Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] We've prayed a lot, but let's pray some more.
[00:00:02] Yah. Father, I thank you for this morning and I just want to pray before I share a word. That you will come and anoint my lips, Father, that you will have your way in this time.
[00:00:10] Holy Spirit, will you come and work in our hearts? Come and convict, Come and shape.
[00:00:14] Come and mold our hearts like soft clay in your hands. Father, I want to pray, Father, if there's any lies and the enemy has stolen faith, Father, Will you come and stir faith again? Will you come and break lies this morning, Father, that we'll have faith for what is in your word and we have faith for where you're leading us.
[00:00:31] Come and have your way this morning, Lord, we are your servants, we are your followers. Jesus.
[00:00:37] Father, I want to pray that this morning will be so much more than head knowledge.
[00:00:41] But you come have your way in our hearts as well. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:00:46] Yeah. Good morning, you guys. My name is Yanku. For those of you guys who don't know me. I'm one of the elders here.
[00:00:53] Married to Leilani. She's not here, but she's coming back from South Africa tonight, which is exciting for me.
[00:01:01] Yeah. So it's a big privilege to be with you guys again this morning.
[00:01:05] And what I have for us that I believe God has put on my heart for us this morning is I'm trusting that the Lord will this morning stir faith in our hearts for things that often we kind of shy away from. And I often ask the Lord, why do you want me to always speak in into things that is maybe some would consider controversial or maybe it's things that we are uncomfortable with, but that's actually why we need to emphasize those things, because we can't just focus on our strengths. We need to actually strengthen our weaknesses. So I want this morning to lay a bit of a biblical foundation regarding the Holy Spirit and then pray for a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit by the end of the meeting. And so I know this is maybe a topic that people have different views on. And so my heart is that we would have some foundations laid, especially regarding the supernatural, because I believe there's. Yeah, there's a lot of lies going around on that front. So, yeah, I want to encourage you guys to open your heart this morning.
[00:02:01] Yeah. So I don't know if you guys know Arnold Schwarzenegger. Do you guys know who he is? Have you heard the name before?
[00:02:08] Yeah. So he's an Austrian guy from Eastern Europe, but he's. I'll Be back. Yeah. If you've watched the Terminator movie series, it's pretty old, but it's pretty good. It's actually not that good, but back in those days, I think it was. I think it's a classic. It was good. It was a classic. If you compare it to the effects these days. Sorry, I'm young. Okay. So sorry. Okay, okay. It's a good movie. It's a good movie.
[00:02:36] Okay, back to preaching.
[00:02:39] But, yeah, don't listen to me on movies. So anyways, he's a really big guy. He won Mr. World, Mr. Olympia quite a few times. He's a pretty big guy. He's a bodybuilder. Before he went into acting, he did that. But while he was still in Austria, he was very successful in bodybuilding and he won his national championship. And he had the dreams of going to the United States because they're the best trainers were. So that he could become world champ. And so he flew over to the United States so he could get the best possible training because he wants to be world champ. And he arrived at the gym with this potential trainer of him.
[00:03:17] And the trainer says, okay, show me your muscles. You know, like some of you guys would do in the mirror.
[00:03:22] I don't know if you guys do that. I'm sure some of us would.
[00:03:26] And he took off his shirt and he was like. It was flexing, but he kept his pants on, his long pants, specifically.
[00:03:33] And you know why he did that?
[00:03:35] It's because his legs weren't very impressive. He had relatively skinny legs now, compared to our legs, it was quite impressive. But.
[00:03:43] And actually, that's what we do as humans. We try to hide our weaknesses and we try to focus on our strengths. And it's actually how it works within the church, even churches, most churches.
[00:03:56] And if we don't catch ourselves, even our church, we start to have an imbalance because we start to focus on the things that we like more. And it's that one degree off. We just start drifting slowly into the things that we are comfortable with. And then we actually no longer, in the whole picture, represent Jesus fully. And so, yeah, the trainer said, I'll take you on one condition.
[00:04:15] If we only train legs for the next year and we don't touch your upper body. And he did become world champ. And so that's why often, if you'll find in our preaching that we sometimes poke on things that might be a bit uncomfortable. That's why it's because the Lord calls us to not be a Bible church. He doesn't call us to be a worshippy church. He doesn't call us to be the happy clappies. He doesn't call us to be something that we like. We are the intercessory church. But we are called to reflect Jesus fully. And so often what I'm doing as I'm asking the Lord, Lord, what are you doing in our midst? What should I preach on, Lord? What's on your heart?
[00:04:49] He'll come and show me the area where we might be lacking a little bit or area that we are lacking in faith. Does it make sense?
[00:04:56] So, yeah. You guys know that God has called us to make disciples of all nations. He commanded that to the disciples in Matthew 28, and he says, go make disciples of all nations.
[00:05:10] That's fine, thanks. Baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded and I will be with you. But the incredible thing is that if you know your scripture, you'll realize that they didn't immediately then go and make disciples. He said something else after that that we so often forget, and that's in Acts 1, he says this.
[00:05:29] On one occasion while he was eating with him, he gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:47] And then in verse 8, it says this, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you or upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
[00:06:02] And after he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hit him. So these are his last words.
[00:06:08] And so I think oftentimes we hear the call for, let's go and make disciples of all nations. Let's do this discipleship thing. Let's do this church thing.
[00:06:17] But we forget that they had another gift that they had to specifically wait for, for them to be fully empowered to do this. Well, so, yeah, I'd love us to focus on that for a moment this morning. It's incredible to think that the disciples walked with Jesus for three years, heard all his teachings, and still Jesus felt something was lacking.
[00:06:38] Even the best teaching is not sufficient to make you mature in the Lord. You guys hear that?
[00:06:46] Because I don't think Jesus was a deficient teacher. He wasn't a bad teacher. And after listening to the best teacher, eating with him, sleeping next to him for three years, still he says, there's something missing. I need my spirit to come and empower you for the work, for the work that is at hand.
[00:07:05] I think many times for us as Christians, we treat Holy Spirit a little bit like that family member that you're embarrassed about, that when people come over, you prefer to actually just close them in a room and lock the door.
[00:07:19] I don't know if you guys have that family member that during a family meeting, it can be a bit embarrassing. It feels like the Holy Spirit is like that. Sometimes in our churches, we're a little bit embarrassed about the Holy Spirit and how he actually works the Holy Spirit. We believe theoretically in the Trinity, right? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Scriptures, right?
[00:07:39] No, believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But often the Holy Spirit is a little bit like a missing person that you need to file a missing person's report for. It's as though, because it's been done so badly so many times, especially when it comes to the supernatural, especially when it comes to what would regard it as Pentecostalism or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, because it's been done in such a way that has actually hurt people, sometimes we pull away from that and we actually leave the Holy Spirit behind.
[00:08:10] So in Galatians 3:1:4, it says this. Paul is writing to this group of Christians, and he says, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?
[00:08:23] Okay, that's a church leader telling Christians you are witched. Have you heard that before? It's quite controversial. Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.
[00:08:35] I would like to learn just one thing from you.
[00:08:37] Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?
[00:08:50] Have you experienced so much in vain? If it really was in vain? And so in this context, for the Galatians, they were mostly Jews, and they were going back to circumcision or to the law as Christians. They taught in their church as believers that you have to practice the law as well. They have to be circumcised as well. And so what Paul is saying is you were birthed supernaturally as a Christian. When you got saved supernaturally, you became a Christian. It's not, I prayed the sinner's prayer, and I'm a Christian. Do you realize that when you come to Jesus and you're born again, that born again is not just a nice term? That we use spiritually, you are made new through a miracle.
[00:09:29] So if you're sitting here and you wonder, have I ever seen a miracle in real life? Yeah, you are a miracle. If you're a Christian, you were born again, you were made new. And so Paul says, but how come if you started by the spirit, how come if by a supernatural thing you were born again? You're now trying to live out this Christian walk by following the law again, by being circumcised again?
[00:09:51] I think so often for us, even though we're not going back to circumcision, we'll do exactly the same thing. We prefer to rely on our own human efforts to perfect ourselves, to disciple other people, to advance the kingdom, rather than rely on the supernatural, rather than to rely on the spirit to do the work. And I think it's so easy for us to slip into a sense of human effort.
[00:10:15] And it comes back to the same thing as Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, rather than just staying dependent on the Lord. It's the same thing. We want to be in control.
[00:10:25] We want to, in our own efforts, make ourselves clean. We want, in our own efforts, advance the kingdom.
[00:10:30] And then Paul would be. Would go so far as to say, who has bewitched you? To think that if. If your walk was started in the spirit, that you could do anything else in the Christian walk in the flesh. We need the Holy Spirit every step of the way, desperately.
[00:10:48] In 2 Timothy 3:1, 2, it says this, but mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days.
[00:10:58] People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, dis. Disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy. And then it jumps to verse five, still describing these same people. It says in verse five, they have a form of godliness, but they deny its power.
[00:11:16] Have nothing to do with such people. Some translations would say they act religiously, but they deny the power that could save them. And he's writing about Christians here.
[00:11:27] It's an incredible concept that as Christians, we can act religiously, have a form of godliness. In other words, they come to church, but they deny the actual power that can change them from the inside. And it reminds me of those scriptures in the Gospels that says, you worship me with your lips, but your heart is far from me. And he actually says to them, your worship is in vain. You teach human tradition as though they are commands from me.
[00:11:52] And it's so easy for us to fall into human tradition and to proclaim the name of Jesus. We have a form of godliness, but we deny the actual power that can change us. And so I don't believe that this is like fully us now. I don't think we would be described as lovers of themselves, money, boastful, proud, abusive. I don't think we're empty completely. But any of us could actually so easily drift in some area in our lives, one degree to a place of having a form of godliness.
[00:12:17] Coming to church. But when the Holy Spirit wants to work and we get a bit uncomfortable, we deny the actual power that could change us.
[00:12:24] Isn't it so easy for us to come to church? We love the form of godliness, but when the actual power of God wants to come and change us and we feel like, oh, it's out of my hands now. What if he takes away this part of my life like we spoke about purity last week? What if he wants to cut away a certain aspect of my life? It's easy for us to have a form of godliness, but to deny the actual power that can change us. Coming on a Sunday. It's a scary thought, eh?
[00:12:51] I'm trying to keep this very word based as we speak about the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 2, 4, 5, Paul writes on the way that he came to the Corinthian church. And he says this.
[00:13:01] My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power.
[00:13:09] So that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. And I think that's the beauty of relying on the Lord to work in supernatural ways is we can take no credit for it. He gets all the glory.
[00:13:24] He really does get all the glory if we allow him to do it his way.
[00:13:29] If we don't do it in our own effort.
[00:13:31] I think it's so easy for us to try to teach away many problems, right?
[00:13:35] If you're trying to disciple someone, or maybe we see it in churches as well that if there's a problem, we just have to teach more into it. But how many times do we actually humble ourselves before the Lord and say, holy Spirit, will you come do a work? Or how many times when you pray for someone, instead of trying to explain to them some revelation or some scripture, you just lay hands on them and you just pray and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work? And I'm not saying it's only this and not the other one, but I'm saying there is a balance where we can't just be teaching away every problem.
[00:14:05] Like Paul said, I did not come with persuasive words and human wisdom, but I came with a demonstration of his power. So I want to ask us, are we a church that is still built on the demonstrations of God's power?
[00:14:16] So just let me, let me clarify. I'm not trying to hype us up this morning, but I do want to lay a foundation biblically so that we do have faith that if God wants to move in a supernatural, powerful way in our midst, we would not be caught judging that we would not be caught quenching the Holy Spirit through our lack of faith, but we would actually be eager and open to it. So that's my heart this morning. Alright, so this is not a hype message, but I am going to speak about the supernatural.
[00:14:43] Yeah.
[00:14:44] So what I want to ask is our way of doing church still built on demonstrations of God's power? Meaning if an unbeliever walked into our church, would they say God is undeniably in your midst?
[00:14:55] If an unbeliever walked into our church, would they be able to say God is undeniably here? Wow.
[00:15:00] He demonstrated his power. And that power is not just through massive healing works or something like that. That power is also through the way that we love people, the way that he convicts us to our heart.
[00:15:13] We'll look at a scripture now where prophecy convicts an unbeliever when they come into our midst.
[00:15:18] So I want to ask us, how big a part of your life are you desperately in need of Jesus every day so that if he didn't come through, it would fall flat completely?
[00:15:31] How much of what you do if Jesus disappeared from your life would fall flat completely? How much of what you do on a Wednesday at com, if he didn't pitch up, your plans are falling flat?
[00:15:44] Actually, I tell this to our community leaders. When you're leading a comm and you're getting comfortable and you're not nervous before comm, then it means you're not actually following the Lord fully. Because if you're following the Lord, it's like Peter walking on water. It's always a little bit like, I've got no idea if this is going to work. Your God needs to come through. It's going to fall flat.
[00:16:03] And that's the place where we need to be in every part of our lives. On a Sunday, when you come to church with your prayer, to prayer meeting, when you come to make coffee, when you come to love someone, are you so desperate for him to come through that if he doesn't. You don't have a backup plan because that's what it means to truly be relying on the spirit. But as long as we are able to do it on our own strength, there's no really need for him.
[00:16:24] You know what he says in 2 Corinthians? My power is made perfect in your weakness. What's one of the main reasons why we don't see God's power?
[00:16:34] We don't operate where we are weak. We prefer to operate where we are in control, where we are strong. And it takes incredible humility and a trust of the Lord to say, God, I'm going to step out. And if you don't come through, it's going to be awkward for everyone here.
[00:16:47] But that's the exact place where it pitches up, because my power is made perfect in your weakness. Does it make sense?
[00:16:55] So, yeah, just a story of the demonstration of God's power.
[00:17:03] So in my university days while I was studying, I would often go on a lot of outreaches over the holidays. And one of the outreaches would be to the beaches in South Africa. And we would, as an outreach group, fall under a denomination that did not believe in the Holy Spirit operating at all.
[00:17:19] But most of the guys going on the outreach was 412Fiery Holy Spirit filled individuals. But they would literally call us in at the beginning of this outreach and saying, guys, we are organizing this outreach. You're not allowed to speak about the Holy Spirit to a single person for the next three weeks. And we had to submit to that because they were organizing it. It was like a nationwide outreach thing every holiday. It was actually very cool.
[00:17:41] And so we said, it's fine, we'll honor you. We won't speak about the Holy Spirit. But all of us were like praying man that God would do something. And. And to this day, I've never in my life been on outreaches or on trips where the Holy Spirit has broken out in power, like those meetings. So we would literally have a prayer meeting as the team before the kids come in. And by the time the kids come in, we are lying on the floor laughing and crying in the Lord's presence as he would like sweep through the room as he would start speaking through individuals. And then in our. So we would do youth every evening with these children. We would go out to the beaches, the holiday, invite these kids and say, let's hang out. And then it's actually a youth. So we catch them a little bit. We speak about the Lord and he would break out time after time.
[00:18:22] Most evenings like in a supernatural way where people would be falling over. And I just love that. We tried our very best to not speak about the Holy Spirit, but through the demonstrations of his power, he moved anyways. And then afterwards we had to explain the Holy Spirit to them because it kind of happened.
[00:18:41] So we were. We were fine to do that. We just had to kind of just biblically ground it. But that's. It's so cool for me how God works through the demonstrations of his power. And that's where lives are changed. So I remember one of those outreaches shortly after.
[00:18:54] I also liked working on farms just in holidays to make a bit of extra money. And one of the farms I was praying about going to, as I was praying, I felt my hands going a bit warm, which for me is a sign that God wants to use me in healing. That's not like doctrine, but for me, that's how God shows me wants to heal. So I was like, oh, this is very cool. I think I need to pray for someone as I go and work there in this time. And close to that time, someone else also sent me a word saying, I see God using you in healing. So I was like, this is great. God is going to use me. And the first day that I arrived on this farm, I was just packing boxes for two, three weeks, just fruit boxes.
[00:19:33] And the kind of manager that was going to show me around for those two weeks, he had a withered hand. Like his hand was shriveled up. He couldn't use it.
[00:19:41] I don't know how it happened. And I saw that and I was like, oh, God told me from the beginning, I need to pray for healing when I'm here. And so I laid hands on him the first day, first day on the job, lay hands on him, pray for him, and he gets healed completely. His hand is fine. And all the workers obviously know the manager, and everyone finds out about God healing this guy miraculously. And for the next two weeks, as I'm working there, just packing boxes, I've got these young guys coming to me just asking questions about the Lord. We actually had a Bible study every morning for those two weeks. And I had the opportunity to share the word with these guys. And I never went back. I don't know how these guys are doing. But through the demonstration of God's power, doors were opened for the gospel.
[00:20:25] And so I'm hoping that I'm stirring a bit of faith in us that we can be excited and expectant for these things. Right?
[00:20:33] We don't have to settle for just the mundane, even though the mundane is also very special. Right?
[00:20:39] Yeah.
[00:20:41] So I want to ask you, how often do you lay hands on, pray for the sick? Just with faith?
[00:20:46] Give it a shot. Most of the time when I pray for guys, they don't get healed, but very often they do.
[00:20:52] I'm not going to stop because they sometimes don't. I want to ask you, how often do you do that? When's the last time you prayed for someone to be filled and baptized with Holy Spirit? When's the last time you laid hands on someone? Because you can.
[00:21:03] I'm just throwing it out. I'm just having us think a bit.
[00:21:09] Yeah. In 1 Corinthians 14, verse 24 and 25, Paul says this.
[00:21:14] If an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of their sin and are brought under judgment by all.
[00:21:24] As the secrets of their hearts are laid bare, so they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, God is really among you. And so usually when we invite a family member or a friend to church, we are praying that it's a normal Sunday. Right.
[00:21:42] We are hoping that Janku doesn't preach on what he's preaching on right now.
[00:21:46] Right.
[00:21:46] That's definitely the case for me. If I were to invite my parents, well, not my parents, but maybe because they're fine with Holy Spirit things. But we're really hoping that it's a normal one and no one gets freaked out. You know, that's not biblical. According to that passage, when an unbeliever walks into your midst and someone prophesies over them, they'll be cut to the heart. They realize God sees me, they fall to their knees. They don't bow down, they fall to their knees. There's a difference saying God is truly among you.
[00:22:15] So the sign to the unbeliever is actually God's demonstrations of power as well.
[00:22:20] And so are we afraid of the Holy Spirit? Do we try to stifle him sometimes? Are we maybe erring towards in our church to quenching it? When in doubt, let's rather stay on the Word.
[00:22:32] But the Word is God breathed by the Spirit.
[00:22:37] Yeah.
[00:22:44] I want to say this. Wrong use should not lead to no use, but to right use.
[00:22:51] Wrong use or abuse shouldn't lead to no use, but to right use.
[00:22:55] And so I'm trusting that the Lord will do so much more in our midst as a church. More the supernatural. We don't go seek it like. Like as in we need this, we don't fake it. We don't conjure it up, we don't hype it, but on the other side, we can't quench it. We need to have a faith and expectation that at times when God breaks out, we're not going to be those that mock it, which we actually see in Scripture.
[00:23:18] So I don't know if you guys watched the YouTube short that was posted on the 412 website or something. It's posted on YouTube as well. In the recent European conference, there's a Dutch guy that only speaks Dutch and English, that he was in worship during the conference, this was a few months ago.
[00:23:36] And his wife taps him on the back and says, hey, do you have a tongue? Do you have a public tongue? And he doesn't have a public tongue at that point. And I love this. His response is, no, but let me ask God. And so he turns around in worship and he's like, okay. The Lord said, I need to honour my wife. I need to treat her with understanding. So he's like, lord, do I have a tongue? And the Father says, yeah, go and share. He doesn't have a tongue yet, but the Lord says, yeah, go and share. And he goes up and he shares a tongue. And in that tongue he speaks fluent.
[00:24:06] A fluent Chinese dialect. So he speaks a language only spoken in China, but it's like in a very rural area. And in the meeting at that time, there's a guy from that area in the small part of China, and he hears it word for word. He doesn't interpret. He doesn't get an interpretation from the Lord. He just translates it because he understands the language.
[00:24:25] And two other people also come to the elders. And so there's three people, one of which understands it because it's his language. The other two just feel an interpretation in the Lord. They come to the elders and say, this is what we feel. And the other two guys who can't speak the language confirm perfectly what the person said. And this happened a few months ago in one of our churches, one of the 412 churches. So I don't know when's the last time you heard about people in our midst speaking in actual other languages?
[00:24:50] I've got a friend that speaks fluent Spanish because the Lord just gave it to her. She went on outreach to South America for a few weeks. When she came back, she was fluent in Spanish to this day.
[00:25:01] The Lord just enabled her and I'm excited for that. I want us to have a faith for that. I want us to have a theological framework for these things that they do happen in 1 Corinthians 14:1, it says, follow the way of love and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit, especially that you may prophesy. And so I just want to speak for a moment into our attitude towards the Holy Spirit and his gifts. Sometimes we can have this attitude of, if the Lord wanted to give it to me, he would have. Or, like, I'm not against it, like, I'm open to it. If he wants to, I'm here, right? That's often how we are. If I ask you, hey, how's your gift of prophecy going? Are you fanning it into flame as Scripture says? Because it says there especially that you may desire prophecy.
[00:25:44] He actually desires everyone to prophesy. We are a prophethood of all believers. I don't know if you've got the scriptural background for that, but we are.
[00:25:51] And if I ask you, how's it going with a prophecy? You'd be like, no, God didn't give me that big of a gift. You know, biblically, that's not actually how it works. He says, earnestly desire it, seek it actively. The scriptural pattern is seek and you will find, ask and you'll be given. The pattern in Scripture is not wait and hope. He gives it to you. The biblical pattern is seek and you'll find, knock on the door, be opened, ask and you'll receive. When it comes to the gifts, he says, eagerly desire it. There's not many things we are commanded to eagerly desire in Scripture. Not many things. One of the few is eagerly desire the gifts. So I want to ask you, when you think about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in that context, it's very much in the context of prophecy, very much in the context of tongues, not to minimize a supernatural gift of administration or a supernatural gift of encouragement, which is just as spiritual biblically, not to minimize that, but this is written in the context of the ones that we would classify as being pretty out there. Like, you can't fake it.
[00:26:52] And he says, are you earnestly desiring it? And I want to ask you, are you, like, just chilled about it? You don't mind if it's happening around you? You're kind of hoping it might happen one day?
[00:27:03] Or are you following God's command in Scripture and you're eagerly desiring it, seeking it.
[00:27:15] So I want to ask us this morning, how do we feel about the. How do we feel about the supernatural?
[00:27:26] So if we look at Pentecost, we see the Holy Spirit is poured out as they're waiting. Because, like we read in the Beginning, they waited on God as he said, go and wait. Don't make disciples just yet. Just kind of stay just among yourselves and wait until I empower you. So they were waiting. And after 50 days, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out, and there's these tongues of fire, and they start speaking unknown languages to them. But the other Jews from around the area recognize, oh, he's speaking Egyptian. Oh, he's speaking Greek. Just amazing. But as I just told the testimony now, it still happens today.
[00:27:59] And so this is the Holy Spirit gets poured out, and I want to show you the reaction of most people or the reaction of the other Jews that were there.
[00:28:08] So in Acts 2, 12, 13, it says they were amazed and perplexed, asking one another, what does this mean?
[00:28:20] Some, however, made fun of them, said they've had too much wine, they're drunk.
[00:28:28] So how does someone look that's drunk?
[00:28:32] Have you guys seen someone that's drunk?
[00:28:34] They don't look like they're with it. They don't look like they standing up quite normally and preaching with, like, a certain. Like they're not in their right mind. And so when these disciples were speaking the gospel in unknown languages, they were not looking normal. They were looking weird.
[00:28:50] Do you guys see how there's a biblical place for looking a bit wonky?
[00:28:56] So if they can be described as looking drunk, I want to ask, have you ever looked drunk as a Christian because of the spirit of the Lord?
[00:29:05] I'm not advocating for chaos. I'm not advocating that we fake anything. But I want us to realize that it is within biblical realms that we need to sometimes see actually these things breaking out sometimes. When's the last time you looked drunk? You really didn't look like you were in your normal senses.
[00:29:22] They were probably falling over one another or laughing or I don't know what. What it must have looked like.
[00:29:30] When the Lord works in power, when he manifests his presence, when he reveals Himself to us, it has a physical effect in our body sometimes. And I'll show you now, biblically, that's the pattern in our Greek thinking. And yes, all of us fall into that category of Greek thinking. Basically, it means that either it's one or the other, but it can't be both. And how the Greeks thought about this whole Jesus thing is they said that all flesh and everything earthly is definitely sinful and bad, and anything spiritual and unseen is good. So they would consider our body to be completely sinful.
[00:30:04] It can't be normal.
[00:30:06] It can't be good at all. God didn't create it to be good. Only the Spirit is pure and holy, which was Aaron's teaching. They couldn't understand that Jesus came in the form of man as God. They had to deny that. Actually, that's Greek thinking. And so they would completely separate the spiritual and the earthly. And that's often what we do when we speak about the way we worship.
[00:30:28] In worship, we stand like this. This is our default. And it's the only way we stand. And I'm like, we're singing about the absolute goodness of God. And you'd be like, yeah, but in my heart, I really think he's that good.
[00:30:39] God is so good.
[00:30:42] And it's actually. There's no biblical. There's no Bible writer that would have understood how we separate the spiritual and our bodies. The two are totally connected in Hebrew thinking, it's totally connected in Bible thought. Whatever you do in the body affects the spirit. Whatever you do in the spirit affects the body.
[00:31:01] If you really think God is good, then your body will show it. The two can't be separated. And so why do we have a theological problem when the Lord is touching us? That there is a physical manifestation in our body?
[00:31:14] It shouldn't break our boxes. Actually, it should make a lot of sense.
[00:31:19] God created us as one.
[00:31:21] Whatever you do in the body affects your spirit and vice versa. It makes sense that if you put your finger in one of these sockets in Zambia, you guys have the smaller holes, but in South Africa, you can fit your finger in there. What will happen? You'll feel 220 volts. Okay? You'll feel it. And you know what? Physically, you'll have a reaction. But for some reason, when God touches us, we don't expect his power to surge through us, the Creator of the universe.
[00:31:48] There's room to believe that God can do so much through us and he can really touch us in a physical way.
[00:31:59] So the pattern in Scripture, there's so many examples. I'm going to list one or two of physical manifestations that happens in the New Testament. An example would be when the people came to capture Jesus for his crucifixion. And they asked him, are you Jesus? And he says, I am. You know what they did?
[00:32:16] They fell backwards.
[00:32:18] Some churches would teach, falling backwards is the enemy and falling forwards is Jesus.
[00:32:23] You guys know that's a teaching. What?
[00:32:25] At the revelation of Jesus, they fell backward. They didn't go sit down, they fell backward. You see in Revelation, John, who knew Jesus quite well, seeing him in his glorified state, and he falls on his face as though dead.
[00:32:40] So biblically falling.
[00:32:42] There's room for that.
[00:32:44] When it says that they looked drunk. And it often says, even in Ephesians, it says, don't be drunk with wine and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:51] There's room to look a little bit drunk. There's room for laughing in his presence as his joy just bubbles over his joy that overflows. Right? How can we say God is the fullness of joy, but we're not allowed to laugh in church? You know, you see in revelation, at the revelation of Jesus, John weeping and weeping.
[00:33:09] There's space for us to cry in church out loud.
[00:33:12] Have you guys heard wailing and crying in church?
[00:33:17] We see Ezekiel being commanded by the Lord to go to a plane, and he sees the glory of God standing there, and he's frozen in position for a week. He just stands still.
[00:33:29] Imagine that, just frozen. There's the other day, there's a story of a lady that was preaching, and she got also, like, halfway through her sermon, she got by the Holy Spirit frozen dead, and felt to her like it was a short vision. And she started preaching again. But when she started preaching, it was three days later.
[00:33:45] Everyone had left for three days, just frozen under the Lord's anointing. And that's biblical. It happened to Ezekiel. So I'm just trying to give you guys a bit of a framework that God can do things in our midst.
[00:33:59] I remember one of the most.
[00:34:02] The most close experiences I've had with the Lord was on an outreach in Zimbabwe.
[00:34:09] The Lord in worship showed me his holiness, his greatness. And I was like, oh. Like, I couldn't. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't stand. And then he showed me my sin, and I started weeping. I started crying and crying and crying, and I started. After that, I started laughing and laughing and crying and crying. And I was rolling around in laughter in my own puddle of tears for three or four hours. Everyone had left, and I was still lying there.
[00:34:35] Just at the revelation of who God is, at the revelation of his mercy, at the revelation that I don't at all deserve to be standing here.
[00:34:44] Even when I think about it now, it's. It's like, I don't deserve to stand here.
[00:34:48] We don't deserve it. I'm utterly sinful, and he's so patient with us. And at that revelation, the natural response was just to laugh and to cry and to cry and to laugh for hours and hours. And everyone else left.
[00:35:02] So just to get back to that Scripture in acts, we can have two responses. When the Lord works like that.
[00:35:09] The first one we see is the people were amazed and perplexed. Okay, so amazed means like, oh, this is cool, right?
[00:35:17] And perplexed means like, I don't really understand what's going on here.
[00:35:21] But this is cool, right? So we could fall into that camp, or we could fall into the camp of people that says we're scoffing at them. We're going to mock them. Ah, these guys are just drunk.
[00:35:34] So I want to ask us, when the Lord moves, when you hear of the Lord moving in a special way, do you scoff at it?
[00:35:43] Is your first thought skepticism is your first thought. No, it's probably not God. They're probably faking it because there is a lot of that out there.
[00:35:54] But is your default to mock it? Is your default to quench the spirit, to grieve the spirit and be like, I don't want that, or are you amazed even though you're quite perplexed?
[00:36:06] Because we can't understand all these things?
[00:36:11] I'm just thinking of even the laying on of hands.
[00:36:15] It's as though we've lost faith that when we lay hands on someone, it imparts actual grace. The Lord actually works in a different way when we lay hands on them. Now, like I said, our Greek thinking, that makes no sense.
[00:36:27] I mean, if I put my hand on Gordon now, nothing's going to happen. But if I do it with faith in prayer, the Lord actually says that the Holy Spirit moves in a different way. And for us, we want to separate the physical and the spiritual. But for God, it's the same thing. What you do in the physical shows often what's going in in your heart, and it often releases something in the spiritual.
[00:36:46] So I want to ask you, do you still lay hands on people in faith that God will touch them supernaturally?
[00:36:52] The amount of times that I've laid hands on someone, this is not to glorify me. I'm not particularly special amount of times I've laid hands on someone and they've said that they felt a burning sensation or they felt electricity going through them. I've heard it many times, and I'm very sinful and very average. I'm not special.
[00:37:07] But if you lay hands on someone in faith, there's no reason why we shouldn't believe that God can touch them in a very special way.
[00:37:14] So as I'm moving towards an ending, not yet, but close.
[00:37:20] I just want to show us from.
[00:37:22] I'll maybe just read one quote from Jonathan Edwards. So I'm reading Jonathan Edwards because he was a. He's probably regarded as the best theologian in American history.
[00:37:34] If you guys know John Piper, the very reformed teacher.
[00:37:38] I think John Piper believes in the gifts operating anymore, but he.
[00:37:43] Except for that, he bases his whole teaching on the teaching of Jonathan Edwards. So Jonathan Edwards is a very reformed guy. Basically. He's very conservative.
[00:37:52] He based all of his work off of John Calvin. I don't know if you guys know that name, but he's basically a Calvinist, very reformed, not very much into the happy clappy side at all. So he's an absolute Bible teacher, theologian.
[00:38:06] He's known as a staunch guy, and he was part of the revivals in America about 300 years ago. And I want to read you one of his pieces, this very conservative guy describing what's happening in the churches around him. So I want to read us this just to show us that it didn't stop at Pentecost, but often at many times during history, often at different revivals. The Lord breaks out in ways exactly like Acts.
[00:38:30] So Jonathan Edwards writes this. He says many. So this is Old English, so bear with me. Many have had their religious affections raised far beyond what they have ever been before, meaning they fall more in love with Jesus. There were some instances of persons lying in a sort of trance, perhaps remaining there for a whole 24 hours, motionless, with their senses locked up, but in the meantime, under strong imaginations, as though they went to heaven and had a vision of glorious and delightful objects. So imagine this conservative guy being in a meeting, and he's just describing people lying around, like just in trances, in vision. In heaven, it was a frequent thing to see outcries, convulsions and such like. So there's shouting, there's people shaking, and he's just describing it both with distress and admiration and joy.
[00:39:19] It is not the normal manner here to hold meetings in the evening, nor was it common to continue very late into the night.
[00:39:27] But it was pretty often so that there were some so affected and their bodies so overcome that they could not go home. But they were obliged to stay all night where they were. The next morning you'd find them still lying there.
[00:39:38] And there's this very reformed guy that probably didn't have a lot of theology for this, and he just notices. This is why. I think this is one of the reasons probably why the United States would consider themselves Christians, because there was a point where God did break out in their midst. So he's part of this, and he's Just describing how this is a very cool quote. I'm not going to read it by John Wesley. So John Wesley, he started the Methodist Church. It's a very well known church.
[00:40:06] He came from the Presbyterians. So you guys will know the Presbyterians are not necessarily known for being like the happy clappy type. And neither are the Methodists today, I don't think.
[00:40:16] But the same thing happened to them when the Methodist church was birthed. People were falling over under the spirit people for days and for hours just laughing and crying. Most moves of the spirit and most denominations that might seem that they're lifeless today was started by a supernatural thing in the spirit. Actually, it's actually a scary thought.
[00:40:37] So I just want to say this.
[00:40:39] When God moves in these ways that I'm describing, it's up to him. He decides when he moves like that. Okay?
[00:40:46] He's God and we can't force him.
[00:40:50] So none of this is to hype us up.
[00:40:54] But at the same time, we can't stay away from something as beautiful as this, as biblical as this.
[00:41:03] We even look at Jesus life and he says in his own town he wasn't able to do miracles. You guys know why?
[00:41:09] Because the people were too familiar with him. They didn't have faith.
[00:41:13] And he literally says God was, he was unable. Now you'd think God can do anything. He allows himself to be limited sometimes by human beings belief or faith towards him. Sometimes. It's not all about our faith and it's definitely not about how hard you can believe. Because I used to like try my best and if I believe enough, it will happen. That's not how faith works. You just believe that he is good and he can do it. It's that simple. That's how faith works. Don't try to hype up your faith. Don't try to feel the faith.
[00:41:43] That's faith in faith. That's not faith in Jesus. Just believe that he's good and you can do it. And then ask him as a son and be expectant. That's faith. It's very simple.
[00:41:52] Okay, so.
[00:41:57] Yeah, I would love to end now by praying for just a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit.
[00:42:06] Yeah, Ayman, maybe if you can come up. Is Amon here?
[00:42:09] As we go into this time, it would be great if there's a bit of bit of music in the background.
[00:42:14] I'm trusting that as I spoke that you saw from scripture that we need to seek in order to find that we can earnestly desire the gifts.
[00:42:22] He actually says in Hebrews that He rewards those who earnestly seek him. Can you throw up that scripture? Please, Kev, let's just with that scripture go into that. Without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him when must believe that he exists. So I'm guessing that's most of you and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Does it fit into your theology that those who seek him less find him less, but those who come with an earnest seeking will find more? And he's God. We can't. He's not a slot machine. I'm not saying we can force him into something.
[00:42:56] I'm not saying we have to see.
[00:42:58] We have to see signs and wonders and physical manifestations. And it's not all about that at all.
[00:43:04] We receive the Holy Spirit as a gift from the Father just like we receive anything else in our Christian faith. We receive it by faith.
[00:43:11] You ask the Father and you receive by faith. So there are these theologies that say that you have to manifest, you have to speak in tongues in order to receive the Holy Spirit. We can't biblically say that accurately. We can't say that there's a pattern. There's enough of a pattern that when you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, you can be expectant for something, but we can't say you have to. That's not the sign that you were baptized. We receive it by faith.
[00:43:36] So I'm trusting that a bit of a desire was stir in you this morning just for.
[00:43:40] Well, first of all, as scripture would say, to be empowered by the Holy Spirit before we go out and make disciples.
[00:43:47] Because he said go and wait.
[00:43:49] So I want to ask you, are you guys willing this morning to just with us just. Just to wait on the Lord and just ask him to fill us again? That's the pattern. Wait, wait to be filled. So let's.
[00:44:01] Yeah, let's just ready our hearts for the Lord to come and fill us afresh.
