Revive: Expect The Holy Spirit

So many times, we and churches get it way too far to one extreme or the other when it comes to the Holy Spirit. One of the things we often do in churches today, and I wasn't part of this group. I didn't grow up in church or anything, but but there's a a wing of Christianity, you might call it, that that made everything about the Holy Spirit. But but what they did in that wing was they would try to manufacture the working of the Holy Spirit themselves. Right? You pray until you get the spirit. You you do all these things until you see the spirit work, and you can get you can get gifts if you seek the gifts and really work at it and practice that and and like, we're controlling the holy spirit. See, that's one extreme. That's not scripturally what Jesus told us to do. There's the other extreme though that I think most of the churches I've been connected to, most of our movement goes to the other extreme, and that is you don't talk much about the Holy Spirit. [00:39:09] (64 seconds)  #HolySpiritBalance

Interesting. If you look at the armor of God in that whole passage, we don't have time to look at all of them today, but there's only one weapon that is both offensive and defensive. You know which one it is? The sword. All the other weaponry is defensive to shield against the attacks of Satan. But the sword was used both defensively and offensively. So the word of God through the leading and the teaching of the spirit and him helping us to understand what it's saying will equip us not only to defend ourselves, but to advance the work of the kingdom against the enemy that's coming up against us. You see, instead of trying to advance in our own strength, we need to advance in the strength of the holy spirit and a clear leading and teaching of the word of God. That's how we advance the work of the kingdom. [00:52:38] (54 seconds)  #WordAsSword

We can even quench the holy spirit, put out the work and the power of the spirit in our lives. So what I want us to understand today and the time we have here is the benefits of opening ourselves up to who the holy spirit is and what the holy spirit we learn from scripture does for people who are ready to receive his working in their lives. K? So we're really gonna focus on that. And and there there there are several things here. The first one is, we see repeated often in scripture that part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to comfort those that he indwells, is to bring comfort to his people. [00:42:06] (43 seconds)  #SpiritComfort

if the holy spirit left the most of the churches in America today, we could keep doing exactly what we were doing and nobody would notice. That's the church operating in its own power. It's totally separate from the working of the holy spirit. And we could cater to what people want. We could cater to what they like. We could cater to their preferences and have people come and have the appearance of godliness without the power of god. You see, when people are standing up for Christ in Iran right now, It's got nothing to do with how that'll make their life better in Iran. It's got nothing to do. Well, they've got a good program for my kids there. It's got everything to do with a personal longing to be in fellowship with God and an appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus in their lives because they're risking everything to profess the name of Jesus. [00:53:57] (71 seconds)  #SpiritNotPrograms

And it sometimes will draw a crowd, but it doesn't produce revival. Lives aren't really changed long term. Our country wasn't brought more to Jesus through all of those efforts that the churches were trying to do for all those years. In fact, the church has been in decline the whole time we've been doing that and taking that approach like we could make it happen ourselves. We can't generate revival. All we can do is get ourselves set for it, prepared for it, but it's the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit that brings revival. [00:30:17] (43 seconds)  #RevivalBySpirit

And scriptural peace that Jesus said, he described his peace. He says, no. I give you peace not as the world gives. Right? It's a different kind of peace. It's a peace that you can experience while there's wars and rumors of war, while there's tornadoes and hurricanes, while there's flooding and fires, while there's family conflict, while there's struggle in the marriage, while you can there's a presence of peace that can still be there. It's a work of the spirit. It's not something you can make happen. It's not something we can generate by our own strength, our own power, our own willpower to make it happen. [01:06:19] (39 seconds)  #SpiritPeace

He had been the one that came alongside them and helped them and comforted them and strengthened them and and helped them get through the hard things, and his his presence with them was what gave them the courage and the faith they needed to do all that Jesus was teaching them to do. And and they were gonna miss that physical presence. So Jesus says, but I'm not gonna leave you like an orphan when I go. I'm gonna give you another advocate. And he identifies that advocate as the holy spirit. The Holy Spirit comes alongside us. Remember, he will be with us, but this advocate will not just be alongside of us. Where else will he be? In us. So that no matter where we go or what we're facing, his presence is here with every one of us all the time. And it's amazing that with that promise and that gift, we still try to operate in our own strength [00:44:14] (58 seconds)  #AdvocateWithin

The holy spirit doesn't work in any way in contradiction to the sword of the spirit, the word of god. So if you feel like it's the leading of the holy spirit, but you want to be sure, how do you test that? Scripture. You test it by scripture. It's not just your emotion. It's not just how you feel about it. You can't let that because here's the thing, Satan knows how to twist your emotions and and prod your emotions and get you to feel what he wants you to feel in a moment to get you to do what he wants you to do. You can't let it be emotionally driven alone. [00:51:13] (44 seconds)  #TestByScripture