Have you ever made a decision in your life? And as soon as you made it, the first thing you thought was, Why didn't I do this sooner? Have you ever had a why didn't I do this sooner moment? You were hesitant about something, you were holding off on some decision or some experience for a variety of reasons, but when it finally happened, you were just like, man, why was I hesitant at all? Why was I waiting for this? I had that happen really recently for me. Um a few months ago, it got hot for the first time, and uh, because we live in Georgia, so the weather doesn't know what it wants to do, right? It's like February, like, let's be in the 70s, and then March, it's like, nah, we'll go back to cold. But but the weather got pretty warm, you know, like late February, and our AC unit did not kick on. It just didn't kick on. And so I had my friend Ben who works in AC, I had him come take a look, and he's like, Yeah, man, this thing is dead. You have to get a new unit. And the truth is, for the last four years that we've lived in this house, it's never really worked, it's never been able to keep up. Our house is always five degrees warmer than the set point in the summer. And we found really unique ways to sort of work around it. Rather than getting a new unit and having to spend that money, we found several other ways to do it. Like if you open this window over here and then you close all these windows, but open this window over here, and you leave this door open, it creates like a nice breeze. And we've been figuring this out for years. But this year, this thing was dead. My friend told me, he said, Hey, look, the truth is this unit was underpowered from the start. And because it was underpowered, it had to run constantly. It can never keep up, it had to run all the time, all through the night, just to try to keep up. And so for the last three or four years, my electric bills in the summer have been $450. Now, some of you are like, he must live in a really, really big house. And many of you have been to my house and you know it should not cost $450. It's not, it's not a manor, it's a house, okay? But that's what we've been paying because this unit is underpowered, because it's underpowered, it's overworked, and it has to run and run and run, never stopping just to try to keep up. And this year it died. Because when you're underpowered and overworked, you have a tendency to break down. And so we had to get a new unit. My friend Ben came and I said, Look, dude, if we're gonna have to buy a new unit, I want you to hear what I'm saying. I want to go big. I want to go big. And Ben said, Well, I looked at your attic and I don't really know how this stuff works. He's like, but it looks like you have room in your attic for a coil that could be like a half ton bigger, and I'm like, I don't know what that means. And he said, You will when you turn it on. And so, my goodness, guys, it's been amazing in my house. I've never been as excited. You know that little click you hear when the thermostat kicks on? You know that like, I'm like, woo! Like anytime that happens at home, I hear the click and I'm just like, oh, I'm excited. Like, because you can you can like hear the air. It used to be that that the air would be on, and we're like, is it on? And I think it's on, I don't know. And we would go up to the vents in our ceiling and hold our hands up to it and be like, no, I think I feel some air. I think something's coming through, and now if it kicks on, you're on the other side of the room and it's like wind. Megan walks through the house and she looks like a model from a hair commercial, her hair's just like blowing, you know? And we've already got four kids, so that's kind of a problem. Like, I need that to stop, you know. I don't have any more of that. So we gotta figure that out. I'm like, put it in a ponytail. I can't handle the hair blowing. This is too much. But it's serious, like it is powerful. And now when we're home, when we're home and that air kicks on, it is, it is, whoo, it is amazing. And because it's actually powerful enough, maybe even a little overpowered, it can actually stop every once in a while. And so I got my first electric bill of a warmer month, it was $105. And I was like, yes, praise God. This is awesome. But the first thought I had after it was all said and done was, why didn't I do this sooner? Yes, it was expensive, but we could have moved some things around. We we could have figured some things out. Like, like for years, we've been sitting in our house miserable all summer long. And I could have just had a new one installed. It could have happened, and I just waited and I have no reason to wait. And I look back now and I go, why didn't I do that sooner? And the truth is, there have been many situations in my life where that's been the case. Where I have dragged my feet for some reason. And there have been many situations in my life spiritually, in my relationship with God, where I have been hesitant to experience something, where I have, where I have been resistant, perhaps, to something that God wants to do in my life. And then when I finally have the experience, I go, why did I wait? What was I waiting for? Why was I hesitant? I should have done this sooner. I should have let God do this sooner. Today we're gonna talk about an experience that scripture speaks of very clearly. And it's an experience in my life that I was as hesitant on, as resistant on as I have been about anything. And it's the experience of the Holy Spirit. Having an actual encounter with the Holy Spirit. Some of you were like, oh no, it's gonna get weird now. Um pick the wrong day to come. Maybe. I don't know. Um, you just have to stay here and see. No, no, seriously, like this is one of those things where if that's what you're thinking, I was you. It's having an actual encounter and an actual experience with the Holy Spirit. For some context, we've been in a series called Blessed for the last six or seven weeks. We've been looking at Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 14. Just going straight through it. We're actually going through the whole book of Ephesians this year. And so in this section, Paul, the author, talks about the blessings that we have from God. He calls them spiritual blessings. The very first verse, Ephesians 1.3, he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. So blessed be God who has blessed us with blessings. But not just any blessings, spiritual blessings. And I'll be honest with you, like, like as we've gone through this series, part of me has been like, oh Lord, is this practical enough? Like, I want people to walk away going, like, yeah, I can do something with this. And we're talking about all these spiritual things. We've talked about truth and grace and being adopted into the family of God and things like that. Holiness, you know, is this. I feel like it should be more practical. Because there's this big push right now in church culture, and actually in most ways it's really good, that you gotta make it practical. And I need things made practical for me, but sometimes we have this way of thinking that develops when we give too much of an emphasis on what's practical. That we begin to believe that what is spiritual is not practical. And so we focus on the practical things at the expense of what's spiritual because in our minds, that spiritual stuff, it's all hazy, it's it's hard to grab a hold of. No, no, no, not that stuff's fine and all, but like let's get down to what's practical. But the truth is, we're spiritual. You are a spiritual person. Like you are. That's why Jesus once asked the question what good is it if a man gains the world but loses his soul? There is no part of you more important than your spirit. Your body is gonna die one day, and I know that's kind of a downer. I shouldn't have said that, but like you will not because you're not a body. Your spirit will endure because your spirit is actually who you are, and so if we are spiritual people at our core, there's actually nothing more practical to us than the spirit. And by the way, we see this in our world. We see this in our world. Our world has no answer, no answer for depression, for anxiety. Our world has no answer for problems like divorce, for broken homes, for violence. It's because our our culture and our world denies the spiritual. And so we see children bringing guns to school and shooting each other, and we're like, oh, what laws can we enact to keep this from happening? And we should be asking, what's going on in the spirit of our nation? There's something going on spiritually, and until we solve that, it doesn't matter what what laws we put in place, nothing will really change. We're seeing that happen in the world, by the way. This isn't meant to be political, actually. I don't own a gun, so this really isn't political for me. But like, like London, London, if you if you know this, London has had an upsurge in knife attacks. And so there's actual laws going in in London right now to try to ban knives. Like, what's next? Pencils, you know? Like, is it gonna be illegal to own sharp things? Nothing sharp. And I I bring this up because when you try to attack a problem without addressing its root cause, nothing changes. See, we are spiritual. And because we're spiritual, there's nothing more practical, there's nothing more important for us than the spirit. And that's why these spiritual blessings that we've been talking about, they're key. You you need to be spiritually blessed more than you need to be circumstantially blessed. Today we get to this final blessing that Paul speaks about. Verses 13 and 14 of Ephesians 1. And I'm reading along in the mobile app. You can follow there if you want or read on the screens, however you want to. It says, Now you Gentiles have also heard the truth. The good news that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised, and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. I hear in a few weeks we're gonna dive into what this inheritance business is all about, but I want to really focus on the simple fact that we're told we have been blessed with the Holy Spirit. We've been given the Holy Spirit, whom God promised long ago. Now, if you study scripture, if you if you open your Bible, you see the Holy Spirit all over it. But it's kind of interesting because the Holy Spirit's role grows as you go through the story. It's kind of like a television show where there's this recurring character that plays like a small part and they're in it every once in a while, but then all of a sudden in one season they're like one of the main characters. That's the Holy Spirit in the Bible. In the Old Testament, we see the Holy Spirit like come upon people, but it's kind of few and far between. But when he does, it's it's powerful. For example, Ezekiel chapter 31, verse 1 says, The Lord said to Moses, Look, I've specially chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, grandson of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with the Spirit of God, giving him great wisdom, ability, and expertise in all kinds of crafts. This was the man that was supposed to build the tabernacle, the place where the Jewish people would worship at that time. And God's like, here's the guy I want to be in charge of this project. Don't worry about it. I have filled him with my spirit. He's got what he needs. Some of us might be familiar with the story of Samson. Samson's the dude with the like the long hair and the biceps in the Bible, the strong guy. But what you may miss if you read his story, if you haven't read in a while anyway, is every time he performs an act of strength, like some great feat of strength, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit came upon him. So it wasn't his own strength. It will say, like, and the Holy Spirit came upon Samson, and then he was able to do this crazy thing. It wasn't his power, it was the Spirit's power. In the Old Testament, we have the prophets, these men that heard from God. And the Spirit of God would come into them, and they would be able to converse with God and to see the world through God's eyes, essentially, and speak to the people on behalf of God. But the average everyday person had no chance in their mind to be able to talk to God. So they were dependent on what the prophets said. You're not dependent on what I say. I'm not a prophet. Because we all have the Holy Spirit available to us. We can all hear from God. Because Jesus changed things. See, that's the thing. As the story goes on, there's this hinge moment, and that hinge moment is Jesus, and Jesus opens us up to the presence of God like no one else ever could. Jesus frequently promised the Holy Spirit to his followers in a very certain way, by the way. This wasn't like, hey, a few of you might just experience the Holy Spirit in power like those of old did. That's not what Jesus said. He talks about the Holy Spirit as if it is a certainty. Listen to what he says. John 14, 17. Jesus says, He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him because it's not looking for him, it doesn't recognize him. But you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you. So Jesus is saying to his disciples, hey, you've experienced the Holy Spirit around you, because you've been with me. And Jesus was completely empowered by the Holy Spirit. He laid his own power aside when he came to earth, but the Holy Spirit is what fueled everything Jesus did. And Jesus says, Hey, you've experienced the Holy Spirit around you. You're about to have the Holy Spirit in you. He says it with certainty. There's not really an if there. And then Jesus goes on to describe what the Holy Spirit will do. And as we read this, by the way, ask yourself: does this sound impractical? Does this sound like some hazy thing that you can't really get your head around, or does this sound insanely practical? Because I think when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, it sounds like someone describing the features of their iPhone. John 14, 26. But when the Father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything. He will remind you of everything I've told you. John 16, 13, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he's heard. He will tell you about the future. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. All that belongs to the Father is mine. This is why I said the Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me. And so Jesus is rattling off about the Holy Spirit. He's saying, You're going to have the Holy Spirit, and he's going to guide you and teach you and remind you, and you're going to be able to hear from God through the Holy Spirit. Like it's going to be amazing. Jesus literally told his disciples, I'm going to leave you, but don't even worry about it. Because you'll have the Holy Spirit. I doubt his disciples were encouraged in that moment. Like, no, we need you physically with us. But he's like, No, no, no, you need the Holy Spirit. And then one day the disciples had that experience. It's a day that we call the day of Pentecost. What happened was the disciples, it was shortly after Jesus had risen from the dead, resurrected, and then he went back to heaven. And so the disciples are in Jerusalem and they're trying to figure things out. And one day the Holy Spirit shows up powerfully and he fills them with power that is not their own. And they start going out in the streets and they start speaking in languages that they've never learned. It'd be like you waking up one day speaking Spanish, and you're like, what in the world's going on? It'd be crazy, right? Or some other language that you don't know. I realize many of us here speak Spanish, so I should have picked Armenian. I don't know if that's a language or not, but it's probably, I don't sounded like one, so whatever. And so they're speaking language that they don't understand. And that day, that one single day, 3,000 people gave their life to Jesus. And the movement of Jesus started, and it's never looked back. But it all happened because the power of the Holy Spirit came upon these people. Okay. So here we are 2,000 years later, and we're like, yeah, but that was then. This is now. Is that for me? Like, is that for me? See, we have this tendency, I think, to split hairs. And the reality is this: if you've given your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit. Technically, if you're a person, you sort of have the Holy Spirit because the Bible says that when God created mankind, he breathed his spirit into us. That is what makes us different from the animals. That's what gives us like a concept of self. That's why we're not like every other creature in the world. Like there's never been a bear that's had an identity crisis, you know? There's never been a bear that's woken up and being like, Am I a bear? I don't know who I am. You know, I gotta go find myself. Like that's never happened before. But people, we're different. We're a little bit more complex, and that's because God breathed his spirit into us and he made us unique, he made us different. And so, you know, the Holy Spirit, like, technically, I guess, is in is in people, like sometimes we come to Jesus because something stirs inside of us, and that's the spirit and our spirit. And God, like, how does it all work? And God doesn't really explain it to us. There's no part in the Bible where God says, Let me break it down for you scientifically. First, the Holy Spirit enters through your ear canal, and then he moves down into your lungs, and we get no, we don't know. It's just like it's very vague in a sense. Like the Holy Spirit just comes upon you. That's what it is. But the reality is in Scripture, there were experiences. People had experiences with the Holy Spirit that were undeniable, and they called it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Maybe you've heard that term, maybe not, but but before I jump into that, let me just kind of explain something. We go back to Ephesians 1.13 for a second. It says, Now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the good news that God saves you, and when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit. Now, where it says he identified you as his own, that phrase is actually a Greek word that we could replace with the word sealed. He sealed you with the Holy Spirit. Last night I got to perform a wedding in coming, and uh it was a great wedding. I've only had two weddings that went horribly wrong. Uh one I called the bride by the wrong name, that was bad. Uh the other I forgot to show up, that was worse. So um, it was bad. Those people go here, I don't know if they still go here, probably not, but like it was a bad day. Anyway, I showed up, got the bride's name right, it was a good day. Pete, you were there. Remember that? Yeah, Pete was there. It was great. So I'm doing this wedding last night, and you know that we've gone through the whole ceremony, they've said their vows, they've exchanged rings, and then at the end, the way you finish the wedding is you say, Hey, you may kiss your bride. Now, chances are they've kissed. I'm just saying, probably so. They're still married if they don't kiss, but there's something about that kiss at the end that sort of like seals it, you know? And you just see the joy in their face that they kind of need that. They need that moment, they need something tangible to seal it. Like, yes, we're husband and wife, we're married, and that's what that kiss does in that ceremony. Well, God knows us as people, and he knows that we need to be sealed sometimes. We need to have an experience, we need something we can grab a hold of, we need something that is undeniable to happen to us. So we go, oh, I know. I know that this is real, I know that I experienced God. And that is what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is. We see it in scripture, for example, in Acts chapter 19. Paul is traveling around and in Acts 19 says this, it begins by saying, Let me find it. It's somewhere in here. Hold on. There we go. Acts 19, 1. While Apollos, Apollos was another teacher in the church, says, while Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions until he reached Ephesus on the coast, where he found several believers. And notice Paul's first priority, the first question he wants to ask these people. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Like Paul thinks this is important. It's the first thing he wants to know. No, they replied, we haven't even heard there is a Holy Spirit. Then what baptism did you experience? He asked, and they replied, the baptism of John. Paul said, John's baptism called for repentance from sin, but John himself told the people to believe in the one who would come later, meaning Jesus. As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all. John the Baptist once said, I baptize in water, but one who is coming who will baptize in fire and in spirit. Like these men had this interesting experience, right? Because first they're baptized in the name of Jesus by Paul, and that's what happened last week. We had seven people go all in with Jesus. It was awesome. They got baptized in the name of Jesus. But then Paul laid his hands on them and they had a separate experience where they were filled with the Holy Spirit in power, and it was undeniable, and they were changed. And it says that they spoke in other tongues and they prophesied. You know, I grew up as a young man who loved the Bible. Like I love the Bible. In fact, it's weird because in church culture anymore, I hear pastors talk about things like you don't want to use too much Bible because it's boring. I'm like, have you read the Bible? You can call the Bible a lot of things, but boring is not one of them. Now you might be afraid to go there with the Bible. You might be afraid to read the juicy parts. But if you're willing to do that, it's not boring. Scandalous. So I grew up reading the Bible and I have great faith in the Word of God. And so that's a problem for me. Like, there's a lot of things I wish the Bible didn't say, because then I have to deal with it. And I grew up having not had an experience like this and also not being in a church culture that really talked about this kind of thing, and I would read stuff like this, like they were they the Holy Spirit came upon them, and then they spoke in other tongues and they prophesied, and that seems really weird. And I've met some freaky weird people in the church who are kooky and strange, and they talk about the Holy Spirit a lot. I don't want to be one of those freaks. And so, like, you know, um, what's this about? But it's there, it's in scripture, like it happened. And so I'm going, God, I have this like identity crisis. God, if this is real, I want it, but I don't want to be a weirdo. And at the same time, I really want to have you and I want to experience your power, but again, I want to emphasize, Lord, not the weird stuff. So, what do I do? You know, because it's there. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit in us, but God intends to seal us with his spirit. He wants to give you and I an experience with the Holy Spirit so real, so powerful, it's undeniable. And that's the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But for years I was so resistant, so hesitant. And I really prayed this week. Why? Like, why was I so resistant? And really, three things came to my mind. Number one, I didn't understand it. We live in a time and in a culture where our intellect has been elevated, and we're told essentially that if we can't understand it, it must not be right. And so I couldn't make sense of the Holy Spirit. Like, God the Father, I get Father, Son get Son, Spirit, I don't know what that is. And all this other stuff about prophesying in tongues, I don't get that stuff. So if I don't understand it, I don't want it. But the reality is there's a lot of things I don't understand. That doesn't mean they're not true. If I make my ability to understand something a necessity for experiencing, I will experience very little in this life. In fact, just this last week there was something, and those of you who are on social media probably uh were made aware of this. Have you heard the Yanni Laurel thing? Like it Of you like raise your hand if you're aware of that. You you heard that this week. Okay. Some of us are like, What in the world is that? Who is not? You're like, what are you talking about? Okay. So there's this clip going around on the internet, and it's this it's made by a professor, and like you hear an audio clip. And depending on like how you hear, you either hear the word Yanny, yanny, like Y-A-N-N-Y, or Laurel, which don't sound alike at all, right? So, in case you're just completely unfamiliar, we'll go ahead and play this. So, I just want to see how it breaks down in our group. I think this will be fun. So, go ahead and play that, guys. Laurel. Laurel. Laurel. Laurel. Alright, that's enough. Laurel. You don't need much. How much? All right. Raise your hand if you heard Yanny. Raise your hand if you heard Laurel. Those of you, those of you who heard Yanny, are you like, what? It's clearly Yanny. Like, as clear as day, because I'm a Yanni person. Let's hear it for the Yanni people in the room. Yeah. The sad thing is we're wrong. It's actually, he's actually saying laurel. He is. He is. Oh, pipe down with the pride. Okay. Isn't it amazing the things we'll brag about as people? Like, I heard laurel. You know? Yeah. Right? So, yeah, he's actually saying laurel, but depending on the way your your ear hears, if you're more prone to hearing high tones, you hear Yanny. Low tones, you hear laurel. I watched a whole video explaining it and I still don't understand it at all. I still think it's nuts, but I okay, it's I guess that's true. It just defies my logic. There are a lot of things in this world I don't understand. And if and if you make your ability to understand something fully, a necessity for you to experience it, you will experience very little. If you make your ability to understand God a necessity for you to experience God, you will experience him none. Because he cannot be understood fully. He can't. Like the angels don't get God. If you see visions of heaven in the Bible, the angels fly around God and they just go, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy. Like for all eternity. They're just like, whoa. They don't even they've been there for millennia, for generations, for millions of years, and they're like, yeah, the furthest we've figured out is just holy. That's all we figured out so far. You know, don't make your intellect a barrier between you experiencing God. I did that, and so I didn't experience the Holy Spirit because it just doesn't click with my with my intellect. Number two was fear. I was hesitant, resistant of the Holy Spirit because of because of my ability to understand him, but I was also hesitant because of fear. I was afraid I would miss it. I'm just being honest. I was afraid of rejection. See, I have some friends that really, really hear from God. And they have this powerful relationship with the Holy Spirit. I got a friend named Dallas. Many of you know Dallas. He's been on our worship team for a long time. Dallas and I are good buddies. In Dallas, he has like the coolest story. Like he had a near-death experience where he was dying, and then Jesus spoke to him, and he became saved, became filled with the Holy Spirit. And I was jealous of that for a long time. I was like, God, why didn't I almost die and get to experience you? You know? My story is like I was in church in the fourth grade and I raised my hand one day. That's not as cool. It's not even close. I knew I should have done more drugs. Like that was what I knew what I missed it. I didn't do I didn't do any drugs. I smoked zero drugs. And now my story's boring. You know? Dallas smoked a ton of drugs, and he has an awesome story. And you know, like what's going on? But in reality, no. If Dallas were here, he'd say, Don't don't do drugs. Kids? I didn't think this through. If you're in here, drugs are bad. But you but let's be, you know that. Okay, so anyway. So Dallas had this encounter with God, and he encountered the Holy Spirit, and it was just obvious, like you'd hang out with Dallas, and you're like, I would literally be insecure because I'm like, he has something I don't have. And what do I do with that? I could either go, God, give me that, whatever he's got, like give me that portion of your spirit, because he would just speak and talk, and it's like just oozing out of him. Or I could go, well, I, you know, I mean, I might not have that, but you know, I got other things. And that's what I did for a long time. I was I was so insecure that rather than ask God to give me an encounter with him that filled me with that kind of faith, I just sort of excused it away. I'm like, well, you know, we don't all need to have big experiences with God. You know, we some of it we don't have to have that. There's nothing in the Bible that says you must, blah, blah, blah. But truth be told, I was just afraid that if I asked God for it, I wouldn't get it. I was afraid that if I said, Lord, give me an encounter with you that I cannot deny, give me an encounter with you, Lord, that changes my understanding of who you are. And I got nothing, that that would be like God saying, Yeah, you're not one of my favorites. You're not one of the chosen few who get to experience me. In reality, it just showed that I had no understanding of the heart of God. Because Jesus said it very clearly in Luke chapter 11. He leaves no wiggle room. So I tell you, keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone, not the chosen few, no, everyone who asks receives. Everyone who seeks finds, and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. You fathers, if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who seek him? That's clear. How much more will he give the Holy Spirit to those who seek him? Now the Bible says that the Lord rewards those who earnestly seek him. Seeking is searching, it's not looking. Looking is like, yeah, it'd be great if I found that. Searching is I will not stop until I find it. He says, if you ask, if you seek, if you search with your heart, if you knock, it will be open to you and you will be given the Holy Spirit in power. But I was afraid of that rejection, so I was hesitant. Number three, I was prideful. That's the hardest one to admit. That for a long time, I just flat out didn't want to do it God's way. So God might say, Clearly, you need the Holy Spirit. I mean, you look at Paul and his experience in Acts 19 that we looked at, like when he hears that these people haven't experienced the Holy Spirit, he's like, Well, this will not do. He doesn't go, oh, it's okay, maybe one day. He's like, What? No. Okay, hold, stop. Right now, we're getting you baptized. I'm praying over you. You need this. First priority, you need the Holy Spirit. But to be honest with you, I was prideful. I wanted it my way. Because we live in a world that tells us we should have it our way, right? McDonald's. It's like we've been hearing it since we were kids. Burger King. I don't need out a lot. Whatever. What is McDonald's? What's theirs? Oh, whatever. Okay. They're all the same. Does Wendy's have one? Nope. That's bad marketing. We gotta figure it out. You know? Our meat is square. I don't know. That's that's the Wendy's tagline. Okay, here we go. Where's the beef? That's right, back in the day. This is a tangent. Let's get back on track. So we grow up being told that we should have it our way. I remember an experience when I was in high school. I went to New York City and uh had never been to New York before. Anyone here ever been to New York? It's a different it's a different place. Those are not nice people. Like they don't even value being nice. They don't like you unless you prove yourself to them, you know? And in the South, we don't really like people either, but we pretend like we do, right? We're so much friendlier. And so I go up to New York and uh and I bring my southern self there, and and I went to this restaurant, it was a pizza restaurant, and I'm like, pizza in New York, that's a thing. So I go there and I see the menu, and on the menu there's this pizza I like, except I want to eat it, but it has mushrooms on it. Mushrooms are disgusting. It's not even a vegetable, it's fungus. Like, why would I eat that? So I uh I I order the pizza, I go to the gentleman, I say, Hey, can I get this but without mushrooms? And he said, No. And I was like, Well, uh, excuse me, I just I just want that pizza with no mushrooms. And he's like, No. I didn't know what to do. I was I was for it. I was like, clearly, at first I thought it was young. He's like, yeah, okay, but like seriously, I want it with no mushrooms. He said, No. And like where I'm from, where I grew up, you don't say no to customers. When I was a waiter, I once had a table that ordered fajitas and then complained to me by saying that they were really good, but they would have been better without the tortillas. Now, I don't know if you've ever ordered fajitas, but you are the one who puts them in the tortillas. You do that, right? You get it. And this guy didn't say the tortillas, he's like, they were really good. I would have liked it better without the tortillas, and I'm like, and I said, I'm sorry. I apologized for the fact that this person decided to do something they didn't like. Make no sense. But that's the South. We're like, I'm so sorry for nothing, but I'm sorry. And this guy says, No to the mushroom thing, and I didn't understand what was going on. And then he said, Hey, the chef knows what he's doing. Order it the way he puts it on the menu, or don't order it at all. And I was very offended. It's like the chef had the audacity to believe that he knew better than me. The chef had the audacity to believe that he actually understood the way flavors would combine better than some person off the street. And so he said, No, you're gonna you're gonna take it the way I make it. Truth is, with God, I think we like to make a lot of special orders. You know? God's very clear with what He He wants for us and how He wants us to live and the life that He has for us. But a lot of times with God, we like to be, Hey Lord, I want your life. I want what you have for me. Few modifications. Um, I want to go, no Holy Spirit stuff, none of that weird stuff. I'd like an extra side of financial blessing. If you could just pile that on, I want a lot of that without the gift of generosity, though, because it's really for me. You know, I want, I want all this. We do that with God, and that's pride. It's prideful for us to say, hey God, I see what you're offering, and and I think it's great. I got a few suggestions. You know, for me, really for me, it'd be better if it didn't have this, this, and this. And I was like that with the Lord. And so God says, You need the Holy Spirit. Don't worry, I'm giving you the Holy Spirit. He's gonna do this, this, this, and this. And I was like, Yeah, that's fine. Um I love you and I want you, and I believe in the Holy Spirit, but I don't need all that stuff. That's pride. And the Lord opposes the proud, but he honors the humble. So for years I was resistant, I was hesitant. And here's what that resulted in it was me doing everything in my own strength. Everything in my own strength. It was me trying to be the husband I was supposed to be, it was me trying to be the father I was supposed to be, it was me trying to be the pastor I was supposed to be, it was me trying to be the employee I was supposed to be, it was me trying to do everything in my life in my own strength, my own power, my own intellect, my own ideas, my own creativity, my own intelligence, my own problem solving, all me. And the reality is me is underpowered. Underpowered, Ezekiel 36, 26. God, centuries before Jesus is promising the Holy Spirit. And he says, I'll give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart, and I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations. And if you read between the lines, you don't have to do a lot of digging to find out that God is basically implying that without his spirit, we can't actually do what he asks us to do. That we need his spirit to fuel us. I was underpowered to live the life God was calling me to live, but I was trying to do it on my own. And because I was trying to do it on my own, underpowered, I was overworked. And I was spinning my wheels. Life was like a treadmill for me. My relationship with God was like a treadmill. It's just me doing more. How can I do more, more, more, more, more? Will this finally be enough? And I was just trying to do everything I could to keep up. And the reality is, if you are underpowered and overworked, you will burn out, you will break down. And that's what happened to me. And I just kind of crashed. And that would happen in cycles. I would, I would, you know, crash and be a horrible person to be around and be miserable, and then I'd finally like snap out of it, and I'd be like, no, no, I can do this, and I'd in pride again be like, I'm gonna do it my own way, and I'm gonna do it without whatever God says I need. I'm just gonna do it and all this other stuff, and then I'd crash again, and it was just over and over and over again. And finally I had to break and say, God, help me. I'm gonna get over the fact that I don't understand it. I'm gonna get over the fact that I'm afraid that maybe if I really ask and hunger for it, you won't be true to your word. I'm gonna get over my pride and me trying to do it my own way rather than receiving what you say that I need. And I began to legitimately hunger for the Holy Spirit. To give me an experience to seal my relationship with God, to fill me with a power I never had before. I began to hunger for that. And I'll say this I I hope today that you experience something, but I hope even more that you leave here hungry. Because Jesus says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. If we live hungry when it comes to God, we will be satisfied. And I began to hunger for God. I began to desire, I began to pray. I'm like, God, I don't know, break my understanding and get past all this other stuff that's holding me back. I want to experience you, and one day it happened. Like it legitimately happened. I was praying. I was here at the building. This was probably seven years ago. And I was praying over in our student area, because I worked with the students back then, and I was praying that God would bless tonight, and everything that I prayed that came out of my mouth, it just seemed like insufficient. I prayed, and it was weird because I would pray words, and it was like my own self was going, ugh, like what a dumb prayer. I was like, Lord, bless tonight. I was like, what is that? Because everything was just very rote and monotonous, and it wasn't from a depth in me. It was just like I was going through the motions, and all of a sudden I did this three or four times, every time frustrated, and then like I just said, finally, and then I just prayed in a way I'd never prayed before. And I'll be honest, I didn't even understand the words coming out of my mouth. And I was like, oh no, I'm one of the weird ones now. You know what happened. And but I can say this. It humbled me. And even though I maybe couldn't describe what was happening, I had never felt my spirit so connected to God. And it wasn't because of the the things I was saying. It wasn't the thing that was happening, it was the my heart. It was just communing with God in a way I'd never encountered before. And I'm telling you, ever since that day, life's been different. It hasn't been perfect, it hasn't been easy, the flesh doesn't go away. But there's there's a different power source. I liken it back to our air conditioning system. Nothing really has changed in my house. It's the same vents, it's the same ductwork, it's the same thermostats on the wall. But there's a wholly new power source. And it takes all those things that are the same and it makes them completely different in their effect. After I had this experience with the Holy Spirit, after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I wasn't like a different person. I had the same IQ, I had the same personality, I had the same sense of humor, I had the same tendencies. Unfortunately, I had the same physique. Like I looked down and I was like, oh no, that's the same, okay, whatever. But like, you know, same Justin, but a different, a different source of power. And it changed the way I saw the world, and it changed the way I saw myself, and it changed the way I could even when I would talk about God. You know, I'll be honest, I think some of my best messages were long before that happened. They were the most well thought out, the most well prepared. I rewrote this message last night and then I rewrote it again this morning, and I don't think it's that good. But I trust not in my own strength, not in my own ability, but in the Lord. And I know that his power is greater than my own. So my point is like I used to, I'm not, I'm not bragging, but like I have a degree in communication. So I know what I'm doing. Okay. And and I used to, I used to like write out these messages when I would come and speak in like I was like the guest speaker for a long time. I'd speak on Memorial Day weekend when you know people were out of town. They'd be like, you can do it now. Uh and I would be so, I would, I would, I would have pride. I would be like, this is gonna be a killer message because it was creative and it was cool, and I'd practice it like seven or eight times, and then I would give it just be like dead. And I didn't understand that. Because I did it all right, but there was no power behind it. The Holy Spirit is meant to be your power source. Worship team, if you guys would make your way out, we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and wrap up. We're gonna sing one more song, and and and here's here's what I here's what I hope happens. My my hope is that you would ask God right now to fill you with the Holy Spirit in a way you've never encountered before. I ask that you would be hungry for that, that you would realize that God can give you this in an instant. And if you're here today and you're like, man, I'm tired. I am I am underpowered and I am overworked. I'm trying to do it all on my own. I'm trying to live my life based on my own strength, my own wisdom, my own everything, and it's not working, and I need a new power source that you would actually say, Holy Spirit, fill me. I may not know what that means, I may not be able to put it in a category, I may not be able to describe it perfectly, but I want it. I want the power of God in my life. Ask God to baptize you in the Holy Spirit, and don't worry about what happens. I had a person ask me after the first service, oh no, is his hands getting weird now? Are there gonna be people doing cartwheels in the aisles and like making weird noises? And you know, no, I don't think so. It's funny though, if someone got like, okay, sometimes in churches when this Holy Spirit stuff gets talked about a lot, some people will take that as an excuse to just do stuff that isn't helpful and isn't, it's just distracting. And if that happens, we'll just tell people to stop. Like, hey, quit it. But I was talking to the person, and even in the first service, like, I think sometimes we get afraid of opening a can of worms. Have you heard that phrase? Like, oh, that's gonna, we're gonna open a whole can of worms if we talk about that. Like, why are we afraid of worms? Have you ever thought about that? Like, like if you opened a can of worms and it spilled all over the ground, it'd be like, well, okay, there's some worms there. You can either pick them back up or leave them there to die. Because worms, worms are not scary, tough, they're not dangerous. Like, worms die every day just trying to get on the other side of my driveway. I see it happen. I'll be like, oh, that that one didn't make it, that one wasn't going fast enough, and it cooked on my driveway. So, as a church, I don't want to be afraid. We don't need to tame faith. We don't we don't need to take what God meant to be an adventure and make it safe. You know, see, I believe God's will is like the ocean. And we're meant to ride the waves. But we can't predict how the ocean's gonna behave. We can't control it. So instead, in church, we just make wave pools. And if you sit in a wave pool long enough, you're like, this is kind of like the ocean, it's predictable. We're controlling it. We decide when it's gonna swell, we decide when it's gonna rest, and it's all the machine of it, right? That's what church becomes. But if you get in the ocean, it's not a wave pool. I want the ocean. I believe this community, I believe this world needs a church, all the church, every church, to dive deep into the presence of God. For us to get over ourselves, to get over our pride, to get over our fear, to get over our our inability to understand things and just say, God, I want you. So blow me away. I don't care if I don't understand it, blow me away, Lord. I want to experience you. I want it to be real, I want it to be tangible, I want to be sealed by your spirit. I want to experience you in all your fullness, and you know what? I'm not even afraid of some worms. I'm not afraid of anything that I may not understand. I want all of it, God. I want to I want to swim in the ocean, I want to ride the wave. Do you want that this morning? Do you crave that? Are we gonna be a church that says, you know, God, stop right there. I don't want all of it. Are we gonna be a church that says, Come on? I want all of you, God. I want everything you've got. That's our church, that's our heart. Lord Jesus, we love you. We love you, and we are desperate, God. Desperate not because we're lacking, desperate not, Lord, because we're lacking, because you haven't blessed us. Desperate, Lord, because we realize that whatever we've experienced right now is small compared to what you have for us. And Lord, in this church right now, there are so many of us that come from so many different backgrounds, Lord. And some of us grew up in churches where when the Holy Spirit was talked about, it was abused and it was counterfeit. But just because something is counterfeited does not mean that there's not a real version of it. And Lord, some of us grew up in such a way that this stuff all seems kooky and strange. And I pray, Lord, that we would just get over that stuff, that we would not be afraid that we would trust you, and that we would say, God, if you're real, speak to me. And Holy Spirit, if you're there, if I can have you, fill me. Lord, I ask that you make this a holy moment. I ask, Lord, right now that you would fill us with a genuine hunger to be filled by you. As we worship you right now, Lord, as we go through this last song, make us hungry. And Lord, I know I've gone five minutes long, and some of us are like legitimately hungry right now. So turn our physical hunger into a spiritual hunger. And let us be people who say, I'm not leaving this place till I'm satisfied, I'm not leaving this place till I experience you, I'm not leaving this place till I have an encounter with you that I've never had before, Lord. We worship you, Jesus. We worship you, God, and Holy Spirit, fill us. We're gonna sing one more song. And as we do this, I just ask that you would you would say, Holy Spirit, fill me. That you would you would hunger for this, that you would say, God, baptize me in your presence. Fill me with a passion that I've never had before. And look, if you're here and you're going, I don't really know how to make sense of this, and I don't even understand what we're really talking about. Justin's been talking for a long time and it's all whatever. We have amazing people on the sides of the room who are filled with the Holy Spirit and they will pray with you. And just like Paul did with those followers, they will lay their hands on you and pray that you receive the Holy Spirit in power today because you can, because he belongs to you. So let's let's stand together for just a moment. Let's worship God and let's ask the Holy Spirit to fill this place. And I'll tell you this we are as a church, we are a church of authenticity. And here's what authenticity is authenticity means we never manufacture. So we don't need to fake it, and we don't need to scream and shout and yell as we worship because it's what is expected of us. We don't manufacture here, but authenticity also means that you do not hold back. So we're not gonna fake it, but we're not gonna hold back. And so if your heart is full of joy, if your heart is full of anticipation, if you feel the presence of God this morning, then worship him like you feel it. Worship him like you know he's real. Let's go into his presence right now.