God's Presence is Essential | Uncommon Culture Series

Well, we're in a series, coming to the end of a series, called Uncommon Culture, where we're walking through four values of New Beginnings Baptist Church. We started week one by talking about the Bible is true, and then week two, we address this value of every believer is called. Last week, we talked about every person is valuable, and today, we're gonna talk about this value, God's presence is essential. God's presence is essential, and we're gonna talk about the presence of the Holy Spirit in our church this morning. So, if you grabbed your Bibles, go to Luke chapter 24. As you're turning, let me just kind of remind you about importance of essential items. A few months ago, we had our electricity go out all over the county, all over, really, every county in the surrounding counties, and we were without electricity. Anybody be part of that club in the room, all right? Some of you were out of power for like two weeks. Some of us were out of power for seven or eight days. Some of you, you were out of power for a couple of hours. We don't like you very much, but you were without power for a few hours. I do love you, and five hours? Five days, okay. So, all over the map here, we've had people without power, and so, when our power went out, we had had plans that week, but immediately, everything in our planning changed.

We started looking at different items that we needed, and how do we preserve our food, and how do we go and get food, and what food sources are available, and then we started thinking about, oh, what is essential is a generator, and apparently, all of Greg and Upshur County thought so as well. By the time we got there, there were no generators, and so then, so the next few days, it was just us getting by. We only cared about what is essential for today, and then for the next day, it would take care of itself, and that's how we lived, and what we discovered was no matter how much food we had, the most essential thing that we needed was what? It was power. Like, we needed electricity. We needed air conditioning. Hello, amen? So we recognized very quickly, it didn't matter how well we did with the refrigerator, or even if we had a generator, what we needed was the power source to be reconnected so that we would have ample power, enough power to run our life, and kind of get back to life as normal, and here's why I tell that. I think for many of us in the Christian life, and for many churches,

there is a spiritual power shortage, but because we fail to see that that's the real problem and the essential need, we begin to look for secondary essentials in order to try to find in it what we should be finding through the power of God's presence. Oftentimes, we look to programs, and ministries, and structures, and Bible studies, and none of those things are necessarily bad, but they can never be a substitute for spiritual power because what is essential is God's presence, and that's where we find the essential power. This is what we're gonna look at today. So Luke chapter 24 is where we're gonna start, and let me tell you why we're gonna be in Luke. Luke is writing the Gospel of Luke. He's telling the story of Jesus, and it's one of my favorite Gospels, and here's why. Luke, in the Gospel of Luke, emphasizes the prayer life and the Holy Spirit power of Jesus more than any other of the Gospel writers. He emphasizes the prayer life of Jesus and the supernatural power that Jesus walked in more than John, more than Mark, more than Matthew, but he also does something else. He writes a sequel to Luke, the Gospel of Luke, called the Book of Acts. Some of y'all may not know that, that the Book of Acts is actually the sequel, the part two of the Gospel of Luke,

and so here's what he does. In the Book of Luke, he emphasizes the life of Jesus, specifically the prayer life and the Holy Spirit power of Jesus. In the Book of Acts, he's emphasizing the life and ministry of the church, and he emphasizes with that the prayer life and the Holy Spirit power that the church walked in, and so what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna look at Luke 24 and then Acts 1, and we're gonna see what Jesus wants to show us about his presence being essential. Luke 24, we're gonna start reading in verse 46. If you're there, say the Bible is true. That was not very convincing, by the way, just so you know. Verse 46, and he said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Now, stop there just for a minute before we get to verse 49. What's happening in this moment is that Jesus has died for the sins of the world, and he is resurrected back to life, and he is spending a few days with the disciples before he ascends back to heaven,

and what he's doing here is he's telling the disciples that this is now gonna be the mission of the church, that you have witnessed that the Son of Man came to die for the sins of the world and to be resurrected. and that salvation is found only in him. And he's telling them, you're gonna go now to all the nations and you're gonna proclaim this message. You're gonna proclaim the gospel. So in essence, this is Luke's version of the Great Commission. He is telling us the mission of the church is to go and proclaim the gospel. Now, with that backdrop, listen to verse 49. He says, and behold, I am sending you the promise of my Father upon you. The promise of the Father is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, notice what he says. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. Now, check out what's happening here. He is telling them, there is a mission that I'm calling you to, and that mission is to go and proclaim what you have seen. You have witnessed my life, my death, my burial, my resurrection, and the saving power that I have in me, and your mission is to go and take that to the world. And so, this is the idea of Matthew 28,

where he says, go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Now, that's the mission of the church, but Jesus wants us to see the power of the church. Now, notice this. He says, now, you've got this great mission, but before you go, you have to receive the promise from my Father. So what you need to do before you go on this mission, you need to stay a little bit. You need to stay into the city until you are clothed with power from on high. Now, what Jesus is talking about here is the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. So he says, go, but not yet. Before you go, you need to wait. Now, I want you to lean in for a moment and listen to why this is so important that we get 49 in context. It's because these disciples that Jesus is giving this mission to, these are disciples that have spent three years walking with Jesus. They spent three years listening to his teaching. They spent three years, they watched him. They were there when he walked on water. They were there when the leprosy was cured. They were there the day the man received his sight. They were there at the tomb the day that he says, Lazarus, wake up.

And Lazarus rose from the dead. They were there whenever Jesus fed the multitudes and they heard the teaching of the kingdom of God at the Sermon on the Mount. If anyone was prepared to go and accomplish the mission of the church, it was these disciples. I mean, they were discipled by the greatest disciple maker in all of disciple makers in disciple making history. Hello? Like, they literally, they were in the greatest seminary with the greatest professor of all time. If anyone was equipped theologically with the right education, with the right knowledge of what God's plan was, it was the men who were there with Jesus for three years while he was on earth. And yet, Jesus in this moment is saying, you got a mission, but you're not ready for it. There is a calling on your life to go and make disciples of all nations, but you don't have what it takes. You being with me is not enough. You walking with me for these three years and listening to my teachings is not enough because what you need in order to accomplish this mission is supernatural power. And so, rather than going, you need to wait. Now, here's just a question I think we should ask ourself. If the disciples who walked with Jesus, like physically for three years,

who slept where he slept, ate what he ate, listened to all of his preaching and teaching, were not ready without the power of the Holy Spirit, how in the world do you think we're ready for what God calls us to without the power of the Holy Spirit? And so, what Jesus is saying is that there's a clothing with power, this wrapping in power that you're gonna receive when the time comes, but I need you to wait for it. Now, with that in mind, I want you to flip over to Acts chapter one. Acts chapter one. Now, with any sequel that's good, like if you watch a movie or a show and they end with a cliffhanger or an overlap of telling the rest of the story, a lot of times they'll have this overlap moment. So, like if you were finishing season one, when you start season two, what's gonna happen? They're gonna put the end of season one there with the beginning of season two so you can see where the storyline is picking up. Does that make sense? Well, this is what Acts does for us. Luke ends with this ascension, but then Acts backs up before the ascension and picks back up in this dialogue that we just read in Luke 24. Look what happens in Acts chapter one.

And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem. Remember what he says? Hey, you gotta wait in the city. So, don't depart Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father. That's what he told them in Luke 24. He says, which he said, you heard from me for John. unbaptize you with water, but listen to this, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So Jesus is now telling them, you will be clothed with power from on high. What is this clothing with power from on high? There is this encounter with the Holy Spirit that they're going to experience that they had not experienced yet. Now, if you go back and read John, John shows us that Jesus has already breathed the Holy Spirit into the disciples. But there is an encounter with him that they're going to have that's going to lead them to supernatural power that's going to equip them to do the thing that God's called them to do. Let me show you this in Acts 1.8. Look what he says in verse eight. He says, but you will receive what? Say it powerfully. You will receive power.

That's better. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. Now, listen to what Jesus is saying. So you've got to wait in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high, until you encounter this presence of the Holy Spirit that the Father had promised you. And when this happens, notice what he says, you will receive power. Not you might receive power. You will receive power. When will we receive power? When the Holy Spirit comes upon you. In other words, when you are clothed with power from on high, Luke 24, what's gonna be the outcome and the evidence of this power? And you will be my witnesses. So what Jesus is telling them is this. You don't have what it takes because you've yet to be clothed or what I'm gonna use the phrase that Luke is gonna use in Acts 2. You have yet to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is gonna bring a supernatural power. The word power here is this idea of supernatural power, not natural power, supernatural power. And what it's gonna do, it's gonna equip you.

And the result of it is you're going to fulfill the mission that I've called you to. Now, here's truth number one I wanna give us. When you see that God's presence is essential, I want you to see this. I want you to see that the filling of the Holy Spirit is the power of the church. This is what Jesus wants us to see. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the power of the church. We know this because Jesus is saying, you don't have the power, you need the power. But when you receive the filling of the Holy Spirit, you will also receive power and that power is gonna lead you as a church to accomplish the mission. But you can't have the power for the mission without the presence of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus is showing us is that God's presence is essential. And how does God's presence fill the church today? It is through the infilling and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life and in the life as a corporate body. And apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit, the church of Jesus Christ does not have power at all. I want you to hear what Andrew Murray says about this filling of the Holy Spirit. He says this, he says, being filled with the Spirit is simply this, having the whole nature yielded to his power.

When the whole soul is yielded to the Holy Spirit, God himself will fill it. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the very presence of God at work in our life when we are fully yielded to him. And apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, there is no spiritual power to live the life that God's called us to live and to accomplish the mission that he's called us to accomplish. And this is, I believe, the problem in the church in America. Why is it we have more Bible studies than we've ever had? We have more access to Christian resources than we've ever had. We have more evangelism training than we've ever had. We have more Christian conferences and talk shows and radio programs and podcasts than we've ever had in the history of our nation. And yet the church has never been more powerless than it is today. Why is that? It's because somewhere along the way we have substituted our programs for Holy Spirit's presence. We have settled for ministries and Bible studies and classes rather than in desperation, dependence upon the presence of God to do in our heart what he alone can do.

You see, I hear this all the time, and specifically the Southern Baptist world, is we have this statement about the Great Commission. We say this, we say, well, God's, Jesus's last words should be our first work. And that sounds amazing. Amazing. Like you have a pastor on stage rallying for the Great Commission, says, well, Jesus's last words should be our first work. And I'm talking about there's amening, there's applauding. The problem I have with that is that what they're saying is Jesus's last words, the Great Commission, should be our first work. The problem was Jesus's last words was not the Great Commission. So I agree with the statement, Jesus's last words should be our first work. But remember this, Jesus's last words to the disciples was not the Great Commission. It was, you can't, you need the Holy Spirit, so wait on Him. And if we would ever get back to the place where the Holy Spirit's power and presence was essential for us so that we would wait for Him, we might actually see the power to accomplish the mission God is calling us to. We need the presence of God. Through the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And there is no substitute for it.

No substitute at all. And so if that's the case, then what does this look like in our life? How do we walk in the Holy Spirit's power? Let me just say this before I answer that. I'm gonna answer this for believers in the room, but let me tell you, if you're not a Christian in the room, you can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but you cannot receive the gift of the Holy Spirit without receiving the one the Spirit has pointed to, and that is Jesus Christ. Jesus died for your sins. He was resurrected for your salvation. And when you receive Him, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and you're made alive in Christ. So that now, because you have the Spirit, you now can be filled with the Spirit. And so if you're not a believer, don't start with the filling of the Spirit, start with receiving Jesus. For those of you who have received the gift of salvation, you have the gift of the Holy Spirit. In a couple of weeks, and by the way, I'm not gonna be able to unpack all of this like I would want to today. You may have more questions than answers today. That's okay, because in two weeks, I'm gonna start a series on the Holy Spirit, where, because I don't wanna just say

God's presence is essential and leave it there. Most of us don't quite understand the Holy Spirit, who He is and how He works in our life. And so I wanna come back in a couple of weeks and we're gonna actually do a four or five week series on the Holy Spirit. I want you to go back to Acts chapter one, verse eight. And I wanna say something to the Christians in the room. When Jesus says you will receive power and you will be my witnesses, those are emphatic statements, would you agree? But notice the condition that those emphatic statements, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. This reference to the Holy Spirit coming upon them, I don't believe is a reference to what we get at salvation. I believe it's a reference to the filling of the Holy Spirit that should dominate the life of a believer. So at salvation, we received the gift of the Holy Spirit. But if you look at the book of Acts, what you find is that the church of Jesus Christ, having moments where they were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and every time there was a filling of the Holy Spirit, there was a supernatural power, and that supernatural power led to supernatural courage, and that supernatural courage led to a proclamation of the gospel so that everything that Jesus promised, because when I look at the church in America, and here's where the Baptist world have,

because we're scared of the Holy Spirit, here's what we've done. We read this verse and we go, yeah, and that conversion, everything that Jesus promised, you received here. And I have a problem with that. I have a problem with that because Jesus is not a liar. And I look at the church today and I see the absolute powerlessness of the believer's life and families that don't have the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit at work. And I see churches that have great ministries, but there is no life or vibrancy of the Spirit's work. So here's what I believe, what Jesus is talking to is not about the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit that we receive at conversion, but rather the supernatural outpouring where he fills our life, dominates our life, and then empowers us to go and live this life. That's something that should happen subsequently on an ongoing basis in our life, and you see that in the book of Acts. So how do we walk in that? Let me show you. I want you to go to, let me give you the statement first. So how do we receive this? Well, the filling of the Holy Spirit is the power of the church. Well, prayer, prayer is the primary way we pursue the filling of the Holy Spirit.

So if the filling of the Holy Spirit is the power, prayer is the way that we pursue the filling of the Holy Spirit. I want you to see verse 14. Verse 14, the disciples hear Jesus say, wait till you're clothed with power, go to the upper room in Jerusalem, wait for him, he's gonna send you the promise of the Holy Spirit. Look what happens in verse 14. All these. who is all of these, all of these disciples, there's gonna be 120 of them that they count. So all of these with one accord were devoting themselves to what? To prayer. Now why were they devoting themselves to prayer? They were devoting themselves to prayer because Jesus told them to go and wait. So they go to the supper room and together, not just individually, so now you see a corporate prayer meeting happening. Why? Here's why. The disciples understood that when Jesus says, wait on the power of the Holy Spirit, he wasn't telling them to passively wait. He was talking about waiting in prayer, waiting by pursuing the presence of the Holy Spirit. He tells them, hey, you're gonna wait,

and so what do they do? They go and they pray, pray. Why? Because praying is a way that we wait for the Holy Spirit to move in our life. You see, prayer is not primarily about you getting answers to burdens that you carry or getting healing to sicknesses that you have or provision to resources that you need. The primary purpose of prayer is to meet with God. And in meeting with God, we posture our life before him in a way where we recognize that what we need is him, and if we're gonna have power, we're gonna have his presence. So prayer is not about what we get from God. It's about getting God primarily. So if God wants to give us the Holy Spirit, what do we do? We get to where God is, and we wait, and we ask for it. Didn't know what Jesus said. Jesus says this in Luke. He says, ask, seek, and knock. Ask, and it'll be given. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened. And then he goes on to this parable of what good father would, if they were to, his son asked for bread,

would give him a stone, or if he asked for a fish, would give him a serpent. In other words, if good fathers know how to give good gifts to your children, he says, how much more will your heavenly father give you good gifts? And Luke tells us what the good gift is that we should be asking, seeking, and knocking for. He says, he will give you the Holy Spirit. So what do these disciples do? They go, and verse 14, Acts 1, verse 14. They're waiting, and they're praying, and they're waiting, and they're praying. And according to the story, for 10 straight days, day and night, gathered together, and they're praying. 10 days. Now here's the question we've gotta ask. Why would they go to a room, 120 of them, and for 10 days, day and night, night and day, all they would do is pray, and they would wait, and they would pray, and they would wait. Why would they do this? Here's one answer. Desperation. These disciples watched the life of Jesus, and they knew that there was a supernatural power that Jesus worked in, that the filling of the Spirit was evident in Jesus' life, and because they understood

that Jesus' ministry was fueled by the Holy Spirit and that Jesus told them, you don't have what it takes, but if you'll wait, what I got, I'm gonna give to you. They go, and for 10 days, you say, why? What's the significance of a 10-day prayer meeting? Nothing. It just so happened that Jesus showed up with the Holy Spirit in 10 days. If he would've waited 12 days, if he would've waited 12 days, it would've been a 12-day prayer meeting. If he would've waited three months, it would've been a 90-day prayer meeting. These disciples understood they could not move one step without the power of the Holy Spirit, so in a posture of desperation, they get before the Father, and they said, we will stay as long as it takes for the Holy Spirit to fall upon us and give us the power that Jesus says we need, and we will not take one step or do one thing or get involved with one activity until he shows up and does for us what he promised he would do. What would happen in the Church of America if we got that desperate for Jesus and for the Holy Spirit? Prayer is the primary way that we pursue the presence of the Holy Spirit. The church in America, our greatest problem is not a lack of programs, it's not a lack of education.

The problem in America is a lack of power, and can I tell you why we have a lack of power? Because we have a lack of prayer. One of the greatest churches in America is in China, growing like crazy, and one of the reasons that the church is growing like it's growing is because this one particular church, this church prays around the clock every day of the year, and they've been doing this for decades. People gathered on their face before the Lord, crying out for the Holy Spirit to fall, to fall, and one pastor from this church came over to America, and he visits a church in America, and this was his statement about the American church. He says, it is amazing to me how much the American church can accomplish without the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Spirit. This is why we have become a praying church in the last few years. It's not so that we can add another thing, another program, it is we wanna become a praying church because what we're recognizing is God's presence is essential, why? Because the filling of the Holy Spirit is the power of the church and that prayer is the way that we pursue the filling of the Holy Spirit. Like, so we come together and we pray, and I love this, it was a corporate prayer gathering.

Let me help you with this. The church of Jesus Christ, let me show you what happens because they prayed. Look what happens in Acts chapter two, verse one. Acts chapter two, verse one. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. Verse 14, they were all together devoting themselves to prayer. This is 10 days afterwards and they're still together, the corporate body, and they're in one place and they're praying and what are they doing? They're waiting to be clothed with power from on high. They're waiting for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Verse two, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Verse three, and divided tongues as fire appeared to them. So in the fire in the Old Testament always represented the presence of God among his people. And so the picture is the presence of God was falling in a very supernatural way and it rested on each one of them, both young and old, men and women, all of them, they were receiving this work of the Holy Spirit and they were filled, there it is, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now I wanna say a few things about this passage.

What God is showing us here is a picture of when we wait on the Lord, the Holy Spirit falls upon us and the Holy Spirit gives us supernatural power. Now as Baptists, here's what we do, we get really uncomfortable and I read this passage of Scripture and here's why, because we run to the last phrase of this passage and we miss the whole point of what Luke is communicating. What Luke is communicating is that God's people waited for God's promise, which is the presence of the Holy Spirit, to fill them and they were filled and rather than focusing on what they were doing, which is speaking in tongues, how were they doing it? With the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. I wanna suggest to you, and I'm not gonna go into great length on this, I do believe in all the gifts of the Spirit, I do not believe this passage is teaching us that speaking in tongues is the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit. But what I will say is, what it is showing us is the supernatural evidence that we have been filled with the Spirit. So it's not what they were doing, it's how they were doing it. So a believer that's full of the Holy Spirit doesn't mean that you're gonna speak in tongues,

Paul makes that very clear, we'll actually unpack that in a few weeks about the Holy Spirit, we'll actually unpack that in a few weeks about the gifts and how the Spirit distributes it. But here's what we do know, is that Jesus said this, hey, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power and you will be my witnesses. In other words, there's gonna be a supernatural power that's gonna lead to a supernatural witness. And what do you find right here? A supernatural power that's leading to a supernatural witness. So here's what goes on, the Scripture tells us they go out into the streets and they're proclaiming in other tongues and other languages, the great works of God. What are the great works of God? Well, up until this point, the greatest work they'd ever seen God do was that he died on the cross for their sins and he was resurrected. And so what was it that these disciples full of the Holy Spirit were proclaiming? They were witnessing and testifying to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the means of salvation. But the focus that Luke is giving here is not in the unknown tongues that they were speaking in

or the known tongues that they were speaking. The point that Luke is making is that these believers who were ordinary now have been filled with a supernatural or not ordinary power that now they were walking in because the presence of the Holy Spirit was with them. Extraordinary work through common ordinary people. And we know the emphasis is not on speaking in tongues and here's why we know that. Because when the crowds look at these disciples, they're like, what in the world is going on with these guys? What does Peter do? He quotes Joel and what he does, he says, in the last days, my spirit will be poured out on all flesh and there will be young and old having visions and dreams and prophesying. In other words, what he's saying is, he's not just saying this, not emphasizing the speaking in tongues, he's saying this is what's going on in the world. but he is emphasizing, Luke is, and Peter is rather, And he's not just saying this, he's saying this is what's going on in the world. he is emphasizing the supernatural power that the believer would receive when the Holy Spirit fills them. Church, hear me say this. I think the church for far too long has operated and believers have lived

without the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, which is why our lives are being dominated by sin and why the gospel work is not effective moving out into the communities that God has called us to. It is not that the gospel has lost its power or that Jesus is not enough to change lives, but we must have the power of the Holy Spirit for apart from the Holy Spirit, eyes cannot see and ears cannot hear. This is why we as a church have become a praying church. This whole idea of God's presence is essential is not something that we've embraced very long here at New Beginnings. See, at least I can only speak for the since 2010 since I've been here. And I can say the problem with the church in America is the lack of the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I can say that without being judgmental because I can say I was one of those pastors and we were one of those churches. So let me kind of just give you the phases of New Beginnings and just share the story of what this looks like in us is that in 2010, and I don't know where the hard line would be, but for the first six or seven years of my time at New Beginnings, here's what I would say. I would not say that our statement, our value was that God's presence is essential. What I would say is God's presence

at New Beginnings was important. It was important. So at that early days, I can say that we wanted the Holy Spirit to move, that he was important, that we were open to his movement and wanted to see him work, but I would not say that it was essential. And here's why, is because whenever God's presence is essential, you will exhaust yourself seeking and chasing it. You will yearn for the Holy Spirit to move in power. But we didn't do that. And here's what's so beautiful about God's grace is that we were desiring God's presence and God would work in our church and he would show up and he honored, even though we weren't pursuing him like we needed to, he honored and he allowed us to get a glimpse of his hand, not to the extent of which we needed or now that we might have, but he was evident. But somewhere along the way, in seven or eight years down the road, nine years down the road, our heart began to drift. When I say our heart, my heart primarily began to drift. We were growing, we were becoming pretty successful as a church

and influence was expanding. And somewhere along the way, we went from God's presence is important to God's presence is welcomed. But we really don't need him. We wouldn't articulate that. But we began to make decisions based upon gifting, experience, preference, growth. Pride began to grow in my heart. Pride began to grow in some of our leader's heart. And whenever that happens, when you begin to look to your success and your ministry and your programs as your identity, all of a sudden, you begin to operate in the flesh and your own power and strength. And here's the scary part about it. You can do that for a little bit because you're gifting and your skillset and your talents can compensate at times. It doesn't substitute, but it can look like everything is the same. Does that make sense? And the scariest part of when that started happening is that we were still seeing the church growing. We were still seeing our finances stable. We were still, from the outside looking in, you would never know that our heart had drifted because we were still putting up the numbers

that people expected us to put up. But I'll tell you what was happening in my heart and what was happening in our church is there was a slow fade. We were becoming indifferent to the presence of God altogether. Bitterness grew in my heart. Sin entered my heart. I began to be frustrated with people who would stand in my way of not pursuing the things that I desired for us to pursue. And then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, here's what happened. COVID was the great X-ray of my heart and the great X-ray of new beginnings. Say, what do you mean? I looked at COVID and man, all of a sudden, the pressure of what the expectations were, all of this anger and bitterness and pride began to rise up inside of me and I couldn't make anyone happy. And that set me in a tailspin personally. Some of you've heard my story, some of you are brand new, you've not heard this. It set me in a tailspin where I was like, I don't know that I wanna do this anymore. I don't know that I wanna be a part of a church anymore. I know I can go to the secular world and probably make more money and not have the pressures and stress and expectations.

But a lot of that was because of all of the undealt with sin and bitterness and hurt that I had built up in my life because I was walking in my own strength and my own power. And when COVID and all of the social unrest of 2020 took place, I was wrecked. I'd lay in bed at night and just have the darkest thoughts, crying to the Lord, saying, I'm done. And then something happened. The Lord went silent for about six months on me. I mean, just silent. I wasn't hearing Him and it scared me to death. Then I started questioning everything about my faith, about my usefulness in the kingdom. I've harbored all of that and I would let our elders in certain places, but I just harbored all of that and I'm gonna kind of grind through it. Then I started seeing our church and I began to realize, oh man, our church is a reflection of me. I began to see how our people were talking on social media with one another. And I began to see how divided we were over social issues and COVID issues and all of the stuff that was happening. We began to look just like the world. And it hit me one day. It's like, we have a big church, but our church is not a spiritual church. It is not a mature church. And I say this, COVID did not create a crisis for new beginnings, COVID revealed it.

I was in a crisis, our church was in a crisis. And it hit me one day that the spirit of God had departed. And in November of 2020, I'll never forget, I was standing on a stage at a convention and I heard a pastor who's become a dear friend. He just confessed for the first time I heard someone else say it out loud. He confessed almost verbatim what I was feeling on the inside. And the Holy Spirit for the first time spoke to me and he just said, you're gonna lead the people to pray. And I started thinking, well, maybe prayer is the answer. So I went back, told the staff and I still, I'm in this dark hole. I can't hear from the Lord. All I know is I feel like we need to pray. And so I go back to staff and they knew something was wrong. And I just said, hey, in January, we're gonna change the schedule. We're gonna pray as a church. I just said, man, I don't feel like the spirit of God is at work in my life, not working our church. And we gotta pray. I don't know what to do except pray. This church is gonna die if we don't pray. And they said, well, what about all the groups on Wednesday nights? And I'm like, I don't care. People are gonna get mad and leave. I'm like, the Holy Spirit's already left us

and what does it matter if people do? And so it's all I heard from the Lord was that. And the Lord went quiet again. And then January 4th, about a week before we started prayer meeting, I'm sitting right over here and Pastor Daniel preaches a message on Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, which was a pre-incarnate visitation from Christ. And he wrestles with this angel and then he prevails and the Lord blesses him and he changes his name and the nation of Israel now is gonna come from his family. And there's this great moment. But the story says that God touched or Jesus touched his hip and it dislocated it. And that Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life. And I was in one of the darkest places that I was in in all of those months. And for the first time, the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to me. It was like the fog lifted from my eyes, like I cannot explain. And here's what the Lord said. He says, I have left you in this place of desperation so that you will fight. For me, because I have been fighting against him. And he says, I've need to break your hip. And I can tell you for six months, God was breaking my hip. He was bringing me to the end of myself and my pride, my arrogance and self-sufficiency.

He was showing me where our church was, not a dependence upon the Holy Spirit. And here's what he said to me. I would rather you limp the rest of your life with me than to run without me. And I'll just tell you sitting right over there, it was like, I can't describe it, it was like the fog was lifted and I was like, the Bible talks about you filled with joy, unspeakable, and full of glory. It was like being washed. And then I had clarity, I knew what I needed to do. It wasn't like the journey ended there, it was kind of just the beginning. And God began to start showing me sin in my life and unforgiveness and bitterness and people I need to reconcile relationships with. And I began to, just for months and months and months, there'd be times where I would sit down and write a sermon and God would just go, I'm not giving you a message until you listen to me. And I literally would be sitting there for sometimes days on end trying to write a sermon. And then the Lord would remind me of a relationship that was fractured. And this is no joke, the Lord would say, you gotta take care of that right now. And the moment I would take care of it, it was like the sermon that I've been trying to write for three days just came together.

Because the Lord was showing me to be dependent upon Him. January 13th, 2021, we started gathering in this room for prayer. And praise be to God, the Holy Spirit has come back. We've seen miracles, medically verified miracles. We have seen hundreds of people come to faith in Christ. We have seen addictions broken. We have seen families restored. We've seen more than a thousand people baptized in these last three years. Here's what I love the absolute most. It is that when people talk about new beginnings, for a while they would talk about the preaching and they would talk about the music and they would talk about the ministries. Here's my prayer and here's where God has changed it. Almost every week, people say, the atmosphere is different. God's presence is here. I am a broken man. What has changed in our church has nothing to do with ministry, gifting, preaching. What has happened in our church has nothing to do with God's people humble themselves and seek his face. He fills us with the Holy Spirit. I never want to do church outside of that. And I understand this is not for everybody. There are gonna be people that hear a sermon like this and some of you aren't gonna let me get to teaching on the Holy Spirit.

You may say, well, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. I wanna do this. I don't wanna do that. I wanna do this. I don't wanna do that. I just wanna be a good person. I just wanna be a good person. I just wanna be a good person. That's what God is here to teach you, teaching on the Holy Spirit. You may just assume that I'm going a place the Bible is not. But, others of you hear this and you're like, man, I just wanna come to church. And you just be like, hey, this is the church, not a church for me. I wanna pastor a church that Jesus wants to attend. And sometimes you can't pastor that church and pastor the church that everybody wants to attend. But I can say this honestly, I don't want this, but I would be more content with 50 people hungry for God's presence than with 50,000 who just wanna play the game. God's presence is essential. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the power of the church and prayer is the primary way that we pursue

the filling of the Holy Spirit. This is why Wednesday nights will be the difference maker for our church as long as I'm the pastor here. Here's what I wanna ask you to do. We're gonna end with just a song, not a song, but a prayer. I'm gonna ask everybody to stand if you would. Maybe this is resonating with you because of a season of dryness or brokenness, or maybe you're just like, man, I want the walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. Here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. If you're hungry for that in your own life personally, and I'm gonna ask everyone to bow your heads, that way this is not about who's moving and who's not moving. But you're like, I want that. I want that spirit-filled life that you're talking about. I'm gonna ask you to slip out of your seat and let's just come forward and just kneel together and let's just pray and ask for it. You say, I want to see the power of God in my life. I want to see a movement in this church. As you're coming, just kneel, and I'm gonna give you a moment to just personally ask the Holy Spirit to just do a fresh work in your life, to show you what it looks like to live a spirit-filled life. And then I'm gonna pray over us.

Just ask the Holy Spirit, will you do a fresh work in my life? When you ask that, you gotta be willing to do whatever He says. You can't be controlling your own life and be filled with the Spirit at the same time. God, we need you. Holy Spirit, we want more of you. God, we recognize that what we need is your presence. God, in many of our lives, there are things that offend and quench and grieve you, and Holy Spirit, we are sorry for that. To the best of our ability, Holy Spirit, we wanna obey whatever you say, but the truth is, we don't have the power. That's why we need you. God, we want you to let your spirit take his rightful place in the throne, this church and our life, that we would be men and women and fathers and mothers and husbands and wives and faith family that just walks in a supernatural power, Lord, that the aroma of Christ would be evident in our life. God, that when people would see us, they wouldn't just look at the programs and the activities, but Lord, there would just be an awareness that these people walk with God. Holy Spirit, let this be a place that you are willing to fill, and whatever changes you need to make in us

in order for us to have more of you, we just wanna yield ourself to you and say, make those changes. Our yes is at the altar. And I ask this in the name that is above every name, the name of Jesus, amen.