To Witness Courageously | Power for More | Rick Atchley

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, everybody. Preacher Rick here, welcoming you to the hills. It's Renew Sunday, and I want to thank all of you that were radically generous, helping us do good in the neighborhood. And if it caught you by surprise, there's still time for you to give. Every dollar collected today goes out to help people in real need in Jesus' name. Today, we're wrapping up a six-week series on the Holy Spirit, and you'll soon understand why I chose this to be the final lesson of this series. So, I heard a story of a woman who showed up at a Tuesday morning ladies' Bible class at her church, but she had been gone for about six weeks, and her friends hadn't noticed, and so they were delighted to see her and asked, where have you been? Said, well, I've been taking a first-aid course. They said, wonderful. Has it been helpful? She said, I've already used it. I was walking down the sidewalk the other day,

heard a terrible sound. Two cars going at high speed crashed into each other. It was terrible. There were bodies on the street. I heard people moaning in pain. I saw blood everywhere. I was about to pass out, and then I remembered my first-aid course, and I put my head between my knees, and I didn't faint. So, I'm thankful for the response to the series. I've gotten so many emails saying, man, I wish I had learned about the Holy Spirit 20, 30, even 60 years ago, and I understand why you're excited. I am, too, to learn all the things that are available to us when we're full of the Holy Spirit, how we can hear God's voice, how we have a spiritual gift by which we can love the people in our church, how we have someone who prays for us when we don't have the words to pray, and it's on and on, how the Holy Spirit blesses us. But here's the danger, the caution. We want to hear how the Holy Spirit will bless us instead of how the Holy Spirit will bless others through us. So, I want to remind you as we close this series

that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on purpose for a purpose. Listen to Jesus speaking about the promised gift in John 15. I will send you the Helper from the Father. He's the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father. When He comes, He will tell about me, and you also must tell people about me. So, I want you to remember this as we wrap up this series. Jesus sends you the Holy Spirit so that Jesus can send you. There's a passage at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew that's very well known. It's called the Great Commission. Jesus is giving His last marching order to His disciples. He said, I want you to go into all the world. He said, I want you to make disciples, ta'ethno, of every ethnic group. There's not a people group in the world that I don't want you to go to and teach about me. And Jesus promised to those that are obedient, I will be with you. You always and so they understood They were to go you've probably heard that But did you know that before he told them to go he told them to wait? Look at Acts 1 Jesus said do not leave Jerusalem until so implied in that is you're supposed to leave. You know that

You're not going to stay here. You're going to go but don't go Until the father sends you the gift he promised as I told you before John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit So Jesus said I want you to go But don't go until the Spirit comes and This is how Jesus is going to keep his promise This is how he was going to be with us Always no matter where we were in the world Look again at what he said in verse 8 You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witness says Telling people about me everywhere if you need another word for Christian use the word witness It's used 39 times in the book of Acts That's your identity as a believer. And here's what Jesus is promising. He's promising with Ness for our witness Think about how Jesus own ministry was launched. He went to the Jordan River. He was baptized by John he heard these words of the Father's pleasure and the Spirit descended on Jesus and Anointed him and he launched his public ministry and Jesus said it's gonna be just like that with you you wait until the Holy Spirit comes and Anoints you and then go launch the mission So have you ever considered that the Godhead was just as eager for Pentecost? To get here as the disciples were so they're waiting. They're being obedient. They're staying in Jerusalem They're meeting together. They're praying and they're praising and ten days later The promise arrived you can read about it in Acts 2 there was a sound of a mighty wind Tongues of fires were on their heads But this is important the Holy Spirit has come to the church What is the first? supernatural

manifestation of his presence When the church finally gets the Holy Spirit What is the first thing the Spirit leads the church to do? Well, it says in chapter 2 verse 11. All these people were gathered around and it said we hear them Declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues when the Holy Spirit arrives You began talking about what God is doing the Holy Spirit never fills Anybody so that they can hide in their prayer closet or in a church building You can check me on this every time in the book of Acts That a person or a church is filled with the Holy Spirit. They immediately start Courageously witnessing to Christ I'd like to tell the story of the pastor on Easter Sunday Outside his church greeting people as they left the building He shook one man's hand and said you need to join the army of the Lord He said I'm in the army of the Lord pastor said why do I only see you at Easter and at Christmas? Man said I'm in the Secret Service Okay Jesus did not give anyone that option. Okay Jesus could not fathom Anyone calling themselves a disciple of Jesus that never talked about him See I believe the challenge facing the church today That is greater than Christians living secretly sinful lives Is Christians living secretly Christian lives?

So I'm gonna ask a bold question Can you be a Christian and not be a witness? Now it's not my place to judge that's God's job, I think it's a good question Can you legitimately call yourself a believer in Jesus that never talks about him? China has been in the news a lot this past week, so I could not help but reflect about the one time in my life I went to China. It was in 2006, and a group of evangelical leaders across America were selected to go and meet with high-ranking communist officials in their government to plead for religious liberty. I had no idea why I was asked to be a part of that group, but I literally sat in a room with the Secretary of State of China, with the Cabinet Secretary of Religion over China, and we plead, especially if you would give Christian people more liberty, they would bless your nation. Every time they would hold up their constitution, said, we've already done that. It says right here in the constitution, you have freedom of religion in China. Well, yes and no. There is a state-supported church in China called the T-Self Church. I met some members of it. You could go there today, and they would sing songs that you would recognize. They would read from the Bible. You might hear a lesson that made some good points, but here's the thing. What happens in the church building stays in the church building, because if you leave the church building and you try that next week to share your faith and convert someone to Christianity, you have broken the law. You can be a Christian, you just can't tell anybody. This is why there is a huge underground church in China. Some say up to 100 million people, because they don't believe you can call yourself a Christian and not talk about Jesus. They're willing to pay the price that might bring. Can you be a Christian and not talk about Jesus?

The truth of the matter is, we've learned in the West how to do church without the Holy Spirit. We don't need a lot of courage to meet and do our programs and run our classes, sing our songs, and I've always been convicted by something written years ago by the great Christian author, A. W. Tozer. He said, if the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference. When the church pursues intimacy with the Holy Spirit, the church will inevitably pursue people who need to hear about Jesus. If the Spirit is working in us, he's going to work through us. I want to share three ways the Spirit is going to give withness to our witness. Number one, he's going to fill our witness with kindness. No one led by the Spirit is going to ever be a jerk for Jesus. We saw in week four, the Holy Spirit's changing our character, and fruit starts to grow in our life from the inside out like gentleness and patience and kindness. Listen to Paul's testimony in 2 Corinthians 6. We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, by the Holy Spirit within us and by our sincere love. You ever heard the phrase, people don't care what you know until they know that you care? That's not totally true. For example, if I have a rare cancer and there's only one doctor that knows how to cure it, I want that doctor. I don't care if he likes me or not, I care about what he knows. But for the most part, especially in questions of faith, if people don't think you care, they don't care what you think. And it's important for us to remember this, the way of Jesus is not to force people to become Christians. It is not to seek political power and make people accept Christian values and ideals.

We do not impose the faith on people. We expose the faith to people by being salt and butter. light by doing good in the neighborhood Jesus said let them see your good works and They will glorify God who is in heaven in other words kindness opens the door for witness Peter and John acts 3 are walking to the temple to pray a beggar says give me some money Peter says I'll give you something better and he heals him This man starts to walk and dance and a crowd gathers and Peter does what Peter loves to do he starts talking about Jesus because that's what you do when you're full of the Spirit and the religious authorities get angry and they call Peter and John and the Apostles before the courts and Look what Peter did It says in Acts 4 then Peter notice filled with the Holy Spirit Said to them rulers and elders of the people you're free and called to account today for an act of kindness Shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed then know this You and all the people of Israel. It's by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth Whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead that this man stands before you healed You need to know in whose name I did this good thing The Holy Spirit doesn't empower us to be kind for kindness sake but for the sake of the name of Jesus Working on this message. I remembered a story I read years ago about a man who went to India to be a missionary name was Doug Nichols couldn't speak the language yet and Shortly after he arrived he contracted tuberculosis. He didn't have any money So he was put in a government-run sanitarium He thought maybe I can witness here and he brought a lot of Christian literature, but nobody wanted it They resented that a rich American was in their sanitarium

He said he woke up about two o'clock one morning coffee there's an old man or a cot next to him trying to get out of his cot and he keeps falling down because he's too weak And he just began to softly weep That next morning Doug realized why because of the stench The man had soiled his sheets and Everybody was angry. The patients were yelling at him. The nurses yelled at him one even slapped him That next night Doug woke up again coughing and there's that little man who can't get out of his bed Doug went over picked him up. He didn't weigh much carried him to What was a filthy closet with a hole in the ground and he held him while he took care of himself And carried him back to his cot and the old man kissed him Doug was awoken the next morning with a patient who had made him a cup of tea and asked for a tract nurses and doctors and other patients asked for literature a Couple of weeks later a missionary that could speak the language came in and said Doug what's going on here? Several people have said they believe in Jesus. Now. What did you do? And Doug said I went to the toilet Because kindness opens a door for witness It's one reason why we take up money every spring our renew offering is Being kind to people we love in our city and with this money We're gonna help women who've been trafficked escape the sex industry We're gonna be there for schools and fourth graders as mentors We're gonna be there in high schools for kids who need support groups. We're gonna advocate for asylum seekers We're gonna help young kids who could never do so. Otherwise go to summer camp Why? Because we are followers of Jesus and we're not just kind to be kind. We're kind in his name And let me be clear Kindness does not earn salvation You don't go to heaven because you do good things

It does not earn salvation, but it can open the door for somebody else To find it and so we're kind in the power of the Spirit. We walk the walk But the Spirit is also going to empower us to talk the talk. He's gonna fill our witness with Truthfulness remember Jesus said the Spirit of truth will testify about me and you also will testify. In fact, it's interesting to me in That last score this course John 14 through 16. Jesus keeps talking about the Holy Spirit He could have called him the Spirit of love or the Spirit of joy or the Spirit of peace. They would all been right but every time Jesus calls him the Spirit of truth I'm gonna send the Spirit so that you have power to tell the truth. He says the Spirit comes with one agenda, the exaltation of Jesus. He doesn't seek attention. He directs attention to Christ. And so the Spirit comes and empowers our testimony with clarity so that we can be clear about who Jesus is and what He's done and the truth that He alone is Lord. So Acts 2, Peter's preaching that first sermon and when it gets to the high point, the tension point of the sermon, Peter doesn't nuance. He doesn't speak opaquely. You know exactly what his point is. He says, therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. And Acts 4, after he met with those leaders and said, we did this kindness in Jesus' name.

He said this, salvation is found in no one else for there's no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When you're filled with the Spirit, you tell the truth. And this is why. I know I'm gonna get a little edgy here. Nobody filled with the Holy Spirit would ever subscribe to this idea that God is up on this mountain and all the religions of the world are basically coming up different sides of the mountain and we're all just trying to reach the same God. It's true that most religions of the world give you tools and rituals and formulas to climb a mountain. Christianity is not like that at all. Christianity says you can never be good enough. You can never do enough. Christianity says you can't reach God. Christianity says God had to come down from the mountain. God had to come down in the person of Jesus Christ where we were and reach us because we couldn't reach him. Listen to Paul. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we're Christ ambassadors.

God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, come back to God. For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Let me be clear. No new ones. It is an insult to the character of God to say he let his son die a horrible, excruciating death on a cross when he didn't have to because there's lots of ways to go up the mountain. We are ambassadors of this message that God made him sin for us so that we could exchange our unrighteousness with his righteousness and be reconciled to God because we are covered in the blood of Jesus. Paul says you're an ambassador of that message. I got to meet the ambassador of China. I got to have lunch at his compound. I learned about ambassadors. Ambassadors don't get to say whatever they want. They don't get to worry about whether or not they're saying what they say is going to upset anybody. Ambassadors don't get to manipulate the message. They don't get to manufacture the message. Ambassadors get to deliver the message.

They were given with absolute integrity. And it doesn't matter how it's received. That's not the ambassador's worry. He's not responsible for the outcome. He's just responsible to faithfully deliver the message he was given. That's what Paul is saying. When the Spirit is near, the message about Christ will be clear. Several weeks ago, we had a wonderful day in West Fort Worth. We've been there now for a number of years, and there's a lot of under-resourced neighborhoods there that can't afford health care. And so we partnered with some other area churches to open the West Side Medical Clinic. And anybody can go to that clinic and get free health care. It is staffed by Christians from different churches. So people who maybe have never walked in a church can walk into that clinic and meet the body of Christ. And they ask them questions about their health. But you need to know they also ask them questions about their spiritual health. And they're unapologetic. We are here to help people get well in every possible way. Great evangelist in the 1800s was named D.L. Moody. He was from Chicago. And he had this one regret he wrote about in his life. He was preaching one Sunday to what he called the largest crowd he'd ever preached to. He was exhausted.

He wanted the service to be over so he could go home and rest. So we did something very atypical. He said, we're going to end the service now. You've got a lot to think about. We're going to come back next week so that you can make a decision about Christ. That night, maybe you've heard of the great Chicago fire. Consumed the city. 100,000 people lost their homes. Hundreds died, including many people who heard Moody that morning. And he said, never again will I preach the truth of Jesus and tell people, make up your mind later. I could not help but reflect about my many years as a pastor. Have I ever done that? Have I ever given you the impression that Jesus is a way but not the way? Have I ever nuanced how I presented Jesus so that nobody would be offended? Have I ever been fuzzy about the gospel? If so, I repent. I don't want a single person to walk to their car today and not know what I believe is the truth about Jesus. That he is God's own son. He came to earth perfect God, perfect man. Lived a sinless life. Died a sinner's death so that we could receive the righteousness we could never earn. He has ascended. He sits on the throne. And by the way, you don't make Jesus Lord. He's Lord. Now, you can acknowledge it and you can submit to it or you can ignore it. But he's Lord whether you make him or not.

And he is going to return again and he's going to establish his kingdom over all the earth and every knee is going to bow. I want to be as clear as I can. That's who Jesus is. And that's what he's done. And the scripture says if you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And the Holy Spirit helps us tell this with clarity. He'll never lead anybody to live a secretly Christian life. But our faithfulness is going to require some fearlessness. So one more thing he does. He fills our witness with boldness. These religious leaders could not believe the courage of the first apostles. These are country bumpkins. These are uneducated goofuses. Where did they get this courage? What's gotten into them? Wrong question. They should have asked who's gotten into them. Because when you're inhabited by God, you can't be intimidated by the world. Jesus prepared them for this. Back in Luke 12, he told them, when you're brought before synagogues, rulers, and authorities, do not worry about how you'll defend yourselves or what you'll say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say. Church, we need to believe Jesus' words. Fear will be absent when we believe that he is present and he is going to help us say what we need to say. He is not promising that you're going to suddenly become a theological scholar and that you're going to have an answer for every single question someone might ask. He's saying, you step into that moment, and I'm going to give you the boldness to say what you believe about me and to tell your story, your one thing I know testimony.

Remember John 9? Jesus healed that blind man. The religious leaders started throwing a bunch of theological bombs at him. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know. But one thing I do know, I was blind, and now I can see. And he will give you the courage to say that. And when you share how Christ has changed your life, you're declaring the wonders of God. But remember this, too. We can be bold not just because the Spirit is working in the believer, but because the Spirit is working on the unbeliever. You see, witnessing to Christ is always spiritual warfare. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, Satan has blinded you. blinded the eyes of unbelievers. Have you ever tried to talk about Jesus, and people just can't get it? They're blind. You and I can't cure blindness. God can. I love in Acts 16, 4, Paul's in Philippi, meets a woman by a river named Lydia, starts talking, and says, and God opened up her heart to receive the message. Satan blinds eyes, God opens hearts. And so we open our mouths, and we speak. The Holy Spirit is at work in the unseen world, making a way for the truth of Jesus to be received. We hear stories from our missionaries, people having dreams and having visions, and God is opening the way for them to hear about Jesus.

It's happening here in our country. You haven't been anywhere where the Holy Spirit hasn't been ahead of you. One of our evangelism ministers, Reid Overall, shared a story with me. Now, Reid and his family were in Concepcion, Chile for a number of years, sitting by our church as missionaries. And he told me about Fabian and Paulina. Fabian came to Christ. Paulina would have nothing to do with it. Paulina's father abandoned her when she was a little girl. She lost her childhood, had to grow up way too fast as a family caretaker. And so she just could not resonate with the whole idea that God is a good father. So she turned to science. She turned to rationality. She would only believe what could be measured and proven rationally. So she tolerated Fabian's faith, but had no use for it. Fabian just kept praying for his wife. And he kept inviting her to something called Alpha. It's a course for people wanting to explore faith. We do it here at our church. And she finally said yes. And there's a part of the Alpha course where you go on what they call Holy Spirit Weekend. And they're just invited to explore the Holy Spirit. And there's this part where you just spend time alone

with the Lord and see what he has for you. And Paulina had no expectation, but she did do this. She got alone and she prayed, God, if you were real, reveal yourself to me. She said power started surging through her body. She couldn't explain it, but she could feel it. But more than that, she said every memory of my childhood started flashing before me. And I could see vividly all these times in my life I felt so alone. And I saw God. I was never alone. Started to cry, but she was smiling while she was crying. Shortly after that, this woman that was embarrassed that her husband was a Christian got baptized. And she didn't just get baptized. This secular scientist put it on her Instagram so all her friends could know she had become a believer of Jesus. And I tell you that story because for Paulina, faith wasn't the result of an intellectual argument or a debate about theology. Faith came from an encounter with the Holy Spirit that she couldn't explain. See, we gotta believe that the Spirit's going more than that. See, we gotta believe that the Spirit's going with us when we testify, but we also have to believe that wherever we go, the Spirit of God's already there. So what does that mean? We're wrapping up a series, Power for More.

It means that we've gotta remember power was promised on purpose for a purpose. The Comforter doesn't come to make us comfortable. He comes to make us missionaries, to help us believe it's mission possible, not mission impossible. Disciples of every ethnic group on the earth can be made because we receive power for more, for more people to hear about Jesus. And God's table always has room for one more chair. Jesus told a story, go invite people to the Father's party. They said, well, we've invited everyone we know and there's still room. And Jesus said, then go compel them. If you're full of the Holy Spirit, you want the Father to have a full house. And there's always room for one more chair. And so what does that mean? It means that we're gonna have a full house. Who's your one? We're gonna have a full house. Who are you praying and talking to about Jesus? Do you have someone you love that's far away? Would you start praying that a person full of the Holy Spirit will enter their life? Oh, and by the way, do you know somewhere somebody is praying for somebody they love, praying that someone full of the Holy Spirit will enter their life? And that's you. Let's bow our heads. We have witness for our witness. We have power for more.

So I want us to pray. God, we declare that Jesus is Lord. He is the King of kings, and that all the world needs to know this truth. And God, we repent if we have been unclear about this, if we have been intimidated to tell the truth to our friends. And Father, we ask for more surrender to the Holy Spirit so that we can be sent as Jesus wishes. Hey, take a moment right now. God's put this on my heart. Would you pray for someone who needs Jesus, someone you know, someone you love? And would you pray that this week God would send someone full of the Holy Spirit into their life? And God, we close with Thanksgiving. We didn't stumble into Jesus. Someone told us. A parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a youth minister, a roommate, a coworker. Somebody had the courage to tell us the truth about Jesus. We thank you for that person. And we're ready to be that person for someone else. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.