Man, what a good day. I love Baptism Sunday. I love it. It's the best. I love watching people just go all in because uh, like like Matt kind of alluded to, he is already all in with us, right? He loves you so much. Um, if you're just joining us, we are almost done with a series called Move. I actually sent an email this week, said we were gonna wrap it up today, and I accidentally lied to you. Um we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up next week. In fact, next week I'm really excited about, don't do this very often. I want to ask that you be here next week. Because next week we're gonna announce a partnership we have with an organization. We've been working on this partnership for a while behind the scenes, ready to sort of roll it out, and it's gonna it's gonna really change, I think, the game for us in terms of how we can help this community and really help the people in this community that that are the most helpless. I'm so excited about that because you know, his hands, we it's not about what happens here. It's gotta it's gotta go outside these walls. We we've gotta we've gotta love and serve our community. Uh, and I've and I'll say this just in case you're new and you're like, this sounds like I'm gonna have to open up a checkbook. No. Um you're just gonna have to open up your heart, and uh, which is harder. So be here next week. It's gonna be really, really good. But we are we are almost done with this series called Move. And if you are just joining us, the premise behind it's really simple. We want to be people who move with God. We want to live our lives in rhythm with God. We want we want to live a life to where if God says, go, do this, if he calls us to some specific action, we can actually hear him do that, discern what he's asking us to do, and then follow him. We want to live life in a movement with God. Because the people that have the best adventures in life are those who move with God, are those people that are most easily moved by God. That's the life we want to live. That life is an adventure. That life is more than monotony, it's more than just a bunch of busyness, having a lot of things to do, but not really any reason to do it. We want to live the life that God has called us to. That means meaning and purpose and passion for living. That's what happens when you live moving with God. And so we've looked at some different ways that God moves, and we've looked at that to try to establish in our minds, in our hearts, a way for us to understand and figure out when he's moving, how he's moving. But today I want to talk about the most essential element. The most essential element to moving with God. We're gonna use that word essential a lot today, so lock that in. The most essential element for us to be able to move with God in our lives. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to lose sight of what's most essential in life? And give your attention to something of far less importance. It happens all the time. I had a young guy working for me a while back, and uh he still works works here, so he's awesome, uh, doing a great job. But he's young, and so when we're all young, we're learning lessons, and one day he shows up to work really late, substantially late. I'm not talking about 10, 15 minutes, traffic was bad late, like an hour late. And I'm I'm there and I'm watching him come in, I look at the clock, and I'm like, man, so you're you're pretty late. What's up? He said, Oh, I had a hair appointment that I could not move. And I was I was baffled by that statement. Because see, I get my hair cut at supercuts, so I don't really know what it's like to have a hair appointment anyway. I just sort of walk in and go, Are you busy? And if they are, I go, it can wait. And I walk out. That's that's my hair appointment. And I'm trying to think through in my mind the scenarios in which a hair appointment can be an unmovable thing. I'm going, do you have like a is there a cancellation fee if you can't make it? Maybe that's a thing. I don't know. It doesn't happen that way at Supercuts. Is this some situation where this this stylist is so in demand that they're booked out for two or three years, like a wedding venue? If that's the case, how at 19 can you afford this person to cut your hair? Do they have dirt on you? Is this a blackmail situation? And if if you cancel, they're gonna spill the beans. What's going on here? Why is this an unmovable thing? And so we just sat down and had a conversation. And I basically said, hey, look, there's a lot of relationships you're gonna need to manage in life. Some are more important than others. Your relationship with God is the first and foremost, that's the biggest. You know, your relationship with your family, that's big. You've got your relationship with your employer, and then you have your relationship with the person that cuts your hair. One of those relationships is essential, the other is not. And so, in the future, when a dilemma arises between where you work, like who pays your bills, and where you get your hair cut, choose the one that's most essential. That will just that'll be good advice from here forward. And he took it. His hair did look fantastic, though. I do have to say. It was, I was impressed. But we all do that, right? I mean, all jokes aside, we do that. In our relationships, in our marriages, in our families, our careers, our jobs, whatever it is we spend our time doing, we we sometimes lose track of what's most important. We make decisions and we we put our focus on something that's not essential. And when that happens, we have to just refocus. Where things get really dangerous is when we begin to ignore what is essential to us in life. And we can do that, many of us have. We actually start completely ignoring or disregarding the things that matter most. I say all that because there's one thing I believe that is the most essential element in our ability to hear from God and move with God, and it just so happens to be the one thing in church culture that gets neglected unlike anything else. And that is our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. And yet, in church culture as a whole, I'm not talking about any specific churches, I'm not even talking about us, I'm just saying in the landscape of American church culture, the Holy Spirit is either undervalued or flat out ignored. But it's it's it's so essential. Jesus says this in John chapter 14. Listen to his words. If you're a Jesus follower, this is Jesus telling you something important. He says, If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate. Now, that Greek word he uses that we translate advocate, it could also mean comforter. It could also mean friend, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him because it's not looking for him and doesn't recognize him, but you know him because he lives with you now, and later he will be in you. It's a powerful promise. Later on, a few verses later, Jesus says, I am telling you these things now while I'm still with you. But when the Father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I've told you. I'm leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart, and the peace I give you is a gift the world cannot give, so don't be troubled or afraid. This is how essential the Holy Spirit is, according to Jesus. Jesus is saying, Look, I'm about to leave you. I'm about to be gone. I won't be here physically anymore. And that's a big deal for them because they've been walking with Jesus hand in hand. He's right there. If they need him, if they have a question, if they have a problem, something they can't handle, they just turn and go, Jesus. You see that a lot in the gospels, by the way. They're afraid, they're on a boat and it's storming, and they're like, Jesus, help us out. I mean, he must have gotten so annoyed at people saying his name all the time just to fix problems. They're used to hearing from Jesus every second of every day about who God is. They rely on Jesus, but he's saying, I'm about to leave you, no biggie. No big deal, because you're gonna have the Holy Spirit. And here's what the Holy Spirit's gonna do: He's gonna lead you, he's gonna guide you, he's gonna teach you, he's gonna help you remember the things I've said, he's gonna give you peace of heart, he's gonna give you peace of mind. He's not just gonna be around you like I'm around you, he's actually gonna be in you, so you'll never ever be alone. That's how essential the Holy Spirit is in Jesus' eyes. And yet, like I said, in church culture, and I'm sure in many of our experiences, the Holy Spirit is often the most difficult aspect of God to engage. I want to talk about this morning. In fact, this morning I really want to accomplish three things. Number one, I want to define what the Holy Spirit is. What is the Holy Spirit? Because I want to make sure we're all on the same page. Number two, I want us to explore why we have such a difficult time engaging the Holy Spirit, why we as people do often, and why even whole churches have a difficult time engaging this subject. And number three, I want to leave us with some really helpful, simple, practical steps that will allow us to begin living this out in our lives and experiencing what Jesus promised right here. Experiencing the peace of heart, the peace of mind, experiencing the guidance that comes when we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. That's the three things. What is the Holy Spirit? Why is it so hard to engage? How can we start living this out? So let's start with the definition. What is the Holy Spirit? I thought about that a lot this week. What is the Holy Spirit? And it's it's funny because that that question really represents some of the difficulties we have with the Holy Spirit right off the bat. Because the Holy Spirit's not a what. I mean, I say what is the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit's not a what, Holy Spirit's a who. And I do this in my own life. You're probably gonna hear me do this five or six times today, maybe even more. I can't help it, I'm working on this. When I talk about God the Father, I say him. When I talk about Jesus the Son, I say he. When I talk about the Holy Spirit, I say it. It's just natural, it's normal. The Holy Spirit's not a what, it's a who. See, there's this concept in Scripture. This word isn't in Scripture, it's just a word we've come up with to help us figure this out. It's called the Trinity. And what the Trinity means is really simple. It means that God, when we say God, we actually mean three people who make up one person. Simple, right? Three people who make up one person, three unique individuals, three unique personalities that come together as one person. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Now, it's really easy to get tripped up right there. And so if you're new to this whole thing, you're like, yep, crazy, that's what I thought, I'm out. Um I understand that. I understand that. It's it's interesting though, the concept is not as strange as it sounds when you really start to think about it. For example, in Genesis 126, it's the very first chapter of the Bible. Some people think the whole concept of the Trinity doesn't even appear until the New Testament, chapter one of the Bible. Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. Let us, our image, be like us. There's a plurality there. Okay, this is God talking to himself. This is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit having a conversation. Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do that. Now, if a human being came up to you and talked like that, you would think they were nuts. Like if I go through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A tomorrow, because they're closed on Sunday, um, but one day that I like really want Chick-fil-A, everyone like, ah, it's brilliant. And it's a really good thing they do that. So if I go through the drive-thru tomorrow and I say, yeah, we would like some grilled chicken nuggets because we are trying to lose weight and we are convincing ourselves that somehow fast food that's grilled will help us lose weight. And we would also like a large unsweet tea, which is weird in Georgia, but it's what I drink. We would like an unsweet tea, and we would like you to put light ice in that tea because we get frustrated when you fill the entire cup with ice and then put like an ounce of liquid in there. We don't like that, so we would like you to do it this way. If I pull up and it's it's just a mi we, it's just me. I mean, that person is, they're still gonna say my pleasure, because they have to, but they're gonna think I'm nuts. Because we don't do that. So so how is this? How is this not insanity? But see, here's the here's the crazy thing. God has made you in his image. You were made in the image of God. Congratulations. And so you, according to God, should reflect him. So if God exists as kind of multiple people that are really one person, shouldn't you if you're made in his image? And I actually think you do. Question. Anyone here ever have a conversation with yourself? Right. Okay? Anyone here ever have an argument with yourself? Yeah. Anyone here nuts? A couple of you. No, we do that all the time, right? So standing in front of you right now is me. My name's Justin, but there are actually several Justins here. There's the emotional Justin. He has been told that he is not in touch with himself and is stunted. He's working on that, okay? There's the intellectual Justin. He is married and reminded that he's not as smart as he thinks he is often. And then there's the spiritual Justin who's just trying his best, okay? So, three Justins that make up me. I live in a body, but that's not what I am. I'm not a gallbladder and bones and things like that. I'm I'm a person. Okay? So if you take away my spirit, Justin's not Justin. If you take away my emotions, I'm not me. If you take away my intellect, I'm not me. Those three aspects of me are what makes me who I am. And I'm still one person, but I'll I'll fight with myself. The intellectual Justin and the emotional Justin will have arguments daily. Like I love cheese a lot. Cheese, I don't know who the first person was that decided to let milk sit for a while and then ate it. But I'm thankful to that person, and I believe they're in heaven, and I will thank them when I meet them there. We all owe them a lot, right? We do. Praise God, that brilliant soul. I imagine that happened and God was like, no, no, eat it. And the person's like, uh, no, no, eat it. Eat it. I love cheese, but I I do have these goals this year. I'm trying to lose weight, I'm trying to get in really great shape. And uh, and the intellectual Justin understands that cheese is not on the menu right now. Okay? But my wife buys cheese. She buys it for my daughter, who I guess is made in my image because she loves cheese. The sharper the better. She has like adult taste in cheese, and I love sharp cheddar and all those kind of nice, like aged cheeses. And so we'll buy cheese cubes and cheese sticks and things like that of these really amazing cheeses, and they're for my daughter, they're not for me. Every once in a while she'll have like one or two cheese cubes, but I can eat 50 in five minutes. I'm like a machine. And so I'll open up the fridge, because I just do that. Does anyone else do that? You're just bored, you walk around your house, you're like, well, see what's in the fridge. You know, I do that all the time. And I'll open up, and there it is, there's cheese cubes, and they're golden, they're actually golden, like shining at me. And and I have an argument with myself. Emotional Justin wants the cheese. Had a hard day. It's cheese. It's just you only have a few cubes. Look, they're tiny, they're practically healthy at this point, they're so small. And then intellectual Justin will actually say this out loud. You've probably done this. No, Justin. You ever say that to yourself? You call yourself by name? Intellectual Justin will say, No, Justin, that's not gonna help you reach your goals. You know that. And emotional Justin and intellectual Justin will have an argument, and emotional Justin wins every time. Every single time. I eat the cheese. And then I have my spirit, and there's times where my emotions and my intelligence tell me one thing, and my spirit tells me something completely different. And there's this battle that ensues. So every single one of us in the room, I think we can at least acknowledge that we do reflect God. We're not crazy when that's happening. Yes, we're one person, but there are these unique aspects of us that sort of come together to make us who we are. They're indistinguishable but still distinct. You reflect God. And if that analogy doesn't help, go to Target, go down the body wash and shampoo aisle, find some body wash, conditioner, and shampoo in one. They make that, there's your trinity right there, there's your proof, and you've got it. You're good. No more analogies. Just keep it in your house. And someone's like, I don't get the Trinity, you're like, hold on. Um, look at this. Three things in one. See, it's not that strange of a concept. It is it's difficult though to grasp, and here's why we're talking about this. Um, this is so important. The Holy Spirit, you want to know who the Holy Spirit is? The Holy Spirit is God. Not some offshoot of God, not some add-on to God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son. Absolutely just as much God. And so if you want to know God, if you want to have God in your life, if you want to experience God, the Holy Spirit's a must. I mean, you can't you can't go to someone you're interested in having a relationship with and say, hey, I want to date you if you're single. Try this. I would love to see what happens. I want to date you. I want to date the spiritual you and the intellectual you. I'd like the emotional you to not be around so much. Right? There's men here being like, should have been in the wedding vows. Uh and there's women here like, you don't have an intellectual you, you don't even have that. Like, it's not even there. We have marriage counseling if you need it. So it doesn't work that way, right? You can't pick and choose what aspects of a person you want, but we try to do that with God. Because we we might say, hey, I I want God the Father, yes, the Father's love. I want that. And Jesus the Son, he died for me, I get that. But then when someone brings up the Holy Spirit, a lot of the time we're kind of like, whoa, hold on. I didn't want things to get all weird. And it's a tragedy, it really is. It's kind of funny, but it's a tragedy because here's what happens people, Christians, people who have given their life to Jesus, live their whole life never experiencing all of God. Their whole life never experiencing all that God can have. And if there's one thing I would love us as a church to commit to together, that we would never allow ourselves to settle for anything less than all of God. Never less than all of God. Why? Why not have Him all when He's given all of Him to us? What is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is God, it's a who, and you can know the Holy Spirit. Now, that said, we do have this difficulty at times, as people and even entire churches. We have this difficulty approaching the Holy Spirit, dealing with the Holy Spirit, figuring out how to make the Holy Spirit something that we apply to our lives. Why is that? Why do we have that tendency? I think it's really important for us to explore that. Because if we don't get through some of the holdups, it's gonna be really challenging for us to have this experience we we want to have. If you want all of God, you're gonna have to overcome some walls, some obstacles in your path, maybe. And so I want to start with an experience some of you might have had. I've definitely had this experience, not all of us, but some of us. You may have at one point in time been open to the Holy Spirit, interested in this whole relationship and how God can actually live in you and the power of God's in your life, all this kind of great stuff. And then someone came along that claimed to have the Holy Spirit, that claimed to represent the Holy Spirit, and they were just super weird. And you said, no, thank you. I mean, really, that that happens a lot. And look, please hear me when I say this. The Holy Spirit is supernatural. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. When the Holy Spirit's operating, sometimes things happen that don't make a lot of sense. And sometimes when when you get filled with the Holy Spirit, sometimes you just like I don't know, it's exciting. That said, supernatural is not the same thing as super bizarre. Okay? And what I really mean by this, because I've experienced this, I've experienced a lot in in church, when someone acts however they want to act, with no regard for the people around them and the experience that the people around them are having, and then uses the Holy Spirit as their excuse for doing that. That's just a super weird person using the Holy Spirit as their excuse to be super weird. And that's not that's not good. That's not the Holy Spirit. One of my favorite authors is a man named John Eldridge. He's written some really great books, Beautiful Outlaw, Wild at Heart, you may have heard of those. I read this quote of his years ago. It's in Beautiful Outlaw, actually. And it's very blunt. Okay, it's super blunt, but it's uh it's accurate. Here's what he says: Bizarre people are probably the most effective tool of the enemy to turn people off to Jesus. Or to a more intimate experience of Jesus, the way they talk, the culture they create, but mostly what they are like to be around. As I have pressed into knowing and loving Jesus more deeply, this is the number one barrier I've had to overcome. Some of the most spiritual people I've met, who operate many powerful gifts, are people I would never want to take on vacation. Would never call at two o'clock in the morning. This is a problem, gang, because people loved to be with Jesus, just to be with him in normal life, walking down the road, having dinner, talking on the beach. So if your spirituality doesn't fit into normal life, it's religious. What he's saying is that if your connection to God, to the Holy Spirit, your spirituality, if that if that makes you inconsiderate of other people, or if it makes it impossible for you to fit in and have a normal conversation and a healthy conversation with another person without freaking them out, that's actually not the Holy Spirit. That's not from God, because that's not how Jesus was, and Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, they get along really well because they're the same person. And so if it doesn't fit with Jesus, it's not the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul he dealt with this in the early church. There were people in this church at Corinth that were having this incredible, incredible experience with God. They were experiencing the Holy Spirit, and it was awesome. But eventually, and this is this is really easy to do, they began to believe that the whole point was to have a crazy experience. They forgot that the point was to lead people to Jesus, to love people to Jesus. And so they were having their crazy experiences and they were eating it up, but they were doing that at the expense of anyone who wanted to come along for the ride. No one could could engage with them. And so Paul wrote to them in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 16. He says, For if you praise God only in the Spirit, how can those who don't understand you praise God with you? How can they join you in giving thanks when they don't understand what you're saying? In other words, Paul's saying, Stop freaking people out. Remember that there's someone near you that's not maybe where you're at. And it's not about you having your experience. It's about the love of Jesus being passed to every person that needs it. So if you've ever been open to the Holy Spirit and some super weird person made you think that was the Holy Spirit, I want to apologize. I don't think they they meant wrong. I think they meant well, they were just confused.

Don't

Let that be a barrier to you experiencing the Holy Spirit. Now, there's other experiences we may have had with people. Maybe we've known someone that had the Holy Spirit, because God's really generous. It's not like he's stingy, you don't have to earn it. So God will give the Holy Spirit to anyone, and sometimes people kind of abuse it. You may have known someone that had the Holy Spirit or even seen them from afar, and they just had this air of super spirituality. They felt like they were super spiritual. And the result of being around them or witnessing them wasn't that you were encouraged and you were like, man, I want to go after God. It was actually you feeling inferior. And you might have looked at that person and said, I'm never going to have what they have. I'm just, I don't have that. I'm not spiritual enough. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't get God like they do. See, there's no such thing as a super spiritual person. It's impossible. Just like you're no less or no more human than the person sitting next to you. You are no less or no more spiritual than the person sitting next to you because we're all humans and we're all spiritual. God made us that way. So you have just as much capacity to experience the Holy Spirit in your life as anyone else. It doesn't matter your past, it doesn't matter what's brought you to the point you are in life, it doesn't matter how many mistakes you have or issues that you have. Some of the people in Scripture that were the most filled with the Holy Spirit were the most messed up people you can imagine. There is no such thing as a super spiritual human being. There are people that are more spiritually developed, more spiritually comfortable. You can grow into that. Talk about that in a second, but but please know that you are every bit as spiritual as anyone else, and you have the capacity to experience the Holy Spirit. So if a super weird person turned you off, consider it, reconsider it. If a super spiritual person discouraged you, made you feel like you'd never have it, that's not true. But I think that the one thing that keeps most of us from this experience with the Holy Spirit, the kind of broadest thing, is that we just have a hard time with the supernatural. Period. It's not the super weird thing, it's not the super spiritual thing. It's just that as people, we have a difficult time engaging something supernatural. And we might believe in Jesus, we might believe in God, we might believe in the Bible, and if someone comes up to us and says, hey, God spoke to me, our first reaction often is like, sure, he did. Okay. Right? There's a hesitancy we have to that. Now, I do believe that God has given us a healthy amount of cynicism. So we wouldn't be naive, we wouldn't be easily swayed and just swept around. There's actually a verse in the Bible that says, don't be swept along by every false teaching that comes along. Be wise. So there is a healthy cynicism that exists. But sometimes that healthy cynicism grows to just plain old cynicism. And we're not open to supernatural experiences, to supernatural things. And that becomes really challenging with the Holy Spirit because obviously God the Father is supernatural. Obviously, Jesus is supernatural, but when we think of God the Father, we can actually think of a natural image to help us make sense of that. He's a father. When we think of Jesus, we know what Jesus looks like. He was that white guy with blue eyes that we see in all the pictures, right? There was the only white dude born in the Middle East 2,000 years ago. It was a miracle. Whatever. That super handsome guy played by all the famous actors, even though the Bible said there was nothing about his appearance that would attract us to him, whatever. So we can picture Jesus. He was a man, he was a carpenter, he wore a robe, a beard, we get all that. But but what mental picture do you get of the Holy Spirit? No one in the room is gonna have the same picture. I talked to someone the other day, and they're like, the color blue, that's what they got. I'm like, you're either the deepest person I've ever known, or nuts, right? Because that's how we think. We have a hard time. We have a hard time with approaching the supernatural, even if we believe in the supernatural, but but here's here's the thing. Here's the challenge. We cannot let an aversion to the supernatural keep us from experiencing God. Because God is supernatural, there's no way around it. There's just no way around it. When God shows up, supernatural things happen. In Scripture, when the Holy Spirit shows up, supernatural things happen. They just do. Battles that have no chance of being won are won. Diseases that have never been cured are cured all of a sudden. People are given gifts and abilities that don't even make sense. They can see the future, they can have dreams. It's it's crazy. Even in the Old Testament, even in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit shows up all the time. You may have heard of the story of Samson. It's a classic Bible story, it's a kid's Bible story, even though it's super violent. Um I used to have a problem. I taught children's church here for a long, long time, and I would teach these Bible stories, and I would forget how intense they were. And so I'd have to figure out like, how do you teach this to a first grader and not have their parents mad at you? Most of the time you just ask for forgiveness, not permission. So Samson's a pretty cool story. If you've never read it, it's in the book of Judges. And Samson has his superhuman strength. That's that's what we all remember from the Samson story. But the strength wasn't actually his own, it was all the Holy Spirit. And so, for example, in Judges chapter 14, it says, Then Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother and came as far as the vineyards of Timnah, and behold, a young lion came roaring toward him. This doesn't mean a cub. Cubs don't roar. It wouldn't be intimidating to have a tiny lion coming your way. This is like a young, healthy lion. So a young lion comes roaring toward him, the spirit of the Lord. There it is, the Holy Spirit. The spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, so that he tore him, that is the lion, as one tears a young goat, though he had nothing in his hand. Now, I have never torn a young goat. So I don't know how challenging that is. But I do imagine it's easier than tearing a young lion. And that's what happens, but he did not tell his father or mother what he had done. So his strength did not come from himself, it came from the Spirit of God. This is supernatural. Supernatural. God is supernatural. And we have to be okay with that. We have to be okay with that as individuals. Just because that's who he is. And we also have to be okay with that as a church. Now, this is a very small rabbit trail. I promise I will come back to this, but I think this is important. Because we as a church are still in the formative years of our culture. So I actually pay a lot of attention to church culture. You might work in an industry or an environment where you pay attention to what's kind of going on in the world in which you work. I do the same thing with church culture. I'm not trying to see what's trendy. I don't care about what's trendy. I'm not trying to look and say, hey, what's working over there? I trust God to tell us what we need to do. But I love, I love Jesus and I love the church. I know God loves the church. And so I pay attention to what's happening in church culture, and I see a lot of things that excite me, and I see a lot of things that concern me. And I think I have to do that so I can make sure that our culture here is what it's supposed to be. I want to be protective of that. I want to be careful with that. Sometimes I see things that excite me and concern me at the same time. For example, I think churches are better at being interesting and relevant than they've ever been before. I think that's a great thing. It's so important to be interesting, it's so important to be relevant so that you can engage people where they're at. And so everything from the dress style to the music style to even the way that church buildings are built, the message content, churches are better than they've ever been at actually being interesting and relevant to people in everyday life. It's not like you have to walk into some weird culture and learn new words and they're talking about doctrine that you don't care about. They're actually talking about life. That's good. At the same time, here's the concern. When you do it that way, and we we we try to do it that way, I hope you find us interesting and I hope we're somewhat relevant to you. But we can't stop there. Because interesting and relevant will help you enjoy your Sunday morning, but they will not change your life. Won't do it. And so what happens, this is what I see happening all the time, is that churches become afraid to go past something relevant, and so they actually become afraid to talk about what is most essential in life. They become afraid to talk about prayer, like real prayer. Not this whole, oh, I'll pray for you so you feel better as you go about your day. But I'm talking about real prayer where you ask a supernatural God to do supernatural things. Churches don't want to talk about that because, ooh, that that doesn't fit with the interesting and relevant. What if that what if that's a turnoff? What if it is? So what? He's God. This is what he does. This is who he is. Churches are afraid, yeah. No God. I see, I see churches afraid to like teach the Bible. So we'll put a verse in here and a verse there. We'll take the verses that are the really good life hacks. Because there's a lot of that in there. You can read Proverbs and you can come up with some great wisdom for how you can have a better financial life, a better marriage, a better job. That's all great. God wants that for you because He loves you. But the Bible is not a collection of life hacks. It's about changing who you are at your core. So you are a new person, so that you have a new life, so that you have joy that overcomes your circumstances, so that you don't need a lot of money in the bank and you don't need everything to be going well to actually enjoy your life. But churches become afraid of actually teaching the word of God because what if that's not relevant? What if too many Bible verses turns people off? How many is that? Is it five? Is it three? I don't know. But I I'm 32 years old, so if you came here today to listen to me tell you about life, you are sorely mistaken. It's God's word. If I ever say anything that doesn't match up with his word, you just need to tell me. I probably will. I get things wrong all the time. See, it's the word of God that we build our lives on. And I'll tell you this: when a church becomes afraid of going beyond relevant, when a church becomes so obsessed with being interesting and relevant, and that oftentimes ends up meaning trendy and cool. Okay? It's a lot harder to be real than it is to be cool. I'd rather be real. So when a church gets in that mindset, you know what, you know what gets the axe completely? The Holy Spirit. It's just that's gone. We're not gonna talk about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's the weird cousin we keep in the closet. Why would you, I don't know why you'd put a weird cousin in the closet, but just go with me. That was a poorly formed analogy. Um but but when that happens, when we become obsessed with with fitting in our culture, we lose the ability to transform it. And the Holy Spirit gets the boot. And that's you know what's so sad about that? What's so heartbreaking? Is a perception starts to develop within the church. I'm not even talking about people outside of the church. I'm talking about within the church, a perception develops that the Holy Spirit just isn't practical. So we can't really talk about the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit's not practical enough. What a lie! The words that we just read of Jesus a few minutes ago, where he was promising the Holy Spirit, talking about all the things the Holy Spirit would do, that the Holy Spirit would guide you and teach you and lead you, that the Holy Spirit would never leave you, he would be in you, that the Holy Spirit would remind you of all the things that Jesus said, that the Holy Spirit would give you peace of mind and peace of heart. Do those sound like impractical things for your life? No, the Holy Spirit's the most practical thing that we have. The Holy Spirit's like spiritual GPS. I'm serious, when you read the words of Jesus, it's it's like reading, it's like reading Apple announcing all the new features and a new product. It's like, and he'll do this and he'll do this and he'll do this and this and this and this. Jesus told his disciples, hey, when you get arrested, don't even worry about what to say, because in that moment, the Holy Spirit will give you the words you need. There is nothing more practical than the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit in your life and being able to sense the Holy Spirit and listen to the Holy Spirit, that that's what allows you to literally live your life making decision after decision after decision that lines up with God's will. And you can try to do it without the Holy Spirit. It's like tying a hand behind your back. You can. You can just know scripture. If you know scripture, that will help. You can know scripture and not really engage the Holy Spirit, and it's gonna help you a lot, but it's still an unnecessary handicap. So don't let an aversion to the supernatural keep you from engaging the Holy Spirit. I know it may not be trendy, it may not be cool, it may be beyond relevant, but we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be focused on what's essential. That's important for us. So as your church, I just want you to know that we're never gonna avoid what's essential out of a fear that somehow it's not cool enough or whatever. It's never gonna happen. Okay, last thing before we go, and I told you in advance that it was gonna go long, so I'm sorry. But it's the people who got baptized's fault. So it's always all right, four things. I know that sounds like, oh my gosh, this is gonna take another 20 minutes. Not at all, this is quick. Four four steps that you can begin to make to experience the Holy Spirit. If you're willing to accept that the Holy Spirit is God, that's who the Holy Spirit is, really God, and number two, if you're willing to sort of move past your difficulty engaging the supernatural, get over the super spiritual stuff, forgive and move beyond the super weird stuff, if you're willing to sort of deal with that and just approach the Holy Spirit, I want to leave you with four really simple steps to help you actually begin living this out, growing in your ability to experience the Holy Spirit. Number one is believe. Really simple. You need to believe that you are made and meant to experience God. You have to believe that. Jesus said that, right? He said, you will receive the Holy Spirit. He didn't say a small portion of you may or may not receive the Holy Spirit. And the rest of you will just have to figure it out. That's not what he said. He said, You will receive the Holy Spirit. Period. You are made by God to receive the Holy Spirit. You need to believe that. Jesus always believed what God said, and that gave him confidence. When other people said you're demon-possessed, Jesus said, No, I'm the Son of God. And he knew that because God told him that. When he was baptized, God said, This is my son who I love. Jesus just held on to that and he believed it. So believe that you are made by God to experience God. Number two, invite. Invite the Holy Spirit into your life. I have a friend, kind of a mentor. I have a lot of mentors. I need mentors in every aspect of life. And so I have a mentor that's helping me with some Holy Spirit stuff because I want to experience the Holy Spirit a lot more. And I was asking her a bunch of questions about the Holy Spirit, stuff I don't understand. And one day she said, The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. And I'm naturally cynical, so I'm like, where's that in the Bible? And it actually is, because the Holy Spirit and Jesus, they're consistent. So in Revelation, the Bible says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks. It's an illustration of how he wants to come into our lives. He says, I stand at the door and knock. If you will open the door and let me in, we'll share a meal together as friends. There's Jesus being polite. But you have to open the door. You have to invite his presence in. You can come to church and you can be around amazing, amazing people, and you will you will experience what Jesus mentioned earlier. You will experience the Holy Spirit around you for sure. But you need to experience the Holy Spirit in you. In your life. Doesn't matter how old you are or how young you are, you can have that. But you need to invite his presence in. Ask him, he's a gentleman. He will not turn you down. So invite his presence in. Number three, you need to listen. You gotta listen to hear the Holy Spirit. I believe the Holy Spirit's talking a ton. I believe the Holy Spirit talks constantly to every single person that has a relationship with Jesus. I just believe that we aren't very good listeners a lot of the time. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is in 1 Kings chapter 19, you can read it later. This prophet named Elijah, he goes to Mount Sinai to hear from God. That's what he was supposed to do. And that made sense because God had spoken on Mount Sinai before. Moses heard from God on Mount Sinai. And when Moses heard from God, there was like lightning and thunder and smoke. It was like a Metallica concert. It was amazing. And so Elijah goes to Mount Sinai to hear from God, and he's expecting that. He's expecting, you know, pyrotechnics and special effects and that kind of stuff. And he gets up there and there's an earthquake. And he's like, sweet, Moses got lightning, I get an earthquake. But God didn't speak in the earthquake. And then there was a fire. And at first he thought that was God. He's like, God's speaking to me in a fire. And then he realized that God wasn't speaking in the fire, and then he probably just went, there's a fire, and he like ran away. Because if the fire is not God, it's bad. Go away from the fire. And then in that craziness, all of a sudden Elijah hears a gentle whisper. Some translations say a still small voice. And that was God. Why in the world would God speak in a whisper when he can do lightning and earthquakes and fire? The only reason he would speak in a whisper, it's the same reason you speak in a whisper. Because you want someone to listen. Now here's the challenge. We live in a world full of voices. Don't pretend like you don't have voices in your head. You do. Right? You've got your own voice, you've got your parents' voice, you've got your friends' voices, you've got the voice of culture. And oftentimes the Holy Spirit is not the loudest voice. And so if you want to grow in your ability to hear the Holy Spirit, you need to listen, and you might need to tune some other voices out for a while. There's some voices you just don't need to have ever. And you know what those are, just get rid of those. There's some voices that affect you more than you might admit. Maybe you don't need to watch that news show every single night, that news station that just makes you afraid of everything happening in the world at all times, that it's all about to come falling apart every second of every day. So you live in fear because that's not the Holy Spirit. So there might be some voices that you you actually give a lot of attention to that you need to tune out and turn off so that you can grow in your ability to hear the Holy Spirit. And that means taking some time to just be in quiet. To just be in quiet. We're not good at that as people, are we? We're not good at quiet. I have friends that will say, I cannot fall asleep unless the TV is on. And I'm like, that's really odd, because it should be the opposite. It would actually make a lot of sense if someone said, you know, if there is a, if there's a blinking, flashing light in my room that's making noise, I have a hard time falling asleep. And I would say, I, yep, that seems like that would be challenging, just turn the thing off. But we are so used to noise that we're like the opposite. We're like, I need noise. I don't know what to do in quiet. But it's in quiet that you hear the Holy Spirit. So listen. Tune the other stuff out. It's that still small voice. Final thing. I'm gonna wrap it up. There is light at the end of the tunnel, I promise. Final thing is discern. Because when you're listening, when you tune those other voices out, when you determine in your heart to hear from the Holy Spirit, how do you know it's the Holy Spirit and not you? How do you know it's the Holy Spirit and not some other random thought? That does become a challenge. And I don't think any one person has a perfect ability to do that. There are people who will tell you that they hear from the Holy Spirit perfectly, they don't. So it is something that takes time and it takes energy and it's a practice, it's a skill, and we can develop this. We can develop the ability to discern the Holy Spirit. Most of that's a relationship as we live that out. If I think the Holy Spirit told me to do something and I do it and it fails miserably, I'm like, oh, that may have not been the Holy Spirit. That's okay, I'll just learn from that. Now, I will say a few things that'll help. Number one, the Holy Spirit, what does it not sound like? That's important, right? If you want to know what the Holy Spirit sounds like and discern it, what does the Holy Spirit not sound like? It doesn't often sound like you. That's really important. I have to know my own voice well enough to recognize when a thought is mine. I have to be honest enough with myself, not convince myself that what I actually want to do and what I told myself to do is somehow what God's telling me to do, because I can do that. All of us can, but I actually need to know my own voice well enough to go, that's me, that's not God. Number two, the Holy Spirit doesn't sound like fear ever. So if you want to do something, if you have this decision to make and you're trying to hear from the Holy Spirit, and what you're hearing is a, oh, but what if this happens? And oh, but if you considered, oh my goodness, what if this could go wrong? That is not the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit's not afraid of anything. He's God. So don't listen to fear. That's not the Holy Spirit. What the Holy Spirit does sound like is God, because he's God. That's where knowing the word, knowing scripture is so vital. Because the more you know the Bible, the more you know what God has said, what God the Father has said, what Jesus said, the more you know that, the better you can discern if it's the Holy Spirit or something else. Because the Holy Spirit is not going to tell you something that disagrees with Jesus, that disagrees with God the Father. He's not going to do it. Because God is not like us, He's not at war with Himself. He lives in harmony with Himself. So the more you know the Word, the better you will you'll get at discerning the Holy Spirit. So those are those are the four steps. They're not patented or anything like that. But it's just simple, simple practices. Number one, believe. Number two, listen. No, that was no, that was number three, wasn't it? It's behind me. Number two, invite. Number three, listen. Number four, discern. You start walking that out, you're gonna experience the Holy Spirit. Now we're gonna we're gonna wrap up like we normally do with some worship. I know we're a little bit late. I appreciate you guys being patient. I will remind you that there is a human being right now watching your children for you, and they're doing it for free. And so just enjoy that for a few more minutes. But but I I just I want to leave us with this. I hope, I hope today, this is what I really hoped for today. The concept of the Holy Spirit might be a little bit demystified. Because I'll admit, I have not valued the Holy Spirit as much in my life as I should. Most of my life I really didn't think I even wanted that whole thing. And as a church, I don't ever want us to make the mistake I've made. I don't ever want us to miss what could have been. You know, one day I'm gonna have to stand in front of God and I'm gonna have to answer to God for how well I've done to do my part in your growth. And so one day when you're standing in front of God, if you could put a good word in and you could say, you know, Lord, it was that one time that Justin said, and I'll be in the back of the line going like, thank you, thank you. I'm playing. The Holy Spirit is for you. Jesus said it's a gift. The Holy Spirit is a gift. Do not reject the gift of the Holy Spirit in your life. Do not settle for less than all of God. Don't settle for anything but all of Him, because He wants you to have all of Him. There's nothing keeping you from that. You're you are spiritual enough. You're not disqualified. Just start where you're at and believe and invite and listen and discern and begin making decisions based on what you believe the Holy Spirit is leading you to do. Because the worst case is that you make a mistake and you stand in front of God one day and you're like, oh, I thought that's what the Holy Spirit said. I just must have heard wrong. I would much rather do that than the opposite. Say, I thought the Holy Spirit said that. I just, you know, ignored it. I don't want to do that. Don't stop short of having all of God. There's no reason to. Okay, I love you guys. I love this church. I'm excited about our future. I'm excited that we can be a place that, you know, is interesting and relevant, but never stop short of what's essential. And trust me, mainly trust Jesus when he tells you that there is nothing more essential in your life than the Holy Spirit. If you want to move with God, he's who needs to move you. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for these amazing, amazing people. God, every single Sunday, I'm just I'm encouraged all over again. I'm inspired by the love and the passion and the authenticity that exists in this place. It's amazing, God. You've done this and it's incredible. So thank you for the gift of this church. But Lord, right now, we want to thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, help us take you at your word. When you promised the Holy Spirit to us. Help us be those few brave people who are willing to be completely open to you. Who are willing to experience you as you are. We want to experience a supernatural God doing supernatural things in our lives. And we need you, Jesus. We need you to heal us. Holy Spirit, we need you to restore us. We need you to fix what's broken. We just need you to move. And our commitment is that if you move, we'll do our best to move with you. We love you, Jesus. We ask all this in your name. Amen.