Gifted! - Lesson 1: Introduction to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Well, all right. I'm excited. I don't know if you are, but I'm excited to get going. We're going to have just a wonderful time. As we get started here, I'm just going to jump right in if that's okay with you. I'm actually titling this. I know we have on there spiritual gifts and all that, but I'm just calling it gifted. I'm doing that on purpose because if you have given your life to Jesus Christ, I want you to know right off that you are gifted. We're going to just start right there and we're going to learn together, but we're going to do more than that. As we jump into this, I want to help you along the way. I'm going to talk today in an introductory type way to go over a few things to try to maybe hopefully clear up some stuff and get us launching in to where God wants to take us. Now, let me just start off and tell you a story. It's a story that happened in the mid-90s in Gardendale, Alabama. We had a lady in our church. Her name is Ms. Griffin. Ms. Griffin ran a daycare preschool slash kindergarten. It was called The Little School. Everybody knew Ms. Griffin. In fact, about half our church had gone to her school growing up. She came up to me one Sunday at the end of a service when we were praying for people. She walked up and she said, Brother David, I need you to pray for me. Of course, man, everybody knows Ms. Griffin. I'm like, okay. I said, what's going on? She said, I've been running this ministry for over 30 years. That time was about 30 something years. She said, I'm getting bad arthritis in my hands. She said, it's getting to the place that I can't grab anything. If it continues, I'll have to stop leading this school. She said, I don't think God's finished with me yet. I said, well, Ms. Griffin, man, you want God to heal your hands? She said, yes. I can still remember standing down there. I just held my hands out and she put her hands in mine and I grabbed her hands. We began to pray. As we began to pray, I said, God, I'm praying that you will heal these hands and that they will be able to function in a normal way until you're ready for her to cease her ministry. We both agreed on it, walked away, and that was it. Two weeks later, she came at the end of a service and she came walking up to me. It's so kind of funny just the way she did. She said, Brother David, I meant to tell you, I hadn't told you, but I just thought you'd probably want to know that God has healed my hands. I don't have any pain. Everything's going good. Now, I tell you all that because in 2016, Ms. Griffin, she retired from her school ministry there called the little school after 55 years of ministry. God gave her an additional 20 plus years of ministry. I tell

you that because God is in the business of bringing healing and deliverance and ministry through his people. That's what God does. And so as we get going into this, we're going to talk about that. So what's the goal? If we're going to talk about what's the goal of the course, if you, does everybody have an outline by the way? I hope so. If you don't, I don't know what to tell you. I just, oh, we have some in the back. There we are. Okay. I got myself to that point and hit a blank. I was like, well, good luck. But yeah, we've got them. They've got them back there if you need one. Okay. Here's the goal. All right. Let me just kind of lay this out because this is important to help believers. So first of all, this is for believers. I don't say you could teach on the gifts of the Holy Spirit to people that aren't believers. So to help believers, here it is, understand and unleash the gifts of the Holy Spirit into our fallen world for the building up of the body of Christ. Now, I spent a lot of time thinking through that and praying through that because I believe that is what my hope and prayer is. Now, whenever I say this, here's some things I want to just kind of add to that or clarify in that. Understanding the gifts, I believe, is essential. Without understanding what they are, their necessity, and parameters in which they function, the gifts are going to be either limited or abused. And you see it everywhere. You find churches that don't use them. I'm going to talk about this in just a minute. You find other churches that it's like a circus. And so as we come in this, we need to understand what the gifts are, what the parameters are. We're going to talk about all those things, how they function, how we walk in them, but also I'm not going to just stop there because if I stop there, we're just having a course, and I don't want a course. I want it to be more than that. And so I also said understand and unleash. Unleashing the gifts is also essential. A refusal to unleash the gifts limits the gospel and weakens the church. I don't know if you know it, but the New Testament gospel is very clear in what it is. It's not just words. It is words, but it's not just words. It's words with power. The Bible is very clear. Whenever you listen to Paul's ministry, it was a ministry of preaching the gospel with signs and wonders. That's the gospel. And so as we walk in this, we want to learn how to unleash the gifts. So my goal is that as we're walking through these together, we're not simply going to gain understanding, but we're going to begin to learn how to exercise or unleash what God's put in us. And so we're going to be talking about that, and we'll be looking at all those things. Now, let me just

go and kind of, you know, hit it in the nose starting off, and that is why all the confusion? Why all the confusion? Well, I didn't even put this in my notes, but honestly, I believe bottom line there is so much confusion in the gifts because they are the weapons of war for the church against the kingdom of darkness. And I can tell you if I was Satan, I would do everything I could to dismantle and confuse the church from using the gifts. If that was what's going to defeat me, well, man, I'm going to do everything I can to keep them from being used, or at least being used correctly. So as we walk in that, let's look at this. And so whenever it comes to it, I'm going to be sharing some things that are going to sound, if you were in the last course I did on spiritual warfare, it's going to sound similar because these two really, in this part, coincide. I mean, whenever most churches don't even know what to say about spiritual warfare. I mean, most pastors, whenever I start talking to them, it's like this silence just comes over everybody. I mean, as I've said before, I know how to clear a room of preachers out and just start talking about spiritual warfare. And man, they don't want to talk about it. And I don't mean that ugly. I'm just saying it's kind of like makes everybody kind of uneasy. Well, let me tell you, when it comes to a lot of the pastors I've been around, if I want to silence them, I just start talking about the gifts of the spirit. And he just kind of does one of those. And I don't mean that ugly against pastors. I'm just saying there is so much confusion around them that many times we just ignore them or we take ideas about them that I don't believe are biblical. So let me just say, these are things, and I've given you these kinds of things before, but I believe there's five basic groups of believers. Let me just go to first Corinthians chapter 12. And by the way, whenever I'm talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, here's where I'm going to focus. I'm going to focus on the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit in first Corinthians chapter 12. That's the ones I'm going to focus on. Okay. And I know there's others. I know there's other gifts, you know, that are in the scriptures. Romans chapter 12 has, has a group. Ephesians chapter four has a group, but I'm going to focus on those nine because one, because I believe that's the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but also because I think that's where a lot of confusion has come. And so, so let's look and we're going to start, let me just read verses one through three of first Corinthians chapter 12 and just kind of see what it says here as we get started. Okay. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when we were, you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols. However, you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one

speaking in the spirit of God ever says, Jesus is accursed. And no one can say Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit. And so he's going on and he's going to start talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit in here. Okay. As he goes. But before we go on in that, let me just say that I found there's basically five and I gave these similar because I think they're the same in the church. Groups of believers. And I'm going to call them believers. I'm not, I'm not, you know, I think there are some that are unbelievers, but I'm talking about even among believers. So let me give them to you. And you may remember some of these, but first I think there's a group of believers that are just simply the uninformed. And, and whenever he says here now concerning spiritual gifts, he doesn't want us to be uninformed. What it means. is it means without knowledge, or it means to not have information about. It's really what that means, and I think that there is a group of believers that are in that place. They just, maybe they've never been taught, or maybe they've never been talked about. I can tell you this, that in, and I can pretty well say this pretty clear, I'm not in every one of them, but I would say in the majority of evangelical seminaries, gifts of the Holy Spirit are not taught. So just know, there is an uninformed reality. The second group, I just call them the deformed, and these have an unhealthy obsession about the gifts. They focus more on the gifts than the giver. They focus more on the gifts of the Spirit than on the fruit of the Spirit, and those two must go together, and we're going to see that as we go through this. I have found this about those who function in a deformed way. Not always, but by and large, most of them are functioning in a deformed way, being independent from the body of Christ and untethered to Scripture. I had a lady back years, several years ago now. I was here, but it was still five to seven years ago, and I was actually talking to a guy that I had discipled many, many years ago, and he started churches in Seattle, and he was actually living in Colorado at the time, and he had a lady that worked for the Baptist in the state of Colorado, and he said she believes that she may have a spirit. She doesn't understand it, and she's scared, and she doesn't know what to do, and she doesn't even know how to go in, and he said, would there be any way that you could call her? I said, well, sure. So I call her, and I'm telling you all this not to talk about demons, because we went through a lot, but here was one of her issues. She was real nervous, and she was open to hear what God wanted to

say to her, but she had a lady that was talking to her, and this lady had come, and of course this woman I'm talking to grew up in a Baptist kind of environment where, man, Scripture is kind of centerpiece of what you're founded on. Baptists may do a lot of things wrong, but they're pretty focused on that, and this lady who didn't grow up Baptist but believed in dealing with demons and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and so she said I was talking to her because I felt like she could help me. She talked about things that nobody else that I knew was even talking about, and she said, so I just asked her, I said, well, how do you get words from God? And the lady said, and this is what she said to me, she said, the lady said, well, you know, I don't really read Scripture, but what I do is I just sit down and I just ask the Holy Spirit to talk to me, and I said, well, you better just run, because as I say, and I've said this for many years, and I believe it to be, well, I know it's a reality because I've been in it. Everywhere God's moving, Satan is moving, and even today in my one-year reading, if you've been reading through the one-year Bible along where we are, today's reading, Jesus says in there, He said that in those last days there will come, there will rise up false prophets who will perform signs and wonders. So just because somebody is bringing healings or getting words from God or even giving you a prophecy or anything like, does not mean they're getting that from the Spirit of God. And so what happens is there are those because of either bad teaching or no teaching that are deformed. They just, they're not tethered to Scripture, and so we're going to see about that. Let me go on to the next group. I just call them this. I just call them the misinformed. And this is where I found a lot of people. These have been under unbiblical teaching, either through man-made ideas or doctrines of demons. Either false teachers or flawed teachers have led them to develop doctrines contrary to the Word of God. They just, they just have. And it's either, you know, and I can tell you some extremes, and maybe I shouldn't be this blunt, but might as well, you know. You know, one of the things good about getting older... You know, you just… I'm not worried about my career too much, how about that? But there are… I'm going to talk about this a little bit, but there are well-known preachers, like you have probably some of their books, maybe even one or two of their study Bibles, that

believe all the gifts have ceased. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So they're going to teach everything that I am saying is wrong. That's one group. If you grew up in that, I promise you your struggle with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because you've been taught everything wrong with them, but not anything right about them. Then I have a pastor that just has poured into me, laid hands on me years ago, is just an amazing man of God. He's gone on to be with the Lord now, and his name is Jack Hayford, and you may have heard of Jack. I love reading Jack, and I loved being around Jack, and he was amazing. And his denomination is a denomination where he led it. I mean, they have in their founding documents that when you… you must be saved and then receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. And he says to me, this is him talking to me. I don't think he would mind me saying it, because he said it to me, knowing I'm a Baptist. He said, Brother David, I lead this group, but I don't believe that. He said, because I have too many Spirit-filled friends that don't speak in tongues. But there are others. I can tell you we've had people in our church, some of you may have had this happen, that at a time in this church before I got here, there were guys who told me this, had people in this church tell them they were only two-thirds of a Christian because they didn't speak in tongues. So just know that would be misinformed teaching, alright? There is that around. Now, I think… let me just clarify here. I know that the people that are Crossgates people know me. I speak in tongues. So anybody here that didn't know that, I've either made you really mad or you're going, okay, I can continue listening, okay? So I'm saying there's the misinformed. And then the next group, and this is where I find a lot of us, and maybe a lot of us even in here. I call them the informed. You've been in some good teaching. I try to teach on this. I've taught on it several times. And so you've been informed. In other words, you have a fairly good biblical understanding on the gifts of the Spirit, and you understand that, but you find yourself not really practicing the gifts. And I think that's where a lot of us find ourselves. And then let me go to the last one. You know, I just call them the Spirit-formed. And these are believers who have a biblical understanding, but are functioning by being guided by the Holy Spirit, and they are… they are practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit as God. And when I say practicing, I hope you know what I mean by that. They're exercising, they're unleashing

the gifts of the Holy Spirit, using them, they're functioning in them. And so what I'm praying for is that by the end of this time we're together, that everybody here will be in that last group, that we'll be practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That's why, again, I'm calling it gifted, because that's who we are. Okay? So as we think about that, I just wanted to go on to the next part because I'm just going ahead and trying to hit these right off so that we can move forward. And let me just tell you, as we go on into the, you know, next week, I'm going to talk a lot about some basic… answering a few questions I think that are important, and like what are the gifts and that kind of stuff. And we'll be doing that as we go, and then we'll go into detail of each one of them, and we'll talk about what they look like, how they function, and then how we walk in them. We'll be looking at all that kind of stuff along the way. But I wanted to hit this next, and I just said it this way, and that is just that question, why do the gifts have such a stigma? You know, why does it seem like the gifts have such a negative connotation, or there is an unfair idea when we think, or even sometimes a little bit of a frightening thing about the gifts? Why is it that the gifts have such a stigma? is that? Why is it that whenever I say that I speak in tongues, people get freaked out and yet Paul said, I wish all of you spoke in tongues more than I do. And nobody seems to think that wasn't inspired by the Holy Spirit. Do you see what I'm saying? Why? You know, I think there's a lot of reasons. I think that, you know, and again, I would just kind of say it this way. I've been walking in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I say this, I've been walking in for, for some, for so long, sometimes I forget, um, the many times in my life that I have wrestled through and deeply studied, ask a lot of questions. Um, because I, I just, I'm not going to accept by at face value. I want to, I want to go in and say, okay, what does the scripture really say? What is that word really mean? And then Holy Spirit, would you just bring illumination? You know, would you, I need more light on this. Would you, and then, and then step into them and learn. And so as we're going, we're, we're going to, we're going to have to look at that and we're going to go there. But sometimes I forget because I know some of you here, this may be new to you. And so right now you've got way more questions than I could answer. And, and you may have been taught in things that you, you may be saying, I just am struggling with

some things, you know, and, and I get that. Um, but let me say this, that I, I do find that, that a lot of people, um, think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in more of a denominational way. Now that's gotten less over the years. You know, it was hardcore like that until the Jesus movement and it kind of, the charismatic movement came out and just kind of blossomed and brought it everywhere. And it brought a lot of problems along with it, let me just say, and some good problems, but still things along the way. Um, and so it, it became less of a problem than, than it was, you know, but it's still pretty much, you know, in fact, I remember I had a guy, um, he, he was going to build our house. He was actually building our house in South Haven. I had just came there as a new pastor and I didn't know him from anybody. He was building it. We bought it while it was still what I say, and that was still in sticks. They just, it didn't have any sheet rock on anything, didn't have a roof, just, they were just sticks. And, um, and we buy it. And, and whenever he found out I was a Baptist preacher, he didn't want me to buy it because he'd had none of my problems from Baptist preachers. And I get that, you know, sadly many times they want the cheapest deal and don't want to, you know, and that just hacks me off big time. But anyway, um, and he was assembly of God. And so over time he tested me a couple of times. I, I still believe he ripped me off one time just to see if I would throw a fit. You know, I wanted to change a window. We wanted to have a different kind of window and he charged me a thousand bucks for it. And I just said, you know, I'm not going to say a word, even though I'm inside going, that is a rip off big time. That didn't cost you a hundred bucks. But, uh, anyway, long story short, we're out there one day and he goes, dude, he said, all right, he said, pastor, he said, pastor, you gotta be spirit filled. I said, why do you say that? He said, because I can tell it, man, you got the Holy Spirit. How are you a Baptist pastor? You know what I'm saying? In other words to him, that was denominational. There are some Baptists that whenever I talk about the Holy Spirit, there's something there. They think I'm really, you know, a charismatic in a denominational way. Does that make sense? Even I've told you this before my wife and in a time in our ministry, whenever we were still in Alabama, she, we were driving back from something and God had been moving powerful in both our lives. And she just looked at me. She said, David, how are we going to stay in a Baptist church? And I just said, I don't know, but I know that's where God's called

us. So, so again, I say that because let me give you this statement and just to understand that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not denominational, but biblical. Okay? So we need to go ahead. I'm not trying to make everybody a church of God, assembly of God, Pentecostal. That's not the goal. When I pastored the church I was in, in South Haven, they had been, nothing against them. They were, they were wonderful people, but they'd had the pastor before me that was, didn't believe the gifts. The supernatural gift still existed. And he taught it for 12 years. So whenever I came there, I didn't know that until I got there. And then I said, well, I'm not gonna touch that for a while. In fact, I'll tell you what I did. Whenever I went there, I decided, you know what, there's no need, because there were some of them really loved him, and he was a wonderful man. So I decided, you know what, I'm not gonna teach on that. What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna practice it. So people would come up to me, this is honest truth, they'd come up, brother David, just wanted you to know I'm gonna be going to have surgery on my knee on Thursday, and just wanted to know if, you know, just to pray for me. I said, can I pray now? Yeah, so how about if we go to the altar? We go to the altar, and I cannot tell you how many people got healed at the altar there. And I thought, I didn't have to say that it was a gift of healing. Just let God do his work. And so as we come into this, it's not a denominational thing.

So as we're coming in this, I'm not trying to make you anything other than biblical. As a matter of fact, at that church, I began a Sunday night series about a month after I got there on what's called, many of you who are Baptists know this, called The Baptist Faith and Message. And it's what Baptists say they believe. And I said, I'm gonna teach a study on this because I'm gonna be accused of not being a Baptist. But I promise you, I believe I'm more of a Baptist than Baptists are, because I really do believe the Bible. All of it. And so as we come into this, that's the goal. I want us to be biblical as we're walking into this. And we're thinking about this and we're praying for God to lead us in this. As a matter of fact, whenever Jesus was talking in John chapter four, he made this statement. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. So we're gonna stay within that. And I heard a guy say this, a pastor said this years ago. I thought it was a great statement just about the fact, because there is this, a part of the stigma is that we don't wanna look like some of the weirdos

we've been around. I know that some of you may have gone to some kind of church in high school or middle school or grew up in and scared you to death. Okay, I get that. And so here's what he said. This guy said, in his book, he said this. He said, the 11th commandment of the evangelical believer, thou shalt not do at all what others do badly. I thought that was pretty good. That was pretty good. By the way, the guy that wrote that, he's a Presbyterian. He wrote a book on, I love the title and it was a great book, he's a great guy. But he wrote a book called Confessions from a Charismatic Calvinist. I thought, man, that almost sounds like schizophrenia more than anything. But anyway, it's just, we wanna say, look, there are gonna be people that do stuff bad. How many of you know of preachers that do bad things? I do. Preach terrible stuff. But that doesn't mean that we need to never go back to church. Some use that as an excuse. We don't throw everything out because of the bad. We just recognize it's there. And it's the same way with the gifts of the Spirit. So we need to kinda see that. Now, let me just say that,

I'll just ask these questions. Here's a question that many believers in America, especially in, and much of the West, Western culture, whenever it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this would be their question. Do Christians still have spiritual gifts? And there are men, and I have the name, I'm not gonna say the name, but anyway, that have written books, just saying none of them, none of the supernatural gifts exist. They've all ceased. And these are guys that like know the Greek and Hebrew. These are, and you listen to a lot of them on television and have some of their books. And so it's caused an issue in the church. And so the question is, where does that idea come from? How can somebody who says they believe the Bible is inspired and can read it in the Greek, what it was written in, how could they come to that? Well, let me kinda give you. Because they want to say we're following the Bible. So here's where it kind of comes from, some of you may know this, some of you may not, but here's where it comes from, let me just give it to you quickly. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 8 through 10, this is what the Bible, you know the love chapter, it's part of the gifts of the Holy Spirit by the way, and it says this, it says, Love never ends, for as for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will

pass away. And so the idea is that these supernatural gifts were needed until the canonization of Scripture, until the church clarified we have 27 books called the New Testament. And at that point, they say, the perfect has come, so those have ceased. Okay? Does that make sense? That's actually their biblical precedence for where that comes from. It's always interesting to me that they would say tongues have ceased and prophecy has ceased, they don't say knowledge has ceased, I mean we're not all a bunch of blooming idiots suddenly because we have the Bible. I'm not going to say, but let me go on, because there's a couple of problems with this. First of all, the first problem is the verse, two verses that follow that verse. Verses 11 and 12 of 1 Corinthians 13 say this, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. And what's the then go back to? It goes when the perfect comes. Is there anybody here seeing Jesus face to face at this point that's living on this earth? Not yet. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. What is that a reference to? That's a reference to the return of Christ. In fact, that's what Paul's talking about contextually. Because in 1 Corinthians 1, look at what he says beginning in verse 4 through verse 8. Says this, I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the what? The revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in

the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul was very clear when those would cease. They would cease when Jesus returns. You don't have to prophesy about the future when the God of all creation is here. The now has come. That make sense? And so by right now, let me just kind of tell you where that's gone a little bit, and I'll tell you a funny story, and I don't want to take too long. So where that's gone now is, well, the gifts haven't ceased, but they're only now being used in areas where the gospel has never been. That's kind of where that's, because they found that using a biblical thing has been just torn to shreds. And so they tried that one, and I'll tell you a funny story. So I'm not going to at all say who it was, but I had gone to visit my dad back, this was years ago. I think I was here. And yeah, I was here, and I never thought I was known about, you know, believing in all the spiritual gifts. I never really thought I was known about anything, but I go in and the pastor, it just so happens that Sunday, he is going to begin a series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and he has in his notes that they've ceased. And then he sees me sitting over there, and let me tell you, in front of everybody, he starts crawfishing, saying, well, I'm a little nervous. nervous about starting this because Brother David's here and he wouldn't say why he was nervous but as he started going in he actually left some things out. I had a guy years ago at the last church I pastored that, long story short, he was a guy, he was pastoring a small church and he had a guy in our church that's a deacon in our church that knew him really well and long story short he had another church wanting to talk to him and he couldn't preach at his church because it was so small they couldn't come there without everybody knowing they're there. So on a Wednesday night I let him come and preach at our church. I didn't

know him but I knew the guy and trusted him. Well he comes and he starts going down, this is the honest truth, I'm sitting right here, and he starts going down the road of he's about to say the gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased and he starts down that road and I'm saying to God, I'm saying God if he takes one more step that way I'm getting up and shutting him down and honestly here's what happened, I'm telling you I'm down here praying like crazy because I don't want to embarrass him, that's where God wants him to go, but he's not about to put that garbage in my church. And he's starting to go there and all of a sudden he just stops, starts stuttering a little bit and skips that completely and goes to his last thing he's going to say. It was really awkward and you know I don't know if the church asked him to come but I can tell you I didn't have to go up and shut him down. And so what I'm saying is that that is a belief that is strong in the overall of the church, especially the evangelical church in the United States. It's sad but it's here. Now let me just say a couple of things about that. My firm belief is that these false ideas that the gifts have ceased come from a combination of several things and here's what I would say, let me just give you these and I've got another one but let me give you these. First of all I believe they come from an overreaction against false signs, fanaticism. Every one of us have seen just weirdos claiming it's the Holy Spirit and we're going, there is no way on earth that was the Holy Spirit. Second, an overestimation and I believe this is majority, an overestimation of one's personal maturity. That's the prideful idea that believers that if the gifts really existed then I would be experiencing them. In other words, they can't exist because I'm not walking in them and obviously I'm spiritually mature because I can read the Greek and the Hebrew and that is Phariseeism at the max. Okay, let me go on. Misinformed by false teachers I think is another reason. Unwillingness to be misunderstood, that means that's just a fear of man. And then bottom line is unbelief. It's just those are some of those things. I also believe there's another reason. I've given you this before. I believe it has a much bigger impact on the church in the West than we want to admit and so let me just say, I'll just ask this question. Why would so many believers be so prone to minimize and even deny the gifts of the Holy Spirit when they are so clearly taught in the New Testament? Why? And I again, I've got it I think in your notes, but I believe it's the church's cultural bias. And again, I talked about this last week or the last

time I was here, so let me just tell you another story when I was here on spiritual warfare. Let me tell you another story. I was in Tanzania. This was in 2010 and I was teaching at that time what we'd done. There was about in Tanzania around, you know, I'll give you a quick geography lesson, okay. In Eastern Africa you have Lake Victoria and around Lake Victoria you have Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, all around it. I was in Tanzania in the city there called Mwanza, it's right on the lake, and we had started through Wade Aikins who I worked with many times. At that time there was 400 churches that had been started in that area, and they were at a place where we needed to get the second, they needed some of these, these were just house church pastors, and we needed to take them to the next level. to start training them and so I went over to teach and I taught on the Trinity, I taught on the Holy Spirit, doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I taught on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I taught on spiritual warfare to all that group. And so I was there with, and the first time I went in 2010, I was with 40 of their main teachers. These were the guys that were about to go and they were going to take what I was giving them for this week and going to teach it to those 400 pastors of those churches. And so I'm in there teaching on that, but there was also the church where we were in, they had asked me, or Wade and his wife had asked, would I be willing to go teach and pray with, but teach also the women who were in the church? I said, well, heck yeah, you know, because Wade and Barbara were also teaching some stuff. So in my break time, had two of the days that I went in to just teach them about the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit, you know, and women in that area, especially the men, and I don't, just here, this is just a reality. The men are the ones who get the teaching, the women typically don't. And so this was a big deal for them and Wade and Barbara asked me, well, of course, you know. So I go in there and I don't know, I don't have any women were in there, it was a group of them. So I walk in there, we're going to be talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. So my thing is, well, how about we just start off by, let's let him, let's let the Holy Spirit demonstrate some of his power. So I get up there and I said, hey, before we get started, man, we want to pray for some people. I know some of you have some prayer needs and maybe you need a miracle or a healing in your life. Is there anybody in here that would want us to pray for you about anything? Well, they just kind of sit there because they're not used to being the ones, you know, being center stage a little bit. And one of them finally raised her hand like that. I said, hey, what do you need?

Well, of course she's talking Swahili and I don't understand it, but basically she said, I have the sickness. Well, in that area, the sickness is malaria. So I said, well, man, let's pray for her. I said, is there any, any other ladies, two other ladies raised their hands. We got to come on down here. We got down, we got them in seats and I anointed them with oil, laid hands on them, prayed for God to bring healing. As a matter of fact, as I was praying for him, I really felt impressed to literally curse the sickness. Now, where does that idea come from? Well, it actually comes from what Jesus did and we see it in Luke. Let me just read it to you. It's in Luke chapter four, but I'm just going to read 30, 38 through 41, but, but it says this, and he arose and left, talking about Jesus and left the synagogue and entered Simon's house. That's Peter's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was ill with a high fever and they appealed to him on her behalf and he stood over her and rebuked, hear that, rebuked the fever and it left her. And immediately she rose and began to serve them. Now, when that, now, why do I, why would I say, I believe he just, I believe he cast out a spirit of sickness. Why would I say that? Well, let's go on down to, it says, now when the sun was setting, all those who had any, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, many who, many who were being healed, crying, you are the son of God, but he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Christ. So I prayed that and rebuked the spirit of sickness that was on her for the fever to be broken and gone. And then, and so then I go on and I say, okay, they leave. And I says, anybody else? And one lady raises her hand and through the interpreter, I find out that her husband had complete numbness on his right side of his face. And it had come about three weeks earlier. It had started and it was even starting to droop some. Now I could have tried to come up with medical things. I don't know nothing about medical stuff. I just refer to my wife on those, but obviously something's not going well. And so I said, well, you know, why don't you come down here and you can sit in his place and I'm going to lay hands on you. We're going to pray for God to heal him. And so I prayed for God to heal the right side of his face. And so she gets up and then I start teaching on the Holy Spirit and we move on. And so then the next day comes and I've taught the men. I go back in, those women come in and they just walk in like nothing's happened, you know, like it's another day. And they sat down and of course I'm antsy. I'm like, I wonder what God did, you know? Well,

they don't say, they don't come up. They don't get excited. They don't say nothing. They're just sitting there waiting for me to teach again. And, and I can't stand it because inside I'm going, you know, of course the, the American in me said, I guess it didn't work, you know? And, and, but I can't stand it. So finally I said, I got to have a report. And so I look at the one lady. who had malaria. I says, tell me, has God done anything? And she says, the malaria is gone. As though, yeah. And the other two, it was gone. And I go over to the other lady, I said, tell me what happened? And she tells a story. She said, well, I didn't tell my husband that we prayed for him because I wanted to see what God had done. And she said this morning when he was coming after washing his face and coming to have breakfast with me, he said to her, he says, you're not going to believe it, but my face is no longer numb. It's all feels perfectly normal. And she said, and then I told him that we prayed for him. But she was not even going to, in other words, here's what I'm saying. They just assumed. I don't know. We prayed and God's bigger than Satan and killed him. Now, let me just say something real quick about that before you start saying, oh man, what great faith. I don't believe it was just faith. I believe it's culture as well. Again, I've told you this before, but just to remind you is that the African people come out of what's called animism and let me just say it again. I've given you this, but let me, let me give it to you again just to clarify, because I think it's a bigger deal than we think. Animism perceives all things, animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and in some cases, words as being animated or having life. As a result, everything is thought to have spiritual essence. Some possess good spirits, some bad spirits. So they would assume that a sickness is bad spirits. That's what, because that's what animism teaches, their culture. So when they get saved, they, you know, God's now dwelling in them. When somebody is sick, they don't necessarily call them bad spirits. What do they call them? They call them demons, right? Demons we would say are probably bad spirits and angels are good spirits. That make sense? So it's not just that they had great, I believe they did have great faith, but it's not just great faith. It's, part of it is, well, those are bad spirits and Jesus defeated bad spirits and we prayed for those bad spirits to be beaten and so they were, yeah, they're gone. Does that make sense? And, and, but with us, and I've told you this before, in America

and in the West, we have what's called a materialistic worldview and materialism is basically this. Materialism assumes all that truly exists is matter. If something cannot be detected through the five senses, it doesn't exist. Well, that's bottom line. What our culture, now humanism also, and I believe we also have a horrible evolutionary bias that is indoctrinated in us because I can tell you, probably you're kind of like me. You might even, you wouldn't want to say this, especially in our culture now because it would sound terrible, but most of us would think, well, yeah, they believed that because they're not really educated. I just want to say that's evolution mindset. That's not anything to do with academic. The vast majority of the church throughout history couldn't read or write. That's not the issue. It's not because they're just, you know, poor, helpless, dumb people, uneducated people. It has to come from a West, that's a Western culture mindset. And so with us, and I have it too, okay, I'm not throwing rocks. I think it's good to embrace the reality of our culture because it helps us understand better why do I struggle with these, especially the supernatural gifts? Why do I say whenever somebody, like I said, and God healed Ms. Griffin's hands, and immediately, and I know none of us would mean to do this, we say, well, did she go to the doctor and find out? I bet she still had arthritis. It just didn't hurt anymore. Did she go to her doctor to check it to prove it? I don't know. I'm assuming she did. All I know is she went 20 years still teaching little kids, and her hands never hurt. You see, I'm just trying to help us because as we start getting into the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I promise you, like me, you're going to be struggling with a few things, just like we did in spiritual warfare. But our struggle, and I have found this in me, sometimes it's not a struggle with Scripture, it's a struggle with my culture bias. So, as we get going, we'll just continue to look at that. And again, I've said this before, but think about the Scripture. Think about, you know, whenever we read the Scripture. You know, last time I talked about some of them, and it makes me uneasy too, so I'm not trying to... But whenever, you know, we read just not... Well, I think we have. Yeah, we're not very long if you've been walking through the one-year Bible, where Aaron took his... I think we're here. I think we've been here. He took his staff and threw it down, and it turned into a snake. How many of you believe that actually happened? I hope you do, if you believe the Bible. But what really weirds me out, I mean, that's pretty... That's over the edge to me. But

then whenever it says, and the magicians threw down their sticks, their staffs, and they turned to snakes, now we've moved into a whole other realm. But the Bible teaches that. Goliath, 9 foot tall, coat of mail that weighed 125 pounds. Can you imagine? And so whenever we read Scripture, and this is what I said last time, and I have found myself here, I tend to read it like I'm watching an Avengers movie, you know? I see the Hulk, and he's tearing things up. But I don't expect to go out and see that happen. But it's fun being in the show. And sometimes I find myself doing that when I read the Bible. Does that make sense? So whenever we come to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it's the same. We struggle in many ways with the same stuff. And so what I've said is this. I'm talking to me as much as all of us. It's the same way in spiritual warfare as it is in the spiritual gifts. And that is this truth, and I gave it to you before. I want to give it to you again. And that's simply this truth. I may not always live what I profess, but I always live what I believe. Now, it may sound like I'm stepping on toes, but I'm not trying to, but I kind of am. In other words, I may profess that I believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but if I'm not living it, I don't really believe it. And that's what I hope we can work through, because I believe everybody that's here believes in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some of you practice them often. Some of you are a little nervous about them, but want to. And my prayer is by the end of the time we're together, man, we're going to be moving on and walking in them. Amen? So let me go again to think about what did I say, and I just want to remind you what my whole goal is for us being together, is to help believers understand and unleash the gifts of the Holy Spirit into our fallen world for the building up of the body of Christ. I want us to do more than simply understand. I want to help you learn how to unleash the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some of you know how. Others of you want to. Some of you know a little bit. Some of you want to do more. All of us want to do more. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are an unveiling of God's kingdom. Just here's what I say it this way. Did I put this in your notes? Yeah, I did. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are a revelation of God's kingdom on earth. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are a revelation. Now, let me just say what I mean by that. The word revelation means to unveil. So the gifts of the Holy Spirit are an unveiling of God's kingdom. And you know Jesus actually told us to pray this? He said it this way. He says it in Matthew

chapter 6, verses 9 and 10. He says, then pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. He's talking about the unveiling of God's kingdom. And he says, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. of God's kingdom, and that includes the gifts. Now I'm gonna say some things here and I've really, I sat down today, I wrote this just thinking about, because I really want to help you. If you're struggling, I'm praying before we get done, you're gonna be shouting by the time this season's over and we move forward about what God's doing through your life. But as I was just writing, I wrote this down, I actually took it to a couple of people I trust and just said, okay, I'm gonna say this and I know I'm being biblical, but make sure that I am, what I'm about to say, or at least that you understand it that way, I know it is, I just want to make sure that it's understood. So here's what, I'm just gonna read what I wrote this morning. The Holy Spirit desires to unleash heaven on earth. That's his desire. That's been God's desire all along. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, came to earth by taking on human flesh. In other words, he has always existed, but he came, we know Philippians chapter two says this, he willingly submitted himself to the Father's will,

I only do what I see the Father doing, and functioned on earth through the Spirit's power. The Bible talks about that. He refused to use his, quote, godness while on earth to fully identify with our humanity so that he could fully redeem us from the curse of sin. He always was 100% God, but he chose to not function in his godness. The same Holy Spirit guiding him when he was on earth now dwells in every believer. Romans chapter eight tells us that. Now a key difference between the Holy Spirit's effectiveness in us and in Jesus during his earthly ministry is that Jesus was unburdened by the sinful nature. Jesus never battled with self-centered motives and desires that all of us have. He was able to commune with the Father and hear the Holy Spirit unfiltered. However, we have the Holy Spirit, but well, first Corinthians 13 I read earlier says this, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. There's filters on, we got a sinful nature, but let me say something about that. Though we now see through a glass dimly, don't forget this, we see. Don't lose sight of that. We're not blinded as unbelievers. We may not see perfectly, but we see. Though we now hear the Spirit through what I'd say

are muffled ears, praise God we hear. First Corinthians 13 verse nine says, for we know in part and we prophesy in part. Let me just say, though we now have limited divine knowledge, praise God, we have some divine knowledge. Though we now only prophesy in part, don't forget the truth, we prophesy. And so many times we look at that as a downer. I look at it as an upper. No, I'm not prophesying perfectly, but praise God. The very first sermon that was preached after the coming of the Holy Spirit said all your sons and daughters will prophesy. You know, I've told some of you this story before, but 10 years ago, now 10 and a half years ago, we were about to have our first grandchild, and Harper was gonna be born. And so, you know, the big thing, if you've either now that you're a grandparent, but if those aren't yet, the big thing is what are they gonna call you? Now, let me just say, that's, I never even thought about it till they were coming. And then I got to thinking about, wait a second, most of the grandparents I know, they're called by whatever name their grandkids wind up calling them. So I need to think about this. So we had this big conversation and it wound up, I was gonna be Papa D.

Oh, now I kinda like that, David, Papa D. And so, Kathy's already gone to Nashville and I'm in the car heading out, it's good, we're coming, it's happy, you know, so I'm driving there, it's dark, I'm driving. My brain starts running through that name. Yeah, it's a cool name, I like it. But then I got to thinking. You know, kids mispronounce names. And typically, in fact, my mom's mom wanted to be called granny until her first grandson, my oldest cousin Mark, a two-year-old, couldn't say granny and called her nanny. I never knew she wanted to be called granny. I only knew her as nanny. So I got to thinking, whatever it's shortened to is what you're gonna be. Well, let me just tell you what Papa Dee shortens to. It shortens to potty. And I wasn't about to be called potty the rest of my life. So I had to put some quick thinking in. And so I did, I went, I've got to do something. And I came up with Dee Daddy. I thought, even if you shorten that, it's still kind of Dee Daddy. And so I called and first they were like, I don't know. And then I told them that. Yeah, okay, that's a good idea. Now, let me just say, I've got eight grandkids now.

I have one of them that pretty much calls me Dee Daddy all the time. Now, let me just say that whenever he was three years old and he would come visit from Tennessee, he said that he was coming to Mr. Sippy. So, you know, it's Mr. Sippy. I thought, well, that's, and I hated whenever he quit calling it that. But he would not, he, but then I've been called Dee Dee a bunch. I still have one, even though she's five years old, she still calls me E Daddy. I'm E Daddy. And then I have another one that calls, she still calls me Dee Dee Daddy. Now, let me just say, I answered all of them. And I just want to encourage you in something. The father knows that he wants to release the gifts of the spirit through you. And he knows, I've told you before, best for all preschoolers. We're going to mess it up. We have muffled ears. Man, we're seeing through a glass dimly. We're going to mess it up. But know this, as we step out, even when we bumble it up some, he answers. He's a good father. So as we start walking in the gifts, I know what some of us are thinking.

Yeah, but what if I mess it up? Hey, listen, let's just start walking. I just trust God that he's big enough that one, he's going to hear, even in the midst of my messing up, but he's going to grow me and develop me to where maybe I understand a little better as we go. Okay, that makes sense? So I want to encourage you. That's what I want us to do. I want to, my belief, here's what I wrote down. My personal goal for you is that by the end of this semester, you will be unleashing heaven's gifts in this fallen, messed up world more than you ever imagined you would. I pray that the Holy Spirit just blows a fresh wind of his presence in your life and through us. Man, the world needs it. Our church needs it. Amen? Let me pray for us. I've gone way too long. Let me pray real quick. Father, I thank you that you are for us and not against us. You didn't bring the gifts here to bring the confusion and disunity that we have just messed it up in in so many ways. And so Father, I'm going to ask that as we walk through these time together

and we're together in this, Lord, I pray that not only will you grow us in understanding, but I pray that you will just well up in this the unleashing of your kingdom so that the people that we work with, the people in our own home, for our children, for our parents, for those that are around us, God, we will be used by you to see heaven come to earth in their lives. And God, we just say right now, we give you all the glory and pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.