The Spirit's Arrival | Josh Leake

the book of Acts to look at how to partner with the Holy Spirit just like they did at the beginning of the church. So I, again, I just got back from Jacksonville. We took a 14-hour trip down with all the kids in the car and I am alive. I made it back. I'm happy to say we're all sane. I was a little bit worried about it. Being honest, I was kind of dreading it because my family growing up, I have four, three brothers, one sister. So five, five of us total. I'm in the middle. I'm number three of five and we would take road trips down when I was a kid in a minivan. All seven of us packed in there, 22 hours down to Florida and all five kids packed in a tin can for 22 hours. You could imagine. That was not always paradise. So I was kind of nervous about how this would go. Again, it went great. It went much better than I was thinking. But as I was driving, a couple of things I was reminded about as we were taking this trip down. First of all, drivers are some of the least empathetic people on the planet. Have you noticed this? Like, and I'm included in this. I'm included in this when I get behind the wheel. You can take somebody who is extraordinarily kind and pleasant and then you put them behind the wheel of a car in their screech. Like, they are just, it transforms people. You can be driving behind somebody like a normally very kind person driving behind somebody who's slow and they're like, "Why do they even have a license? I'm going to get these people off the road." And then the same thing happens to you. Somebody drives up fast behind you and they want to get around you and you're like, "Whoa, it's NASCAR out here." Didn't really, it was speed eraser. Okay, I hope you get pulled over. Right? Like, drivers are not empathetic people. The other thing that I was thinking about is you can have an accident on the highway that's not blocking traffic, out of the way, and you can have 30 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic because of that accident. And I was included in this wave of impatient people who saw the accident were like, "This is what we're stopped for." It's like people are all impatient and angry until they get in front of the accident and then everyone turns into Sherlock Holmes for four seconds where they're like, "What's happened?" Everybody's slowing down. Everybody goes from impatient and angry until they're studying it. No one would admit that that's them. Okay, well, it was everybody in front of me and it was me included in that. It was a stop and stare moment. Okay, what we're studying today, Acts chapter two, is a stop and stare moment like this. This is where the Holy Spirit finally descends Jesus prophesied that this would happen when he ascended into heaven and Acts chapter one. Now it finally happens. And when it happens, it's dramatic, it's loud, and there are a wide

array of reactions to it. So Acts chapter two, verse 12 shows us the reaction. It says, "Amazed and perplexed." They asked one another, "What does this mean?" This is the crowd standing around watching this moment. "Some, however, made fun of them and said, they have had too much wine." Basically, these guys are drunk. So when the Holy Spirit finally comes, when Jesus said this would happen and now it's happening, it draws stop and stare reaction from people, but then it also is people are amazed, confused, skeptical, mocking. And we're going to read what happened leading up to this, but I want to focus in on the reactions because I want you to see this moment was controversial at first. When the Holy Spirit came and baptized the believers who were all there, that was a controversial divided reaction, it drew attention and amazement and confusion. And I think this is the same today with many Christians, many believers who hear about this concept, the baptism and the Holy Spirit and the miraculous and all of the things that come with it. I think there can be just as wide of a range of emotions and reactions as there was back then. And maybe you fall in that camp where your reaction to it is maybe you have never studied this before, never really heard about it before. And so there's curiosity or confusion. Maybe you have had a bad experience with somebody that talked about the baptism in the Spirit or speaking in tongues or something like that. And so you have skepticism or frustration, whatever it is, my goal is let's cut through all of the emotions and reactions and let's just study what does the word of God say about this? And then what does this mean for us? So Acts chapter two, verse one, start right at the beginning, when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. Now most likely they are gathered on the If you studied this before, you may have heard that they were praying in the upper room when this happened, but probably it didn't happen in the upper room. Acts chapter one ends in the upper room. The believers are praying there together. But this probably happens right near the temple and we know that because what's about to happen is thousands of people are around to react to it.

And then Peter, one of the disciples, the apostles is gonna get up in preach. Verse three, they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Here's the crowd's reaction again, utterly amazed. They asked, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans, people from Galilee? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? All of this is taking place about 10 days after Jesus ascends into heaven. This is what we studied in the first week. Jesus said, when I leave, the Holy Spirit is going to fill you, you'll receive power to be my witnesses all over the world. This is that moment. This is the moment where the promise of the Holy Spirit that Jesus talked about becomes the power that gives birth to the church. All leading up to this moment right here. And what we see is an essential part of the church's DNA from day one is the baptism and the Holy Spirit and the power that comes with it. So remember, the idea of this series, Divine Partnership, is that God has something He wants to do through your life to reach other people, not just in you or for you.

There are so many good things that come in us and for us when we put our faith in Jesus. So the Bible says, when you put your faith in Jesus and you make them the king of your life, you are adopted into the family of God. You are then called a son or daughter of the king. Amazing. You also, when you put your faith in Jesus, are given a spiritual inheritance. We are given everything that Christ gets. We get all those blessings and it means when you die, you have an eternity of joy and peace and perfection in paradise. It also means through Jesus, you have access to God the Father. You don't need any human on earth. Jesus has called our High Priest, where we have access to God the Father. All amazing, incredible things we get. But that's not, it sounds like a commercial, but that's not all. That's not all that it's designed to be. There is a mission. Those are the things for your life, but God wants to do something through your life. Your life carries a mission. And some of you, my prayer during this series, and especially today, is that some of you are going to begin to discover for the first time or rediscover the mission that God has through your life

and not just things for you. That is what spirit baptism in Acts 2 is all about. It's not for the spectacle or the emotion. It's not about reaching a higher standard or higher status of spirituality. Here's what it's all about. There's the main point. The baptism of the spirit always points people to the resurrected Jesus. It's a real simple main point, but this is so important because the baptism of the spirit in Acts 2 has so many feelings and reactions and thoughts about it that get mixed up maybe based on your background, based on an experience you had, based on confusion, that sometimes we forget what the purpose is. The purpose is not having a spiritual experience or a dramatic emotional miracle. The most important part of Acts chapter 2 is what happened right after because it sets the stage for Peter to preach about how Jesus is alive. All of the people, the Jews who had come to the temple, knew who Jesus was and they thought he was a good teacher who died, but Peter gets up and says this Jesus, who you crucified, this whole miracle is pointing to the fact that he is still alive and then verse 41 of Acts chapter 2 says 3,000 people get saved, added to their number, get baptized, give their life to Jesus. So again, sometimes our background, our uncertainty,

our past experiences can color what we think about this moment or about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but if we simplify it down, it's the power to carry out God's mission for your life. It's the power to point other people to the resurrected Jesus. This is what my dad, Pastor Jeff, who was the lead pastor of this church for 35 years, I love how he talked about this. "Stay in Jerusalem until you've been clothed with power from on high." So when you're baptized in the spirit, it's like a piece of clothing you're putting on, partnering with the power of the spirit. These people, these believers, these men and women, had already been baptized in water and put their faith in Jesus. So what's happening here is a new experience where they were given power clothes for a purpose. What was the purpose? This is where we get confused based on our feelings, based on past experiences, our background, and especially because this moment drew a lot of attention. Some people feel really uncomfortable about this idea just because of the attention that it drew. I know there's some people in the room where you do not at all mind being the life of the party. You're fun and extroverted. Where are the life of the party people? If you are, you're doing a bad job of it now

'cause you should raise your hand at the very least. Okay, that's great, a couple of you. My wife is the opposite of that group of people. She does not like attention at all. And I got permission, she's right over there, I see you. I got permission to talk about this from her. About a month ago, she tripped down the stairs and hurt her foot, went to the doctor. And they were like, "You need to wear this little boot "until it heals." And she told me I am under no circumstances wearing this to church 'cause I don't want anyone to ask me about it, I don't want that kind of attention. So I thought, let's expose it for everyone to know right now and it's recorded and you can ask her about it later. I'm just kidding. No, she does not like that kind of attention, right? Everybody asking, "Oh, what happened to you?" So the attention that comes from this moment, I think for a lot of people is like, "Ah, I'm not even interested in that." 'Cause that's what people see. But the baptism in the spirit and what was happening was not about attention. And it really wasn't even about the miracle. The whole book of Acts is about people partnering with the Holy Spirit to point to one truth. And here's the truth, Jesus is alive and he is the hope of the world. Everything else in life is temporary.

It all fades away, nothing else is gonna last. There's only one hope for our broken world. It's not an economic system. It's not a political party. It's a person. It's the resurrected person of Jesus Christ who is still alive today. Somebody say, "Amen." So if Jesus was just a good idea, if Jesus was just a wise teacher and a good guy and he died and that was it, then everything that we are gathered for is nonsense. Everything is meaningless and we're wasting our time by doing this. You can live how you wanna live. And at the end of life, we're all gonna die. No one's gonna remember us. It all goes to nothing and that's it. But if Jesus was God and if he did come back to life, it's the most important news in existence. Jesus either didn't come back to life and it means absolutely nothing or he really was God and did rise again from the grave, in which case it means absolutely everything. And when you're saved and transformed by Jesus, it changes the ultimate purpose and direction of your life because God wants to reach other people through you with this news. Jesus is alive and he's the hope of the world. That's what the Holy Spirit baptism is all about.

It all boils down to that. It sometimes gets confused in the all of the things that come with it, but it's all about that. And remember, if God is gonna do something through your life, it's not gonna be you doing it on your own. You need to partner with him, divine partnership. Now again, I know there's barriers to this topic. We've mentioned it a few times. There's hesitancy about the supernatural in the room with some people, I get that. Or maybe your religious background you were raised with didn't teach this or even taught against this idea. Or maybe there's the fear of what seems to be a loss of control of the believers in this moment. So we're gonna talk about these different barriers, but again, it helps to simplify the whole point of what's happening here in Acts chapter two is all about the Holy Spirit pointing to the resurrected Jesus. That's what it's all about. And Peter, who got up and was the one who preached and pointed people to Jesus. This is the same guy who a few days earlier said to Jesus, I would die with you. When you die, I'll be right there next to you. And then when Jesus is on trial and about to be killed, Peter denies even knowing him. He actually calls down curses on himself, which is a way of swearing, giving an oath. I never knew this man.

So Peter fumbled hard right before this moment. And now this same guy, through the power of the Spirit, repent, get baptized, get saved on that day. Jesus's first command to his followers was to wait for this power. It was empowering Peter, it was empowering the believers. If you're going to be used by God, listen, you need to partner with the Holy Spirit and His guidance in your life. So we can see the Holy Spirit led the believers in Acts 2 to do a couple of things that apply to us. First of all, the Spirit led them to number one, demonstrate His power. So a couple of things happened. There was a sound of violent wind that'll quickly get everyone's attention. Then fire came and split off and rested over them. And then ordinary people, men and women from Galilee, started speaking in other earthly languages that they had never studied before. It says they were declaring the wonders of God. So again, let's simplify it 'cause this is where the cloud of experience, background, confusion comes in. Let's simplify. Speaking in tongues, this is really just a bilingual language miracle because the Jews that were surrounding them were scattered to other nations where they were living in other cultures, they spoke different languages.

And when they came back to Jerusalem to the temple for Pentecost, they hear these believers speaking in other languages and they realize there's no way that these ordinary men and women could do this without the power of the Holy Spirit. So it's a bilingual language miracle. But this passage and Holy Spirit baptism really aren't just about speaking in tongues and miracles. God was displaying something supernatural to get people's attention. And there are people who quickly gave their lives to Jesus, surrendered to Him because they recognized this has to be the power of God. When Jesus ministers to this American woman, He goes to the well where she is and He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, gives her a word of knowledge and tells her about her past marriages, the pain that she's been through, something He could never know, but the Holy Spirit gives Him that knowledge and that wisdom and He shares that with her. And I love what it leads to because we see in John 4, she goes back to her town and says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? And then the town comes out and makes their way toward Him. The Holy Spirit works through power to get people's attention,

to draw people to Himself in ways that we never can. And we still see God's power displayed in this way all the time now. Some of you heard this story if you were at revival nights last week. There's a guy who's been coming to the church for a long time, I've known him a long time, his name's Keith Gallagher. And he was having pain in one arm where he had very limited range of motion. So he could move it a little bit, but it usually caused a lot of pain and he couldn't lift it up like this. He couldn't exercise in the way that he used to. And it had been this way for over five years. So he came forward on the first night to receive prayer for healing. Nothing happened, he went back to his seat and he's praying and worshiping and he's lifting this hand. And then he doesn't even think about it. He lifts the other hand as he's worshiping and he opens his eyes and he looks at his hand and he just starts crying. And he goes home and he exercise and he has full range of motion, no pain at all, God completely healed him. Why do we talk about this? Because it points to the fact that Jesus is still alive. Come on, give it up for that.

It's not just about the miracle. The miracle points to a person. It gets the attention to point to the fact that Jesus is alive. So we still see this happen now today. When it comes to this moment of speaking in tongues, this is really one of those things that in my conversations with people, people have a really hard time with us. They get hung up on this idea or this concept. Let me just talk about a couple of things that we can get out of this passage. First of all, when the believer spoke in tongues, we know that the spirit didn't take control of them and force it to happen. Okay, would you put up verse four for me of chapter two? Here's what it says in Acts chapter two, verse four. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them. Another translation says, the spirit gave them the ability to speak. Gave them the ability. So the crucial distinction is it was an ability that they could choose to partner with, not something involuntary. It's partnership. That also means if you want to pursue this, this is not something that happens about the Bible? It is extremely rare that God ever infringed on someone's control or agency.

We see a couple of times where God does some things to move someone in a direction or to steer their heart, but most of the time that God used people, he doesn't take control. He doesn't remove their agency. It's partnership. And that's what we see here. I even struggled with this growing up. I grew up at this church, sometimes with the idea of speaking in tongues. It's like, well, isn't God just, he took over for them. The wind came, the fire came down, and then they didn't have a choice. No, no, no. The Spirit gave them the ability, but they had to choose to step out. Okay, one more thing I want to say about this. The Bible talks about two different forms of speaking in tongues. The first one is what we're seeing now, Acts chapter two, where it was a public bilingual miracle as a sign to unbelievers. So again, when they spoke out in languages, they didn't know the other Jews who had not given their life to Jesus knew there's no way that they would know these languages. This has to be the power of God. That's Acts chapter two, the public bilingual miracle. But then we also see the private speaking to God in a heavenly language that builds your faith. This is 1 Corinthians 14. If you want to study this for yourself, if you're curious about this, if you feel God kind of moving you to study right down 1 Corinthians 14 and study this, this passage has really helped me with this as well. It talks about this idea that there is the public bilingual miracle, but there's also the ability to privately speak to God in a heavenly language that no person on earth understands and it builds your faith. Okay, it's a language miracle. So my encouragement is don't give up on the Holy Spirit baptism or on the idea of speaking in tongues just because of your background or just because of your experiences with this kind of thing in the past. Our goal is let's be hungry to be used by God so we can point to the resurrected Jesus. Okay, the first thing Spirit led them to do, he leads us to do, is to display the Holy Spirit's power. Here's the second thing he led them to do is to cross cultural barriers. Again, when the believer spoke in tongues, they were speaking in languages that the other Jews recognized. They were Jews that lived in other cultures, but recognized the foreign languages that there's no way that these people from Galilee could know. So what I love is God wasn't just displaying power, the sound of wind, fire, and then Peter gets up and speaks. No, they were God, God was speaking through them, speaking their language. He was unifying different cultures around the fact that Jesus is alive. This shows us God is an intensely personal God, not just a distant force with preaching. God cares about what we call the one, the individual. This is again what we see with the moment where Jesus is ministering to the woman

at the well. When he gives her the word of knowledge, she later responds by bringing up the division culturally between Samaritans and Jews. Jesus is a Jew, this Samaritan woman, they don't get along. Jews and Samaritans hated each other. So when Jesus is talking with her, she responds and says, "Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain in Samaria, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." Basically saying, there's a divide in theology between our cultures that we can't get. But I love Jesus leaps off of the word of knowledge, the power of the spirit, and then he bridges the cultural divide and he says, "True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father speaks." Jesus is basically recognizing what she sees as a cultural barrier and is saying, it doesn't matter where you were born, it doesn't matter your background, it doesn't matter your ethnicity, your gender, you have access to God. And I love what he's saying to this woman, "God has not rejected you and God has not forgotten you." When we partner with the spirit, he will lead us to tear down barriers and to bridge over them to reach the one. Let me say this to you, there are cultural barriers, walls up even today in our culture now that make it very difficult for people to come to Jesus and we can't do it on our own. But when we work through the power of the spirit, he leads us to bridge over these cultural divides to reach the one. So first one, he displayed his power through them. Second one is he bridged cultural barriers. Number three, the last thing the Holy Spirit baptism leads us to do is to preach the resurrection. It all comes back to this one right here. It's what it's all about. Sometimes people have used God's power to draw attention to themselves. Maybe you've had that experience before, where somebody uses it to bolster their status or position or influence or they use it for their own validation. And it's a trap that any one of us can easily fall into because pride is sneaky. It's easy for us to make things about ourselves

without even realizing it. But we know that the baptism and the Holy Spirit and the power that comes with it, we know that it's legit when it passes this test, it moves credit and attention away from us and towards the resurrected King Jesus. That's what it's all about. Peter jumps off of this power display and over the cultural bridge that was built to get to the main point. What's the main point? Jesus didn't stay dead. He actually explained this by referencing the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, that the Jewish people would have been familiar with. There's an Old Testament book written by a prophet named Joel who prophesied about this moment in Acts 2. So Peter references it in Acts chapter two, verse 17, he quotes the prophet Joel. He says, "In the last days, God says, 'I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.' This is a radical idea for the culture. The idea that God's spirit was gonna be poured out not on just a few, not on just a couple of special people, but on all people. Every nation, every background, slave, free,

no matter where you came from, how much of scriptures you knew, men and women in a male dominated culture and society. This was a radical idea that Joel was prophesying about. And now Peter is saying this is what's happening now. And then he leaps into the main point that everything circulates around who Jesus was and is in verse 23. He says, "This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and for knowledge. And you with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." Everything comes back to this. Because Jesus is alive, life is not hopeless. You might be walking through some painful things this morning. Grief, the loss of someone important to you, physical, emotional pain. The reminder we have though is because Jesus is alive, our pain and suffering isn't for nothing. Because Jesus is alive, one day, all pain and suffering and evil will go away and everything will be made right. Because Jesus is alive, not only that, you have access to the Holy Spirit, the Bible says the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead will be your guide and your advocate

and your comforter and your strength. And this is what I live for, preaching that Jesus is alive. Because you know what I've found in the rest of my life? Everything else is empty. I've found that there's a lot of other good things out there, but in pursuing career, money, pleasure, every time you know what I've found, it's all temporary. Everything's gonna burn up, fade away. It's all meaningless. And what happens is most people on Earth pick one of those temporary things to be the ultimate thing that they live for. Every person in this room, whether we have consciously said it out loud or not, everyone has decided what we're living for. You're living for something. You're living for your career or your physical health or your finances or your kids or your marriage. What are you living for? Every one of us has to choose to wake up in the morning and we're living for something. The problem is is when we turn a good thing, any one of those things is good, your finances, your physical health, your marriage, your kids, things can withstand the place in your life of being the ultimate thing because every one of those things can be taken from you. And when someone has one of those good things and it's the ultimate thing, it's what the Bible calls idolatry, the problem is when any of those things are taken away you face ultimate despair. And the truth is any one of those things can be taken away from us at any second. None of us can guarantee the safety of our family or our kids or our

money or our physical health or our job. None of us guarantee that. It's all temporary. There's only one thing in existence that is eternal and that will fill you with true joy and purpose and meaning and that's the resurrected person of Jesus Christ. This is what I have experienced so deeply in my own life. It's what I live for. So there's some of you in the room that I believe the Holy Spirit is calling you to come to Jesus either for the first time or to come back to Him. You've been living for something else, something temporary. Maybe you've even been facing a little bit of despair or depression because you know living for those things that's empty. It's meaningless. It's all going to fade away. So if you want to ask Jesus to be forgiven, I'm going to give you that opportunity. This is why Jesus came to earth. He was God who came down as a man, fully God, fully man, lived a perfect life and he died on a cross in our place because each one of us has been infected by sin. The evil is not just out there in bad people. It's within each one of us. It's corrupted each one of us and the only way to be forgiven and healed and cleansed is through Jesus' death and sacrifice on the cross. God Himself came down because He loved you. He loved me so much. He died and took our place so that we have the opportunity to be forgiven. But the way you're forgiven, the Bible says you believe in your heart. You confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and that's how you receive salvation. It's not based on what you do. It's not based on a certain standard of living. You confess with your mouth you believe in your heart and then the Holy Spirit transforms you. It helps you to live more like Him. So what I want us to do is close your eyes by your heads. If that's you, you're in the room. You say I know it's me. I've never given my life to Jesus or maybe I've been living apart from Him. I need to ask for His forgiveness and I want to be transformed. I'm tired of doing life in my own strength. I'm tired of living for temporary earthly things. I want to live for something more. If that's you and you know it's you, when I count to three, what I want to ask you to do is to raise your hand. Why do I do this? When you're giving your life to King Jesus who gave his life for you on the cross, bled, suffered, and died so you could be forgiven. It's important for it

to not just be a thought in your head but for it to be an act of your will, a decision. Okay, so if that's you, I want you to be bold now. It's the most important decision you'll ever make. Ready? One, two, three. Just raise it up and say yeah that's me. I need to be forgiven. I want to come to Jesus. I want to make him the King of my life. That's beautiful. I love it. That's awesome. So proud of you guys. You could put your hands down. Now every person in the room let's pray a prayer of dedication together. Prayer of surrender to Jesus. So join me everybody in the room. Repeat after me. Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on that cross. Thank you for the pain that you endured. Thank you for bleeding on that cross in my place. So I pray, Lord forgive me. Forgive me of my sin. I want to be made right before you. I want to live for something more. So I pray, fill me with your peace. Fill me with your joy. Be the King of my life. In Jesus' name. Everybody said, Amen. Amen. Come on. Give a give a round of applause for those that made that decision. It's awesome. Let's stay to our feet together as we get ready to close. Here's what I want to do as we get ready to close this moment. It would be a real shame if we talk about the baptism and the Holy Spirit and what's happening. And we were like, cool, see ya. We should activate this. We're not going to take long. We're going to take just a couple of minutes and talk about how to do this in a really approachable way. And then I'll dismiss you and if you want to hang around the team will sing. But just stick with me for a few minutes, okay? It's 12.30. I promise we'll get you out of here soon. But this moment is really important where we activate what we were talking about, where we actually live it out. So the way it all starts is with worship. If we want to get in the right posture to say, Lord, I want to partner with you, clothe me in your power. The way we start is always by getting our eyes on Jesus. By getting our eyes on God the Father, on the Holy Spirit, saying God your couple of weeks, I would love to meet you and give you some resources to take some next steps as you follow Jesus. So write in these doors, right on your left, my right, write these double doors. I'll be out there as we're worshiping. Just slip out of your seat as the team is singing. I'd love to shake your hand and let's worship together. Would you

want me to do this? Would you lift your hands? Let's get our eyes on Jesus. Lord, we surrender ourselves to you. Before we rush out to the rest of this week, the rest of our day, we want to get our eyes on King Jesus. Your name, let's worship together. Oh, we lift up your name and sing how great, how great is our God. Sing with me, how great is our God. Oh, we'll see how great, how great is our God. I won't let sing that again, how great, how great is our God. Oh, we'll see how great, how great is our God. Oh, would you lift your voice and sing how great, how great is our God. Sing with me, how great is our God. Oh, we'll see how great is our God. Oh, we'll see you're the name of our voice. You're the name of our all names. You are worthy, worthy of all praise. And my heart will sing how great is our God. Oh, you're the name, you're the name of our all names. You are worthy of all praise. And my heart will sing how great is our God. Awesome. Okay, so this is where it starts. Give me five more minutes and then I promise we're done. Okay, but this is a really important moment right here. A couple of encouragement as we do, a Holy Spirit activation moment like in Acts 2. First thing is, this is a gift. So Jesus said to his followers, go to Jerusalem and wait for the gift. My father promised. You don't earn this. This is not based on how much you know or your background or how you've been living. Our father, our heavenly father loves to give good gifts. So you remember this has nothing to do with you. This is about him giving a gift. Okay, the second thing is it's about vocalizing. So the baptism in the Holy Spirit that we see all throughout, not just Acts, but throughout the New Testament, it's not an intellectual thing. It's something that you have to partner with and the starting point is confession. So it's like we're doing is we're worshiping out, not with our mouth, but then it's also learning to pray and to confess God's praise out loud. So we're going to do those things. We're going to sing you're the name above all names and then I'm going to lead us just to in English. Tell God how much we love them. Let's sing this again. You're the name above all names. Everybody now, come on sing. You're the name above. Come on, join me. Lift your hands and confess with your mouth. Let's sing it. Lord, we pray, fill this room with your spirit. And my heart will sing. Lord, more time to sing. Name above all names. You're the name above all names. You are worthy of all praise. And my heart will sing.

How great is our God. Okay, so this is where it starts confessing your adoration, your love for God. Join me now, let's just do that together in the room. Jesus, we're so grateful for you. If you've been around Dallas and Park just lead the way now, okay? Open your mouth, it doesn't have to be loud, but you do have to confess it. There's power and confession. Jesus, we worship you. Jesus, you're everything to me. Where would I be without you? Jesus, I love you so much. I'm so grateful for your sacrifice. If you don't know what else to say, it's not about religious words, it's about a heart and spirit connection. So you say, "Jesus, Jesus," you could just say his name, or you could say, "Jesus, I love you." But again, it has to move beyond intellect. It has to move into partnership, confessing. Jesus, I love you. You're everything to me. Yeah, we worship you, we worship you. You're everything to me. We need you, we need you. Okay, the next step is what the Bible says is just groaning out of your spirit, which is just where you say, "God, I need you." When you think about the stuff happening in your world and in your family, in our country, all of that, you just say, "Holy Spirit, I need you." This is the next step, it's not all just thinking about everything, but you're just crying out from your spirit, connecting with him. So just join me and do that. Again, if you've been around here, lead the way. Holy Spirit, we cry out for you. Jesus, we need you. Holy Spirit, I'm desperate for your strength, for your power in my life. Lord, I don't want to go another day in my own strength. I don't want to figure out life on my own, so Holy Spirit, we cry out. Lord, our country needs you. Our world needs you. Our family needs you. Our church needs you. We're crying out, "God, we need you. We need you." Okay, now in this moment, I believe the Holy Spirit's going to begin to baptize some of you. All that means is that you're going to begin to be prompted to speak in a language you don't know. So at some point, it has to move beyond, "I'm waiting for God to do this through me. Make it happen." And you just say, "I think God's prompting me to speak language, syllables, phrases, I don't know." And you have to choose to speak it out. Let's just do this for 60 seconds. Okay, if you're in the room and you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you speak in tongues, you can just do that. It doesn't need to be loud, but let's just fill the room with that sound.

And if you haven't, you can just, in English, again, Jesus, we need you. And if you feel that prompting, you take that step. Let's just take 60 seconds here. Holy Spirit, we need you. We need you. Lord, I pray for your Spirit to fall now in Jesus' name. Not for a tension, not for spectacle's sake, not for an emotion or a feeling, but so that we can point people to the resurrected Jesus. So we can point people to the true meaning of life. Lord, I pray for your Spirit to fall now when people are at their jobs, when they're in their cars. Lord, I pray baptized people in your power in Jesus' name. Let's close out the service one more time. Let's sing your name above all names. Everybody sing. You're the name above all names. You are worthy of all praise. And my heart will sing the praise. He's our God. Okay, so I'm about to dismiss you, couple encouragements. First of all, you're not waiting for a certain emotion. You're not waiting to feel something. It can happen anywhere. My friend, Kyler, who's the pastor of the north side campus of Allison Park Church, he grew up around this hearing people preach about it, talk about it. But he first experienced it alone when he was reading my dad's book on this in his basement. He was praying. He felt the Holy Spirit prompt him and he began to speak in tongues alone in his basement. There's another pastor that I love who, his name's Francis Chan. He's an author. He wrote a lot of really great books. He grew up in an environment that taught against this. Didn't believe in miracles. Didn't believe in the baptism of the Spirit, speaking in tongues. And throughout his life, as he studied the Bible more, he said, "I think this is what the Bible teaches." He was over 50 when he spoke in tongues for the first time and started to see miracles. My encouragement is, don't give up on this. If you were expecting something It's not about a specific moment or environment, it's about hungering after the power of the Spirit

so that you can accomplish the mission He has for you. Okay, let me pray over you, and then the team will stick around if you wanna worship. I pray that God's grace and His favor will carry you through this week, and I pray that as you submit and surrender your life to Him, that the Holy Spirit will lead you and speak to you in new ways. And I pray for God's rest and His peace to flood your spirit. In Jesus' name, everybody said, amen, amen. Guys, thanks for being here. If you wanna stick around in worship, you can. Have a great weekend.