.
SPEAKER_01: That we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01: And I would just encourage you this week, and even in this time here, we're just gonna have a moment, we're just gonna have kind of the time where we can just sit here.
SPEAKER_01: To see and to pray and ask God for a deep awareness of his presence.
SPEAKER_01: God's presence is around us.
SPEAKER_01: I know many times in my life I prayed, God, I just prayed that you would show up, and it isn't until much older and I begin to read the Bible that I realize, oh, God is actually here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just not aware he's here.
SPEAKER_01: The issue is me.
SPEAKER_01: And so I would just encourage you right now as we start, but also as you spend time this week to really sit and you ask God to move close to you.
SPEAKER_01: That you would ask God to make his presence felt.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe as you're sitting here, it's like, you know, I've uh invited Jesus, I've talked, and I believe that I've followed Jesus, I know the Savior, but I don't know if I felt that presence very strongly before.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I felt that.
SPEAKER_01: It's a great invitation to do so now or to do so as we sit and as we experience Him.
SPEAKER_01: I love even the language of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't talk about a one-time thing, it's a continually asking, continual presence of asking over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: We talked about that last week, Jesus is Savior, and it's the same with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So why don't we go ahead and stand, everybody, as we end.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna start us off with a prayer.
SPEAKER_01: So, Lord, I just pray as we just take a moment as we end this service, that we would just take a moment.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would come and fill us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, it is promised that you are the baptizer and the Holy Spirit, that you are the one that gives us access to your presence and in your feeling now.
SPEAKER_01: I just pray that we would just be able to sit with an open heart and to be able to experience the fullness of your presence.
SPEAKER_01: And what a great opportunity now, as we're in this place surrounded, that we can experience your presence wherever we're at.
SPEAKER_01: As we take a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Take me back to where we start.
SPEAKER_00: Oh nothing else.
SPEAKER_00: Oh nothing else, nothing else will do.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, just thank you for not only being our Savior, but our baptized on the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That you just don't save us and ask us to live a life where we feel apart from God.
SPEAKER_01: I pray, Lord, that we would truly be a spirit-filled church that as we are in this season of salt and light, that we would be known as people that are your salt and your light to this world, and that can only go so far under our own power.
SPEAKER_01: We can be salt only for so long, we can be light only for so long before, after a while, our humanity just overtakes us and we turn back into the people that we don't want to be anymore.
SPEAKER_01: I pray God that we would have a strong awareness of your presence, that there would just be something different about us when you meet us.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive us of the times that we will take care of everyone and everything else in our lives and neglect spending time just baptized, just soaked in your presence, God.
SPEAKER_01: That we would be people who ask for your baptism daily, that we would be people who would constantly live in that sense.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry for the times in my life I've gone to everything else but you.
SPEAKER_01: Every time else I've looked for all of the other things to fill that hole in my life.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for your presence and for your power.
SPEAKER_01: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Will I leave you with this blessing as we go?
SPEAKER_01: The Lord bless you and keep you.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord turn his face towards you and give you his shalo.
SPEAKER_01: God bless.