JUN 24 2020 | Holy Spirit Workshop S1E2 | Holy Spirit Whispers

Sea Change Church · Holy Spirit Workshop · "Holy Spirit Whispers" · June 24, 2020
1 Kings 19:11-13
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Welcome to the week two of the Holy Spirit workshop. We're going to talk a little bit about what God did in your lives after this is over because this is the teaching portion and definitely want to hear from you. Once again, if you are new to the class, welcome. It's good to see you. I think you're brand new, right? Yeah. Great to see you. Jake, you were here. No, you weren't here last time. Good to see you. This is a workshop. So if you missed out last week, the workshop means that we're going to get our hands dirty. We really want to have an opportunity to invite and know the Holy Spirit.

If you were going to take a pottery workshop, you would want to get your hands in the clay. You would definitely want to do that. It wouldn't be fun to just go hear me talk about pottery. You want to get into the pottery. So we're going to give you an opportunity to do that. And we're going to, the last half hour tonight, we're going to have some exercises every week where we just wait on the Holy Spirit. We do different things and we will try those. This week we are going to be working on hearing from the Holy Spirit in regard to some silence and listening to what God has to say to us.

Before we do that, though, first thing we want to do is just invite the Spirit of God, whatever has been on your heart today, even if you're online, no matter where you are in the world. Let's just get into a posture. We always want our, the reason that we do these postures is to match what our heart posture is. So whatever feels good to you, it could be on your knees, could be just with your hands, just open your hands up, just take a moment and just invite the Holy Spirit.

So you just say, Holy Spirit, we just invite you into this place. For over a hundred years, people have met on this corner, inviting the Holy Spirit to this place. And we invite you, we invite you, Spirit. We invite you into my heart, no matter what's going on today, the chaos of the world, all these things, Lord Jesus. We invite you, we invite your presence on the teaching, on the hearing from you today. And so, God, we just bless you in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, last week, I talked a little bit about the power of the Holy Spirit. And if you've ever gone to anything Holy Spirit orientated that was not Catholic, if it was Protestant, I want to say 100% of the time, but I'm going to say 99% of the time. 99% of the time, it is going to be about the fruit of the Spirit, it's going to be about the gifts of the Spirit, or it's going to be about the power of the Spirit. Sometimes the voice of the Spirit.

But very rarely will you ever hear it be about the presence of the Holy Spirit in regard to hearing from Him in silence. Hearing the God through silence and being able to experience Him here through that. Now, what I want to do today is I really want to juxtapose, before we go any further, I want to juxtapose what I spoke about last week. That power element. I gave some stories last week of some of the power that I've seen with God and throughout the world in different places, as I've seen God move in some very powerful ways.

And the power of God can be very addictive, because it really touches us in so many of our senses. We want to feel. We want to feel God. We want to prove God. God allows us, when we feel like we're experiencing God in our feelings, or we're seeing Him working, all of a sudden it starts to prove our faith in a way that sometimes maybe even faith wasn't meant to be proved. Although God will prove Himself to us, and wants to, the essence of faith is believing in things that are not seen.

And so, I want to just start with this passage that I heard this week out of 1 Kings, and it is about Elijah. And it's Elijah running from Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Now, if you know the story, Elijah has just had this incredible experience of God's power. He had confronted the prophets of Baal, and he had called them to Mount Carmel. I stood on Mount Carmel not long ago, looking over, I believe the Valley of Armageddon is right there, below it.

And you look over that, and he had come there and called them, and he said, we're going to have a, we're going to prove God. We're going to see who, whose God is real. And so he says, we're going to make, you guys are going to go first. I'm going to set up an altar and put wood on it. He says, you guys build an altar, and then you put your, your sacrifices on it. And then I want you to call fire down from heaven. And if fire comes down from heaven, then we are going to know that your God is real.

But if it doesn't, you're going to let me try it. And so all day, they are running around, they're cutting themselves, and they're getting very desperate, calling for Baal to show up and set, and consume the offering. And one of the things we see with the Holy Spirit oftentimes, I spoke about this a few weeks ago, is that God is a consuming fire. The Holy Spirit is oftentimes seen as a fire. God consumes sacrifice. And I ask the question, is there any sacrifice in your life to consume?

Like, is there anything in our life? And so when we experience the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, one of the ways that we experience the presence of God is in obedience. And then also having sacrifice in our life. I spoke on fasting last week. That's a sacrifice. And so we want to put ourselves in a position where God can consume the sacrifice of our life. And so Elijah, at the end of the day, it's about the end of the day, he says, step back.

He says, you know, he's taunting them. He's mocking them. And he's like, you know, where's your God? One of my daughter's favorite lines in the Bible is he says, you know, where's your God? Is he busy? Is he on the toilet? Like, that's exactly what Elijah says. My daughter thought that was the most hilarious thing ever, still to this day. Just mocking the prophets of Baal. And then he says, well, I'm going to make the wood wet.

I'm just going to just pour five, you know, do it, I think, three times. Pour five, you know, these giant things of water on it, I think. I forgot the exact amount. And I'm going to make it wet. I'm going to call God and on God and see if the fire comes. Well, the fire comes down. It consumes the offering. He kills the prophets of Baal. It proves that God is real. And he has this incredible moment where God is proven.

Within less than a, I think it's a couple days or something, within a day, Jezebel hears about this and basically threatens him from far away. He just had this incredible moment. He gets so terrified that Jezebel, this non-believing woman, says she's going to kill him, that he runs. He not only runs from where he is, which is north of Jerusalem. He runs about a 10-hour car journey all the way to the south of where Israel is.

All the way to the south of Israel by where they originally crossed. And then he crosses over and goes to Mount Sinai, which is where Moses got the law. Goes up into a cave and he hides there. He's hiding there as far away from this woman as, you know, basically physically possible for him at the time. God didn't transport him away like he'd been doing these things. And he's terrified. Here's why I bring this up. I have found that my experiences with the power of God, while those are the things we often go for, do not have the ability to sustain my walk with God in the difficult times, like when I have had experiences with the presence of God in silence, solitude, worship, and prayer.

What I have found is when I look back in really dark, let's say I have some dark times, something happens, I tend to look back at the moments where God spoke to me deep in my heart. When he spoke to me out of silence, when he spoke to me out of this quiet place, I look back to these promises of God and the presence of God more than I look to the power of God. When I'm in a really difficult place in my life, rarely do I look back and say, you remember when God showed up that one time and all the prophets were put asunder, you know, and all these powerful things happened.

Rarely do I look back and I find that the things that I've experienced in the power of God are great stories. And I believe they're encouraging and interesting. But they don't seem for me personally to have the same staying power in regard to continuing on. Now this is actually true for Elijah. He had just had this incredible experience, but yet he was lacking the presence. He had the power, but at this moment he wasn't experiencing the presence.

And so let me read what happens because God shows up and God calls him into the presence. He doesn't call him back into the power, although he demonstrates his power. He calls him back into the presence. And so today, tonight, before we go any further, I don't know what you're going to experience in this class. We are going to do things like go into different parts of the city and worship. We're going to invite you to go to that.

You don't have to come to that. We are going to have times to go pray over certain areas and pray over each other. After we do a little bit of training, I'm going to release you in our church as a class, secret agent, seal team, to go throughout the church on Sundays when you're here, or maybe you're not here on Sunday or wherever. I'm going to release you into our congregation to begin to pray for people. With your mask, socially distanced, we'll figure all that stuff out.

To give people words. You can make mistakes here, like I said. One of the things about this workshop is you can make mistakes. I'm having a banner made for the church right now that says, mistakes happen. It says, mistakes happen. And, you know, and I think the, and grace happens here too. And so this idea that you can make mistakes. So I'm going to release you, this group of 15, 25 of us, whatever it'll be, into the church as a beta test group.

To when the Lord speaks to you, to begin to try to be obedient to that, and to step into his presence, to pray for people, whatever it is, I'm going to do that. But before we do that, and if God shows up in power, it's going to be exhilarating. It's going to be awesome. You're probably going to be terrified at first and love it when you're done. And so it's going to be amazing. But before we get to that place, I really want to set a base that was not set for me.

Actually, it was somewhat set for me through my studies of Catholic mysticism, which is mostly about silence and hearing from God and being in his presence. And then all the actions happen out of that place. In regard to Catholic mysticism, which would be pretty much in alignment, in a lot of ways, in alignment with Protestant Pentecostalism, one of the things that Catholics have right, charismatic Catholics, there's a lot of them, whether you know it or not, is that they really want to sit and burn before the presence of the Lord before they go out and change the world.

Whereas us Protestants, what we love to do is run out into the world, see what's happening, react according to what's happening out here before we've ever made any progress in the presence. And so before we have any of these experiences, I want us to set a foundation of the presence. I want us to set a foundation of hungering for his presence. Because when you get to heaven, Paul speaks about it, all the powerful gifts of the spirit, we'll talk about gifts tonight, fruit and a few other things, all of these things will pass away.

But one thing that will not pass away is his presence and his peace. There's not going to be no healing in heaven because healing will be done. There's going to be no interpretation in heaven because interpretation will no longer be needed. There's going to be no need for these things. But we want to develop this presence of God. So let me read this and see what happened. So the Lord says to Elijah in 1 Kings 19, 11 through 13, the Lord said, now he's in a cave, remember, he's on Mount Sinai in a cave, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord.

Now you'll see in a moment that he didn't do this. He actually doesn't come out until after God shows up, which is interesting. A lot of times I've never seen that before until I started realizing this. He actually, after God shows up, he walks out of the cave, did not stand on the mountain, missed an invitation. And one of the things I said about the invitations of the Holy Spirit and opportunities, one thing that's true for all opportunities, they pass.

You probably had opportunities this week. The first night after we left here on Monday night, whether it was the Lord or not, I don't know. I woke up at 2 in the morning, 2.30 in the morning, very tired, rare. Usually I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm wide awake. And I saw this picture in my head, very clear, me sitting on the couch in my living room praying. And I just felt the Lord saying, you just had a Holy Spirit class, you talked about invitation, I'm inviting you to go pray on your couch right now at 2.30 in the morning when you're incredibly tired.

And I was like, uh, so I tried to talk myself out of it. I went out there and I sat there for a minute and prayed. And I went back to my bed. I thought, I'm not going to miss the opportunity. I'm running the class. I'll give you a minute. Now, I'm not saying it was the best thing in the world, but I did show up and the tookus actually hit the couch and I was there for a minute and praying with God. It's this opportunity.

He misses an opportunity here. Through this, in your workshop, and I had a, actually I went to sleep and I ended up having a ton of dreams. I journaled that night, really interesting dreams and words about China and whether these things will come out. I'm not going to preach them because they're just things I wrote in my journal to pray about. But I, um, what I realized is there's an opportunity. And I want to, I want you to journal the opportunities and be very aware and keen over the next seven weeks that we have left in this.

This is an opportunity for you to step into those things. When you hear something, hey, pray for this person at the gas station. Hey, read this scripture. Hey, fast this day. So the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountain apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake came a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the king. This is the place that the Lord had told him to already stand before I'm going to show up. Finally makes it out. But what drew him out? Well, he didn't have the courage or for one reason he didn't have the ability to go out.

And there was a lot of action happening. A lot of things were there. And even though God created those things, the presence of God was not in or on those things. He created it. God does a lot of stuff. And a lot of things this can show that God can initiate it for one reason or another, but he's not in it. We see that he, in the Old Testament scriptures, he will send, he put a lying, he allowed a lying spirit to go into these prophets of one of the kings of Israel and lie to the king.

Now, God is not a liar. God did not create a lying spirit. But he allowed a lying spirit because we know that the spirits like Satan come before the throne of God and ask things of him. And he allowed it. Not everything that is allowed by God is of God and God is in it. Why is this important? Why am I bringing this up? And why is this confusing? Because if you are enamored by the power of God and you don't know how to hear the whisper of God, you will at some point be deceived by the enemy into thinking that something that is full of fire, full of earthquake, full of power, full of wind, is God.

Because it must be. But 2 Thessalonians tells us that it's not. We'll get to that in a moment. The key is, can you hear the whisper? Because the whisper will identify whether God is in the fire, whether God is in the wind, whether God is in the earthquake. Even if he allowed it, even if he perhaps caused it, he was not in it. And so one of the things I've always tried to teach my children is not about God, but how to hear the voice of God, to actually know God.

Because I knew one day when they were 17 years old, I wouldn't be there to tell them everything that they needed to know. And they would be somewhere, and if they knew how to hear the voice of God, there'd be somebody who was perhaps drunk, who got into a car on prom night, and said, come on, get in. It's no big deal. We'll be fine. Now if I'm just teaching her yes and no and right, and statistics, then she can wave that in her head, say, you know, the statistics are we're only going a block.

We should be fine. But if I've taught her to hear the voice of the Spirit, to know the presence of God, and something in her heart says, no, no, that's what you want. I would give up all of the power of God, but we don't have to, because he offers it to us, for one day in his presence. His presence is what we want. And so this church, and this movement of the Spirit, that we want to see happen in this church, as I release you, has got to be based in the presence.

Because otherwise, there's a ministry time. People are crying. They're up front. And you see everyone up front, and they're crying. And you think, ah, God's on this. He's moving. And some woman comes up front, who has perhaps had a molestation issue or something, but you think, because God's moving, that, hey, God's moving. He wants me to pray for her. And so you go, and you put your hand on her back, or something like that, and all of a sudden, you're not listening.

You step into something, because you see the power of God, not knowing for that moment, she might never come back again, because it didn't feel safe, and she was abused, or whatever the reason is. You see, we're not going for the power, and we're not going to identify, or put a price tag, on how worthy we thought an event was, or something was, based on what we see with our eyes. We want to do it based on what we go, and we follow our hearts, hearts of fire.

This is what Elijah found here. So we're juxtaposing the power versus the presence. You'll see in your notes. The modern Holy Spirit movement has too often erred in the pursuit of the God of the earthquake, and failed in its desire for the God of the whisper. The God of the earthquake, rather than the God of the whisper. And what I want to challenge you, and us to do, is to spend time listening for the whisper. Spend time listening to that whisper, because that is what will lead us, and give us our directions.

Thomas Merton is a monastic, and controversial sometimes, but he has a lot of really good stuff in his books, and he was a monk in America, and throughout the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, I think, before he died. He died, got electrocuted to death in Thailand at a conference. And, hi Steve. Hi. He said this, when we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world, nor from other men.

Let me circle the word words. Words. We love words. Most people love words. Nor from God, nor from ourselves, because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. Let me unpack that. Let me just read it one more time, and let me unpack it. Because it speaks about our desire to have things that we can control. Language is something you can control. The voice, the whisper, or the presence without words of the Spirit is something you cannot control.

That makes sense. We want to control God. Words help us control it. Why does God not give his name to Moses? He says, who are you? Godway. I am who I am. What is that supposed to mean? You cannot put me in a box. You cannot put me into a word. Even when I said that God, the primary metaphor of God is a father. God is more than a father. I won't go into that whole teaching again, but he's more than a father. He's more than a king.

He's more than everything. So Merton says this. When we have really met and known the world in silence, which is, I mean, you're filtering everything that's happening in the world right now through silence. How do we tend to filter it? Well, we go back on the news. We go listen to our favorite podcast. We listen to our favorite commentators. It is so easy for me to spot when a believer has spent more time listening to the world's opinion on matters.

Even matters I agree with. Even when their opinions are a lot of things I agree with. Even the way that they say it, the way that they write it on Facebook, their opinions, the way that they say things. When you are filtering the world through silence, it'll be so obvious. Even when a Christian puts things up on whether they are taking their opinions and their voice from the outside and working inward, or they're going from the inside outward.

It is so obvious. Merton says, when we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world, nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves, because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. I asked my daughter today, we were talking about this, my Lucy, my philosopher, 12 years old, and I said, Lucy, why do you think people don't like silence? Why do we love words?

Why do we like to speak? Why do we always have the phone buzzing? Why are we always on social media? Why do we always want to just fill, fill, fill any empty space? We can have no empty spaces. Why don't we like silence? And she said to me, it was really interesting, she's actually right, she says, because silence has no ending. There's no, does that make sense? Silence has no ending. Words, the English language, it only has so many words with so many meanings.

At some point it ends. The internet, while it seems like it goes forever, doesn't. There's only so many web addresses. It might be 28 trillion, but at some point they're all connected and it ends. The universe itself, even the secular scientists will say, has an ending. But silence has no ending. Silence is eternity. It is not based in matter. It is not based in an understanding. It is based in a presence. Even if you look at how God created the universe, look at all of the matter of planets versus how much space surrounds those.

Are we more matter and movement or are we more empty, dark space? She's absolutely right. If you want to really know God, you can pursue him in the word, but even the word of God is limited. The Bible is a tool that is limited by language. That's why Jesus says, I am the word. This Bible that I'm giving you is a representation of me. It contains truth and it will lead you to all truth. But all truth is not in the Bible, but the direction to lead you to all truth is in the Bible.

The Bible doesn't tell you everything. It doesn't tell us certain things in modern understanding. This is why silence is so important because silence with the Holy Spirit is eternal. And if you want to touch eternity, silence is the place to start. It's not in lots of words. We find it in this place. So here's the lesson. Let us not get enamored with God's power. I'm hoping that you experience God's power in this class.

Really, in this workshop, excuse me. I really am. But let us not get enamored with God's power. God is not in every act of power associated with the movement of the Holy Spirit. I already spoke about that with Elijah. I would say the Spirit of God moves in power. You'll see in your notes, but the initiative of that power flows from a place of presence, silence, and solitude. Everything needs to have an engine. The engine of our spiritual life needs to start from a very small place.

The smaller you try to be in your heart before God, the more silent, the smaller, the less things you have to say, the bigger you will become. The smaller you try to become, the more humble you try to become, the less opinions you try to have, the smaller you try to become, the larger presence you will enter into. And you will expand. And as you get smaller, your outsides will be expanding like this. Expanding and expanding.

And from that place, you walk into the world that is temporal, that has boundaries, as an eternal being. This is really the key. To live as a time traveler, someone of eternity in the moment now. And I gotta tell you, the world does not know how to filter you in that place. The world does not know how to comprehend. They don't even understand you. Because the world does not know you, the scripture says. It won't even know who you are.

It won't know how to deal with you. It won't understand why you smile when you suffer. It won't understand any of these things. This is the type of person that we want to be. So that's the lesson for tonight. Let's not get enamored with God's power. Here's one of the things I wrote in the notes. Rarely will the voice of stillness before God lead you astray. Rarely. I wanted to say never. I just don't want to be definitive.

Rarely will the voice of stillness being still before God, meditating on the scriptures, being before Him when you slow down, you will hear a little voice. Especially if you're filled with the Holy Spirit. If you've accepted Christ as your Savior, that will speak to you and direct you and tell you what is right. And it will oftentimes be counter-cultural to the thing that you thought you should do and with it will come a flood of peace, presence, courage, whatever you need in that moment.

This week as I was preparing my sermon, I had my goggles on. I was looking at the world. I had a text. Ready to go. I had some hard hitters. I was ready. I mean, it was good. Really good. It was called life risk because one of our values that we're trying, I think we're going to incorporate into our church values is life risk. I just love it. Take a risk with your life. Risk your emotions to care for people. Risk your finances to help the poor.

Just life risk. One of the things that Christians understood is life risk. I raised my children with the understanding from the very beginning that the reason we follow Jesus, it might end up you being, you dying because of Jesus. Like I let my children know that like at three years old, four years old. I didn't want to build this like fluffy unicorn Jesus for them. I wanted to give them this thing that we follow Jesus and we follow him to the cross and we might need to be willing to die for him and this is why he died on this cross and so like from the very, we're just, we're going to start there and then we're going to have a high calling to what that looks like and you can decide if you want it or not.

Life risk. So good. The sermon was going to be so good so I'm going to preach it next week. But I was so, settled down and all of a sudden the Lord began to speak to me and the Lord began to speak to me about revival and if you speak about that, you're going to be going outside into the streets, taking cues from the streets, from the world and then coming back to the church and preaching from what the world inspired you to preach.

When I sat silent, I felt like the Lord said, I want you to teach on silence and knowing me and knowing my presence because from that place as people go out, you make a massive difference. So like I said, rarely will the voice of stillness before God lead you astray. It's especially true if you're single in relationships. You're a Christian and you're single and you're in a relationship you shouldn't be in, you will know it.

Now I have found that it usually takes four months was about my max before I finally obeyed it, but it's a four to six month max or some people just string it out for years and years and they're just disobedient to that voice and they come and they want to have a conversation with me as pastor. What do you think about this person? He's not a Christian and I'll be like, well, what do you, well, I know but and then boom, we go off into this like rationalization, we talk ourselves out of it but if they were to really sit quiet or if you have an addiction in your life right now or you have this thing, if you're a Christian, you will know and if you slow down, you will know but we don't want to slow down because that brings us into complete realization of the voice of God and he speaks to us clearly.

Rarely will the voice of stillness before God lead you astray. I want to give a couple verses here just so we keep this scripturally in context. I want to make sure that everything we're doing is scripturally in context. John 10, 27 says, My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. My sheep listen or know my voice. Do you know the voice of God? And when he speaks, how do you know it's him? I would say there's certain ways God speaks to me now where I'm right 90% of the time.

I would say almost 100 because it's so, just in, not in regard to leading other people but God will say something to me and I'll just know it. He has spoken to me so many times in that particular way it would be very hard for Satan to mimic that voice, that feeling, that presence. Not saying I can't be deceived, not saying we still don't need to check everything against the word because when you get a word from the Holy Spirit you want to check it against the scripture.

We have all these filters to make sure that we're not just acting impulsively but the sheep know his voice and to understand the voice of God and one of the best ways to have that voice speak more is to obey it. He who is faithful with little will be given more. If God speaks to you and you begin to obey it all of a sudden God will speak to you you will see it it will just start unfolding and as your ears open up the sheep know his voice 2 Thessalonians 2.9 Now, this is about why it's so important to know the inner voice and not follow the power because if you're following the power 2 Thessalonians talks about the Antichrist and a man of lawlessness who comes.

Here's what it says 2 Thessalonians 2.9 it's in your notes The coming of the lawless one is based on Satan's working with all kinds of false miracles signs and wonders and with every unrighteous deception among those who are perishing If we did not have the silent presence of God if we did not cultivate the ability to his sheep knowing his voice this scripture would absolutely terrify me How would I know? How would I know?

Because Satan is in the business of signs and wonders of miracles of all these things he calls them false miracles When Antichrist comes there will be false miracles there will be false prophecies there will be all these things that look real but something inside of the remnant of the true believer who actually is listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit will have the ability to discern that is not from God One of the things that I see happening in the church right now for many people is their patriotism is stronger than their faith their Christians Massive patriotism I have no problem with patriotism I love it I think the country was founded this country in particular was founded on some amazing principles that we have yet to live up to but I think we were moving in the right direction in a lot of ways but and while I would die for the country for certain aspects of it and all that I'm not going to put my flag above my Savior and so one of the things I see right now with Christians is if they slowed down and listened they would see that maybe this is misplaced my patriotism is stronger than my desire for God that's just one thing another thing I mentioned this the other week is when you see you know all these people pouring out of of refugee countries in Africa and in the Middle East people are upset oh it's going to it's going to turn um um Christian a Christian nation into an irreligious country well first of all Europe has not been Christian for a very long time very long time at least notably Christian and many of the people that are taking this road are is the exact same road that Christians took when they originally came and brought Christ and many of these people are accepting Christ along the way if you talk to some of our missionaries in the area you will see that actually one of the hopes and I've spoken to a recent one of our missionaries you know her she was speaking this week at our church she actually said that one of the great hopes of her missionary friends that she sees happening is that all of Western Europe is going to be re-evangelized with a second wave of people who have accepted Christ left false religions who actually know what it means to be persecuted and are willing to put their lives on the line for Jesus to go in and re-evangelize work for a second time following the same route that Christians took 2,000 years ago now you're probably not getting that perspective if you're listening to the news or conservative podcast you're seeing the exact opposite now there's look there's a rough and tumble in there there are a lot of negative things that are happening but I love that heart I'm not saying it's true but it is a different perspective and for me it's something that rung true begin to pray for those people have a heart for them and pray that they accept Christ along the way in these refugee camps that you meet them in dreams like he's been doing that is the difference between just seeing something and interpreting it like Merton says in the silence where we do not get mixed up because when the enemy comes if we are used to being wowed by all the things of the outside when he comes many believers will be deceived many believers because they're looking for the power but they've never had the presence we want a church of the presence we want to sit by the fire and if I could sit by the fire and experience his presence and never experience the power again I will take the presence every single time because the presence is full of his power and personally I have experienced more of his presence and power sitting alone than I have out on the streets doing ministry even when I was preaching and people would walk by and fall down in the street we would be worshipping in the street people would walk by the presence of God would be around the circle people that were worshipping in the streets people would walk by and fall down just out of the blue we'd be in the middle of downtown of the city we'd go outside of a strip club about 10-11 o'clock at night we'd get in a circle we'd all face inward we'd worship we're not doing a show we're not talking to anybody else we're just worshipping about 10 feet away from the strip club people would walk by boom fall down just out you could feel it and then I'd walk outside and I'd feel the presence of God and then I'd step out and I'd feel like this darkness like all of a sudden you could feel it and then I'd step in a foot and I'd feel the presence of God it was interesting the geographical territories of how God works the Bible talks about that I don't have a theology for it at the moment I'm going to preach but this is really really interesting this idea turn your notes over as we turn the corner now come in for the final half of our talk tonight before we go into our experimentation workshop we need to compartmentalize if we're going to understand the Holy Spirit we need to compartmentalize the Holy Spirit so that we understand what it means to be baptized in the Holy Spirit because there's a lot of questions like well if I accepted Christ I have the Holy Spirit what do you mean I need the Holy Spirit that is a great question and I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and the difference between the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gifts with an S of the Holy Spirit look at this we need to compartmentalize the gift of the Holy Spirit for salvation versus or and or operating in the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit there is a difference between when you finally realize that Jesus Christ is Lord you invite him into your life you are given a gift you cannot earn it it is there forever until you have it when you're in heaven it'll take you all the way through life you will have the mark the seal you are sealed in the Holy Spirit the Bible says you have a gift of the Holy Spirit I want to say that you can go to heaven and die as a Christian with that seal of a gift that's been given to you and never experience the power of the Holy Spirit and never experience the gifts of the Holy Spirit and probably rarely experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit you see the Holy Spirit is a gift who comes with gifts whether you want to go to stage two to become to a level of submission in your life or curiosity where you step into those things that is oftentimes going to be up to us can God show up like he did with Paul and just like boom hey it's not going to be up to you I'm just going to show up and make you blind and do this yeah God can do that he can totally do that but let's talk about the differences here first of all the gift of the Holy Spirit for salvation if you made a decision to follow Jesus Acts 2 38 Peter replied repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive what the gift of the Holy Spirit does it say the gifts of the Holy Spirit well the Holy Spirit comes with gifts he's got all of his gifts but even scripture itself says you don't get all the gifts everyone has at least one so there's some people that just have one really powerful gift they don't get all the other gifts so this is making a differentiation saying that when you accept Christ you are given a gift the gift of the Holy Spirit and that is a gift of grace it seals you for redemption it seals you for heaven it's awesome and now there's possibilities the way we were talking about it earlier somebody asked me this before the class I said it's like you've been given a car with the motor on idle you've been given this gift of a car it's there the power is there V8 beautiful car just and you can let that thing idle all the way to heaven if you want and you get that car and you're going to get to heaven and you're just going to put into heaven with it it's going to be awesome you got a gift of that car it's never going away but if you want to get into that bad boy bad girl get in the leather seat a little bit you know what I'm saying touch that you know that throttle a little bit all of a sudden you start throttling you know like Ferris Bueller you might take this out with Cameron's you know Ferrari you know you pull it out of the driveway pretty soon you start getting some speed start digging it take it to the desert you know just burrow around just have this huge ride in that gift then you are going to experience something that is so dramatically different than somebody who let the car idle this million dollar Ferrari idle their whole life that is still an amazing gift it's still a Ferrari you're still going to go to heaven but you're never going to get the thrill ride of your life this is the difference that between understanding the gift of the Holy Spirit and the thrill ride that it can be the gift of the Holy Spirit or the gifts of the Holy Spirit so the first is the gift for salvation Acts 2 38 next is the gifts for ministry it says brothers and sisters I want you to know about the gifts of the Holy Spirit if you look at 1 Corinthians 12 you can read through that there's tongues there's healing there's prophecy there's words of knowledge we talked about all those last week if you want a list of the gifts the Holy Spirit has all these gifts and he has more these are the ones that are listed God is eternal he is a God of gifts he is a God of extravagant gifts if you don't want to call it gifts because we want to make sure we stay scriptural and there's like hey there's a new gift that no one knows about and I got it we don't want to do that but God is a God of rewards and he's an extravagant eternal God and if you start experiencing his presence you will start experiencing certain things I've heard people experiencing like colors like that come with a with a passion like beyond words like you will experience presence there's the opportunity I'm not going to say you will for sure but I've experienced some of this where I start experiencing something with God that words cannot express it is a love that is deeper than the word love can actually comprehend it is it goes further longer you know stronger whatever it is you start experiencing this something that is of another realm that is of that is transcendent and it is in that place where God begins to show up in these gifts of the spirit but there are certain gifts that it speaks about we want to limit ourselves to those there are no extra ones like I came up with this new one but so it says brothers and sisters I want you to know about the gifts of the Holy Spirit you can check those out we will have a whole week on the gifts so we will talk about those and you're also going to get a spiritual gifts test while you're in here in this workshop and you can test those things the other thing we see now is we have the gift of the Holy Spirit then we have the gifts that he brings with him but then we also have the power so God has this power and because he is spiritually nuclear and because we are finite sometimes when God shows up I think you are going to react now I've heard it said now I've had only three times where the presence of God has come so strong on me where I've actually fallen down I've seen that happen multiple times I was in England with a group of kids and we were in a room and I got 24 kids together and God had kept telling me I had a dream the night before and all these different things that had happened and the Holy Spirit said say come Holy Spirit just get in the room gather the kids and say come Holy Spirit so I get in the room never had this happen before never done anything like at this point it was the first time this had ever happened and I get in the room circle them up and I say guys circle up I think there was 24 kids maybe and I said come Holy Spirit immediately one kid starts crying just like starts crying pretty soon a couple other kids start crying I mean it's like within a minute or two like just crying just the presence of God just fell in the room and then I went to pray for a kid I don't know if I touched him on the head or his shoulder or something like that but the kid just goes out he just like literally like passes out and I've never seen this before I hadn't done this before to this point and it was the weirdest thing because as he fell I caught him and he was big he wasn't my size but he's big and I was able it's the weirdest thing I was able to lay him down with one hand which I actually don't have the physical strength to do even at my buffest self which is not now when I was in my 20s I actually was able to lay him down so he didn't hit his head and he was actually like out straight and I laid him on the ground and then I went and touched somebody else on the shoulder pretty I don't know three four I don't know the exact number kids just as soon as I touched them boom boom now my youth group had never done this before and I had never done it before and nor was I seeking it nor had I read a book about how to do it I'd had a dream that night say come Holy Spirit somebody I have the book here Sue Giles we were staying at this woman's house and she said hey in the morning we had breakfast at her house before we went to the ministry time she said hey there's a book I was supposed to give you and it was called Come Holy Spirit I have it I almost brought it in tonight and it's by David Pitches and it said come Holy Spirit right after I'd had the dream it was like a half hour after I'd woken up from the dream and then I went to the church where they had a cafe and I got a cup of coffee at the cafe and I read a paper and the newspaper was called Come Holy Spirit so that's when I thought okay I better say come Holy Spirit so all of a sudden this power of God shows up and you know it was kind of cool because I'd never really seen it I'd seen the things on TV and all that but like I didn't know much about it that was just the beginning of God showing up in power for a very long time that was one of the first experiences if not the first experience I had where like the Holy Spirit would come now by the we did trips overseas every year for four three years we did England we did Thailand and we did Australia I went to the third Hillsong conference when they were still in their church we just ended up hey there's this worship conference called Hillsong I was like cool it was 1999 so we went to it I was like whatever it was like a small little church we went to it and worshipped we got pictures from all that but God was actually moving by the third trip we took the one to Thailand I mean we were just like we were in it like when we had a ministry time it was like it's on tonight let's do it and I started just digging it we'd gather everybody up next thing you know like people would be all over the floor like you know out people prophesying I got my back healed I had a six month back injury had a nerve and a guy said hey that's what I felt like I'm going to pray for you as he prayed for you he pushed me down I touched my toes I hadn't done it for six months I kept touching my toes so much that I sprained or I pulled my hamstrings because I kept going watch what I can do watch what I can do three days later I was running you know so that was just this power now so God has gifts but he also has power and I like the power of God and I want to walk in the power of God but the furnace has to come from that presence and then the presence will tell you what to do so that when you're like Paul walking into the synagogue some of you are going to come to church here and God is going to say I want you to pray for that person and you're going to feel awkward even doing it at church you're going to say hey I've got to have a mask on we've got to be socially distanced and all that God's going to say forget all that I want you to not forget it but do that and then tell them you know I'm going to teach you guys how to do it we're not going to have men walk up to women individually you're going to bring a woman with you from the class and you're both going to pray or God's going to say I have a word he's going to give you words to give to people and you're going to say God I have a I want to share this word with you so you're going to share these words with people I'm going to release you into the congregation not yet I'm going to release you to do that because we need a little bit of training to make sure that it's safe but there is this power but God is going to speak to you like he did with Paul walking into church he saw this man he says silver and gold have I none but in the power of the Lord Jesus what I can give you stand up and walk and it says that he stands up and the man walks and he is healed absolutely healed and so we see that with the power so the three things and then the final one that didn't end up in these notes I printed the wrong notes because I added this right before the fruit of the spirit fruit of the spirit is character issues if you can have the gifts of the spirit or the fruit choose the fruit every single time you're not sure the gifts will sustain you because the gift might not be edible but if you have fruit you can live on fruit you can live on a fruitarian diet if you can have the power or the fruit or the gifts or the fruit take the fruit it is character love joy peace self you know self-control this is one thing with the Holy Spirit as well okay I see this all the time in my Pentecostal circles and circuses and I have been a bit guilty of it myself if the Holy Spirit leads you he will not violate self-control I've seen a lot of crazy stuff happening where people just lose control of self to the point where like Paul says it's off-putting the non-believers or whatever there will be there's a balance there but realize that when the Holy Spirit moves he's going to have self-control he's going to move and you're going to have fruit it's going to be loving it's going to be kind it's going to be peaceful it's going to have that fruit if you can get all that going the presence the gift the power the fruit the gifts that's how we're supposed to live but if you can only have some go for the presence and the fruit the problem is very much of the Western church and I'm following a new publishing company from a it's called the majority it's called the majority church publishing or something like that the majority of the church two-thirds of the church is not American and not Western they operate in the gifts of the spirit the problem with our Western mind thinking and like I said last week it's father son and holy scriptures not father son and holy spirit and so we want to invite the Holy Spirit coming in for a landing to finish Holy Spirit ministry is more about presence and power he said go stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord for the Lord is about to pass by I want to talk about cultivating a presence we're going to do that tonight in our workshop time cultivating the presence and modeling it after the ministry of Jesus always want to use Jesus as our model we you know there are things that happen in the New Testament with Paul and those but they are modeling Jesus do whatever I commanded you to do so over and over again how do we model the presence one prayer Matthew 6 6 when you go to pray go to your inner room close your door and pray to the father who is in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you solitude Luke 5 16 but Jesus himself would often slip away into the wilderness and pray meditation Psalm 1 and 2 but delight in his in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night Eugene Peterson has a final quote as we finish it says classically there are three ways in which humans find try to find transcendence most human beings want to find transcendence they want to live for something bigger than themselves one of the motivating fuels and factors of what you see happening in our country and around the world today is a deep desire to be transcendent of the moment to be something bigger than you are to be a part of something larger than you are whether you completely agree with the values or not people will be swept into that because of a desire for transcendence because we live in a very temporal thin world it is very thin it has little to do with reality why is that because it is passing away the world and all that's in it passes away only the things that we do in the name of God are eternal will last forever and so the more you spend time in the presence the more that you pray you are inserting eternity into the temporal that will last you actually become transcendent when you are sitting in the presence of God when you are operating in the spirit of God when you are reading the word of God when you are loving someone not because of love but because the Holy Spirit called you to love them this is the whole idea of being in love it's ridiculous the western idea of being in love is ridiculous being in love means there's a circle and you're in it you're not leaving because you are living in love it isn't a feeling as you know that we go in and out if you're in love you don't leave love you don't you are in love and so when we do those things we actually stamp eternity into the moment and you live transcendent you actually become otherworldly you actually become more real like C.S. Lewis says you become so real he talks about going to heaven in this book the great divorce and when he walks on the grass with bare feet it's like needles on his feet because he's not real enough yet because heaven is so real even the grass will hurt your feet and God forbid it rains because he thinks it'll be like bullets going through him because heaven is so real you see if you're in the presence of God you will be real and people will know you are real and a lot of times they'll just hate that reality because they can't touch it he says classically there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence religious meaning apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus through the ecstasy of alcohol drugs recreational sex so this was one of the things he talked about was when we cannot find reality in God true reality comes in God transcendent reality comes in God then humans will seek to find things that cause them to be transcendent addiction drugs these cause you to feel transcendent when I used to do LSD I would feel transcendent it would move me and actually God would show you know one of the things LSD does is it removes the actual barriers God put in place so you couldn't see them so I won't go into a whole thing on LSD but nonetheless I saw a lot of things on LSD that I ended up experiencing in the spirit years later actually many things I experienced but it wasn't the way God meant me to experience them so we look for transcendence there we look for transcendence sexually we want to be transcendent why?

because God has made us eternal beings eternity has been birthed in our hearts we will never be satisfied here and so one of the ways to experience full peace and joy and meaning is to live in the eternal now to live in the transcendence of who God is and when we don't live in God then we're going to go for all these other things it says through the ecstasy of recreational sex and then he says through the ecstasy of crowds really interesting crowds now this is the part I put in here which I thought was so interesting church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex but at least in America almost never against the crowds we love crowds church loves crowds church loves noise church just likes all that stuff very rarely do we like the stillness of the moment so this is the bedrock as I finish this is the bedrock of the class that we're in right now the workshop the bedrock of what we're going to do is in the presence and I want to encourage you in your this week's assignment is to spend time in the presence in silence in solitude amen amen we're going to take a five minute break right now but you guys use the restrooms there's two upstairs two back there and then we're going to come back and we're going to sit in the presence of the lord and ask for his presence to come upon us all right so you