The Forgotten Fire: Evidence of the Holy Spirit?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help you know God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here, and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's word in practical ways. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Let's listen in. Good morning. Welcome to church, everybody. I'm so glad you're here. Let's take a moment. Welcome in all of our online friends from all around the world. Come on, we could do better than that. Welcome, everybody. I'm glad that you have tuned in. I'm glad that you're here. Grab your Bibles, if you would. Galatians chapter five is where we're going to spend all of our time today. As we're doing that, I want to say a very special thank you to all of you who have stood behind us financially. Your generosity is helping us to do awesome things in our community and around the world. One of the neat things we got to do this week is our youth was able to do Valentine's Day cards for nursing homes. How cool is that? By the way, there's a lot of widows, a lot of people who feel like they're very neglected during this Valentine's Day. And because of your generosity, we're able to do wonderful things, just like making somebody smile that might be having a rough day. So I hope you had a good Valentine's Day weekend. For those of you that are married, for those of you that are not, happy, sad day, or as we call it, Singles awareness Day. We hope that you powered through. So I want to get into. I want to get into God's Word today together. Galatians, chapter five. We're going to wrap up our series called the Forgotten Fire. The Forgotten Fire. This is specifically about the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit, depending upon if you're raised in a white church or black church, you might have called them Holy Ghost, you might have called it Holy Spirit. Same thing. For the sake of argument. But we feel like it's important for us to get on the same page on who the Bible says the Holy Spirit is, not who church or religious experiences or different denominations say the Holy Spirit is. What does the Bible say? Let's get absolute truth from the source himself on the Holy Spirit so we can kind of just cut out all the noise and get directly into who is the Holy Spirit. And so I want to say a very special thank you to Danny. You did a fantastic job last week in speaking the word. You guys show some appreciation to Danny Stanley. That was awesome. Great job. Thank you for filling in. In case you can't tell, my voice is on the blink. I've got very little left, so I'm going to do as good as I can for you. But I've been yelling at my wife for the past three days. That's not true. That's not true at all. So we. We've had a long week of traveling and. And ministry, preaching at a marriage conference and. And another church. And so it's. It's. It's been a lot, but I'm going to give you the best I can because I love you. And so let. Let's talk about the Holy Spirit. So Galatians, chapter 5. The apostle Paul is laying down some important doctrinal truth to the church that. That is confused about. About grace. And so in some ways, he's helping them to kind of understand what grace is for and how they have misused it. And so it reminds me a lot of my son's first birthday party. So those of you that are parents, let me see your hands. Where are you guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots and lots and lots of parents in this place. Do you remember the first birthday party? Especially with the very first child? Because the first child is different than all the rest of them. With the first child, you want to have an amazing experience. Everything is brand new. Everything is right. By the time you get to the second or third one, you're like, you're on your own. It's whatever. Oh, is it your birthday? Whatever. But with that first one, what we had tried to do with my son was try to keep him completely away from sugar. Anybody remember that? With the first kid? The second one, you're like, eat what you want. You'll be fine. But with the first one, we try to keep him off of sugar completely until the very first birthday party. And so that first birthday party, which is a sham, by the way, they don't have any idea what those gifts are. And it's this massive deal, and they want to play with the wrapping paper. Come on. But as a first birthday party, get him, you know, the. The cutest outfit. All of his little friends are there, and you've got about five minutes before it turns into complete chaos. And then we gave him his own chocolate cake. And I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he got the very first taste of chocolate cake with frosting, because it. It's like. It's like something woke up inside of him and it wasn't all Good. And the look that he gave me was like, you've been lying to me my whole life. That stuff was not good. This is incredible. And then just kind of just dive into it, just make a whole mess. And it's kind of like this. You watch the fine line between the parts of their life which have been hidden and the parts of their life which just get off the rails, right? And this is essentially what the apostle Paul is kind of dealing with when he's coming to a group of people misunderstanding God's grace. Because he says, now you've tasted grace apart from the law and all these rules and all these regulations. Now you've got grace. And you're like, I can live however I want. I could do whatever I want. This is amazing. I can just sin and sin and sin and sin, and God has to forgive me. I said, no, that's not God's grace. That's God's patience. And so he begins to lay down exactly what we need to hear today. It's not about the sugar, this grace that's just so wonderful and great that I can just keep sinning. He said, understand this is a gift. It's a beautiful gift. It's a wonderful part of this. But it's not something that you turn it into something that's bad. And so this is what he's doing. In verse 13, he says this. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. You're called to walk in freedom. He says, but this is what you're doing. He said, don't use your freedom to indulge your flesh. Rather serve one another humbly in love. And then he begins to break down. How do we do that? He says, walk by the Somebody, say the next word. Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Walk by the spirit. And you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh. They are in constant conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you you want. Paul is essentially saying, the greatest battles you're going to face in your entire life are not the battle between good and evil and right and wrong. It's the battle between the Holy Spirit and your flesh. It's what I want, what I think is right. And it's interesting when Paul uses that word, flesh, most people think these are physical sins because he begins to list them out, all the sexual stuff. But the word that he used, that he uses there in the. In the original language of the Greek, is the Word Sarx. This is not necessarily the body, but. But sarx means the human self apart from a relationship with God. What we would say that is self reliance. That's the works of self reliance. You're leading yourself, you're not being led by the Holy Spirit. And these become the works of the flesh. Remember, he's speaking to believers. He's not speaking to a group of people that weren't saved. It's a group of people that have known Christ. They understand the freedom that Christ has given us. They're filled with God's spirit. But they've taken that grace and gone to a place that made it evil. This was not an isolated incident, by the way. We still see that in the church today. I can live however I want to live. I've got grace. God's grace. Isn't it great? We call that greasy grace, by the way. Greasy grace. He says you're not to just do whatever you want. Look at this. But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious. He says this sexual immorality, this any sex outside of the covenant of marriage. He said that's wrong. Impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft. That word witchcraft, by the way, in the Greek language is the word pharmacia, where we get our word for like pharmaceutical stuff. He said, look, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness and orgies. Orgies. Did this turn into a PG13 message? Apostle Paul, watch your mouth. Here's what's crazy. Remember this. He's speaking to believers. And when he gets into these works of the flesh, he said, this is what happens when you, when you take your own self reliance and you try to bring it into Christianity. That doesn't work. This is not good. An interesting thing was he, when he's, when he's speaking to these people, they understand this, maybe in a different language in a different time period, but they understand that when Paul uses that word freedom, that's political language for them. He's saying you were called to walk in freedom. America is a country that's built on freedom. But he's saying you're using your freedom to turn it into something that's evil. You're called to live free of tyranny, but yet now you're putting yourself back underneath a new kind of legalism and the works of the flesh. He said you're starting to imitate pagan culture. The pagan culture that they're talking about they would have seen this. It mixes sex and worship all the time. All these pagan deities and all these things that are happening with other worship in their culture was ridiculous. And the works of the flesh that he starts listing out here, they mirror that pagan culture worship, their temple feasts and their orgies and the factions and the rivalries very common in that culture. And so Paul is essentially saying, look, when you live by the flesh, you don't look like Jesus, you look like Rome, you look like your culture. And the same would be said for us today. When you live like that, when you think that that's okay, you don't look like Jesus, you look like the American culture. You look like every other American Christian. And people say, this is why I don't go to church. Because you're filled with hypocrites. You people aren't walking by the spirit. You're not being changed into the image of Christ. You look like everybody else. You're just better at hiding it. So when Paul lists this stuff out, he says, I warn you, as I did before, those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Strong language. I mean, he's speaking directly to a group of people. He said, you know better than this. Well, what are you asking us to do? What's the remedy for us to say we're called to live in freedom, we're called to walk in the spirit? What do you. What are you offering us to help us? What's the redemptive value here? And then he begins to list it out. He says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Those who belong to Christ, Jesus Christ, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Notice the past tense of that word. That was done for you. It was crucified. It was nailed to the cross. The moment that you accepted Christ, you took upon Christ. Jesus took that upon himself. You crucified that to the cross. He said, what are you doing pulling that out of the grave? That's not you anymore. You've crucified the flesh with its desires. So he says, since we live by the Somebody, say the next word. The Spirit, let us keep in step with. Say it again, Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. So Paul gives the beautiful key to living a life apart from hypocrisy, apart from dead works, apart from dead religion, which is what we see today in our Americanized version of Christianity. Apart from all that, he said the key to doing that is having a relationship with the Holy Spirit. And here is where we find One of the biggest problems facing the church today is we generally take the Holy Spirit and we fall into two ditches on the side of the road, and one ditch is chaos, and the other ditch is control. And this is where churches take the Holy Spirit. Either we go to a place that's completely unhealthy outside of scripture, and it just goes off the rails, and we're like, oh, Holy Spirit does whatever he wants. Like, I don't know if that's Holy Spirit. That got a little weird, or it goes to control where we're so afraid of what the Holy Spirit will do. He's gonna make me lose control. That's just completely. Take him out. There is no Holy Spirit. It's not for today. Not good for you. It makes you weird. It makes you do strange things. Don't even talk about it. Holy Spirit. Shh. Remind yourself. The Holy Spirit is not the bronze medalist of the Trinity. He is God and he is good. It is the gift that Jesus promised. He said it's better. I should go. The Holy Spirit's coming. And what you're going to find in your relationship with the Holy Spirit is better. It's going to be good. So no wonder the enemy does not want you to have a good understanding of who the Holy Spirit is. No wonder he wants us to just look at the church like, oh, a bunch of hypocrites. That's why I don't go to church anymore. Those people can't do. No wonder we don't have an understanding of who the Holy Spirit is, much less a relationship with him that works. But Paul lines it out so clearly. This is who the Holy Spirit is. Unfortunately, it's become the forgotten fire of our church today. So like I told you with my own story, I grew up Pentecostal, and I've seen things that I thought that could only be the power of the Holy Ghost. And I've seen some things like, I don't know what that is. That just gets weird. Then I've been to some other church services where I'm like, is anybody even alive in this place? They're just petrified. Like, do not move. Do not move. Do not move. One more song and then we get to go eat. Be very quiet. I've been in some place, some places where there are things happening I could not explain with my own. With my own mind. I. I don't know what that was. I've seen people that. That that did things and experienced things, and I'm like, wow. And then I've also seen people that did something, and I thought, wow. I've seen people do things that I thought, that has to be the spirit. And some things like that has to be a spirit. I've had experiences where I've seen, like, gold flakes fall from the sky in a church service. Explain that to me. I've never seen that before, but I saw it once. I've seen services where people that were paralyzed from the chest down got up and started walking. I've seen it. I've seen demons cast out, like, people writhing on the ground like a snake. I've seen those things, and all of a sudden it's like, boom. And then they're clothing in their right mind. It'd freak you out. I've seen people, like, get gold fillings in their teeth. Explain that to me. I don't know what that is. I was at a church service one time, and we were just worshiping before the message. And the friend of mine that I just brought, that was straight Baptist, by the way, who had no clue of none of this stuff, always been taught to stiff arm the Holy Spirit. And he looked at me and he's like, something's wrong. I'm like, what's wrong? He said, look at my hands. He holds his hands out, and his hands are dripping with oil. And I touch his hands. I'm like, did they put, like, oil on the doorknobs? Because that would be really weird. Or maybe they put on the seat backs in front of you to, like, freak people out. Like, oh, there's oil dripping. Like, it's the oil of joy or it's the oil of anointing or something. Like, that's where my mind goes. Like, this is a scam, right? It has to be a scam. And so we started looking around and the people started doing this. They're holding their hands up, and there's oil, like, dripping from their hands. The room's like, 68 degrees. That's not hot. It's not sweat. It's oil. Explain that to me. I don't know, but I've also seen, like, people run around on open mic night and talking about the Holy Ghost and in the same context of the holy Ghost move. And look at the temperature of my husband's underwear that happened. I don't know what spirit that was. I've seen people, like, just jump into the baptistry. Like, is that the Holy Spirit or just need a shower? I don't Know what that is? But there's some crazy things that I'm like, that's, that's much more emotional than supernatural. Where's the middle ground on what the Bible says is the works of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit and the miracles and the gifts? And what are those things? And could it be possible that many of our churches today have tried to manufacture those to prove to themselves that the Holy Spirit is still with them? Yeah. Could it be that some people have gotten so strange with it, other churches have completely disappointed associated from the power of the Holy Spirit because they don't want to be weird? Yes. We cannot afford to neglect the Holy Spirit and fall to a place of chaos or control. And so Paul breaks it down in Galatians, Chapter 5, and shows us some things that I think are so important for us to understand today. Here's the first of three things. Number one, the Holy Spirit wasn't given to be controlled or to bring chaos. That is not the reason why he came so that we would control him or that would bring total chaos to the church. Paul very clearly lays out that the Holy Spirit helps us walk in freedom, helps us to become like Christ, helps us to mature, helps us to bear fruit. It helps us where rules couldn't help us. Since you're no longer under the law, now you're under grace. And in order to keep from abusing that, you need a relationship with the Holy Spirit. He's going to help you to mature. Here's what I want to show you. The Holy Spirit was given to help us become more like Christ. The Holy Spirit was given to help us become more like Christ. So it's interesting that when Paul lists out the works of the flesh right here, he has some words that, that we don't mention a lot in church services because it gets a little raw here with the sexual things that he begins to mention. But he's speaking to a group of Christians and they needed somebody to be honest with him. He said, your sexual sin, like that's not okay. That's not okay. And please hear me. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you. Cause God would say you're better than that. You were called to walk in freedom. Don't presume upon my grace, but use it for what it's for. To help you become more like me and less like you. When Paul uses some of these words in the next part of this sentence, he starts using words like jealousy and rivalries and factions and division and envy. Here's the important thing to remember. Those are church Sins. He's not speaking about individual sexual, sensual sins. He moves into church sins. So not only is the Holy Spirit given to help a believer, but the Holy Spirit is given to help the church. Because the church will very easily become envious of other churches that have some sort of move of the Holy Spirit and say, we have to have that here to prove to ourselves and to other churches that were just as good or better so that no one will leave. We just go over there. Some of you haven't been around churches long enough to see that, oh, something happened over there. Did you hear about what happened at this church? Well, then we got it. We got. That's got to happen here. So. Because the Holy Ghost is here, and the Holy Ghost is. If he's doing that there, then this was really, really common in the 80s and 90s. Whatever happened at one church has happened at the other one. And he's saying, this is parts of the works of the flesh. This is what you're going to see. I said, but that's not a work of the Spirit. Because sometimes what the Holy Spirit does at one church, he ain't doing it at your church. He's doing something different. And it's what you need. That's okay. So here we see the Holy Spirit was given to help us become more like Christ, not more like first, whatever, more like Him. So churches should be filled with those that are walking in the Spirit, not those that are playing games and comparing themselves to each other. That's not what we're here to do. Look at this. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says this in verse 26 and in verse 40, everything in your church services, by the way, he says, it must be done so that the church may be built up. I'm here to encourage you, to build you up, to encourage you, to strengthen you. That's why the Holy Spirit is here, to build you up in Christ. And he says, but everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. So I've seen multiple churches that would say, I'm here to build you up. And I've seen other multiple churches that would say there is zero order. It's not fitting. The zero order at all is complete total chaos. Here's the thing. Paul integrates them and says, understand that the Holy Spirit understands order, understands things that make sense. God is not a God of disorder. He's a God of peace. Here's what we see. Chaos happens when the Holy Spirit experiences get detached from Scripture. Here's the second part. Control happens when Scripture is Detached from dependence upon the spirit, when it's just word, word, word, word, word. We don't want to talk about you, Holy Spirit. You got a problem. Because the Holy Spirit is our teacher. He helps us to read this in a way that it makes sense. He reveals things. As you read your Word, you see the difference. But if you're just reading your Word and you don't invite the Holy Spirit, you're walking towards control. The Spirit makes the word come alive. Do you see the difference? So the solution is not control or chaos. The solution is discernment. The solution is God's word. Okay, God gave us a Bible and a brain. We can use both. You're fine. Here's what we know. The Holy Spirit is not restrained by order, and order is not threatened by the Spirit. I'm going to leave that up here for you just one time, because I still have conversations every once in a while with people really, really irate at what they think the Holy Spirit can or cannot do and how I'm supposed to yield or not yield to Him. It's crazy. There was one time. I'll share this. This is funny. We had built a church, and the engineers that built the church were, like, from a Methodist background. So they had this idea in their mind that, you know, churches have to have stained glass. And so one of the walls was just filled of beautiful stained glass. It was. It was awesome. It was. It was beautiful. And when the sun would rise there in the east on Sunday morning, the whole church just lit up with beautiful colors. It was beautiful. It was great. Except for in North Texas, when that sun would come up in the summer, the whole. Like, the whole left side of that room got to, like, 96 degrees, got super hot. And it got so hot that the grass that the glass on the wall began to crack because it was. It was too hot. The glass. The stained glass couldn't handle the heat. And so after a couple of years of dealing with that, we realized, like, okay, all of our people are sitting over here on this side of the. Of the worship center. No one's sitting on that side. We got to do something about this. So we took the stained glass out and we bricked it up and painted over it, and it was nice. And you would have thought we slapped Jesus on the face. The irate people, I'm not going to say they're all from baddest background, but they're ready to vote me out. Like, how dare you take the stained glass. Like, you weren't even sitting over there. You didn't have the complaints for two years that it's. It's 94 degrees on that side of the roof. But I remember a lady coming up to a group of us pastors. She said, you have quenched the Holy Spirit. I'm like, by what? By taking out the stained glass. I'm like, the Holy Spirit is stained glass? Really? You serious? Do you understand that the Holy Spirit left the moment that you took that stained glass out? And I'm. I'm like, oh, she's serious. Like, she's really math out. She was joking. And one of my buddies, a pastor, I won't mention his name. He says, no, ma'. Am. When we. When we break that in, we. We. We trap the Holy Spirit inside. He can't leave now. The whole. The Holy Spirit is not restrained by order, and order is not threatened by the Spirit. Like, it's. It's common sense. It's okay. We're going to be just fine. Come on, somebody. Is that all right? Here's the second thing that we see. Number two. The Holy Spirit invites us to live and walk with him. Not to just experience him on Sunday mornings. Not to just have some emotional experience, not to be afraid of him. He wants you to live with me, and he wants you to walk with me. He invites us to walk with him in daily relationship. Not in emotion chasing and not by being so afraid that you don't want him around you. He wants you to live with him. He wants you to walk with him. He wants you to have a daily relationship with him. It's more than just reading your Bible every day. He wants you to read the Bible while talking to him. Holy Spirit, what does this mean? Holy Spirit, what are you showing me? Holy Spirit, Would you remind me of this when I need this throughout the day? Like, he wants you to live with the spirit. Walk with the Spirit. Galatians 5 says, since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Keep in step with the Spirit. Some people are so afraid of the Holy Spirit, you just mention his name. And we give them a name. I call them the Holy Heismans. Anything that has to do with the Holy Ghost, they're just. No. Too afraid. Can't do that. That's what makes people weird. Holy Heisman. Like, hey, calm down. Like, the Bible has a lot to say about the Holy Spirit. And he's God. He's not outdated. He's not weird. He's not here to screw your life up. He's here to be your advocate. He's here to be your helper. He's good because he's God. He's not the bronze medalist of the Trinity. It is not God the Father, God the Son, God, the Holy Bible. No, no, no. It's Holy Spirit. And he's active. He's alive. He wants a relationship with you. He wants you to be in step with him. He wants you to live with him. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. What's important for us to see this says, keep in step with the Spirit. What does that tell us? Tells us the Holy Spirit moves. He moves. He's not stationary. He moves. He moves in seasons. Sometimes he does things one way, sometimes he does them in another, and it's okay. But when we walk by the Spirit, we understand. Like, okay, Lord, I see you. That's cool. I understand. It makes sense to me. He moves, he speaks, he walks. So when we listen for God's voice, when we're reading God's word, when we're praying, when we're worshiping, when we're responding promptly to whatever he's saying, when we're obeying his word, this is how we walk in step with the Spirit. It's how we learn. For those of us that have ever had to have a child that took their first steps, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. But the first steps is actually the kind of ending process for a long time of watching their legs get stronger. And you, you notice that they're about ready to start walking when you see them pull themselves up on stuff, right? You know, they grab something and pull themselves up, and then they start scooting along the sides of the couch, you know, by holding onto something, it kind of lets you know they're ready to take some steps. But before we get to that place where we hold out our hands and tell them, come to us. Normally we'll put their hands in our hands, put their feet on your feet, and you start doing that little walk where they get used to the rhythm. You remember that. It's a beautiful time of bonding with a parent where you teach them what it feels like to keep in step with you in our relationship with the Holy Spirit. He invites us to live with him, to walk with him. He says, I'll teach you, but you gotta listen to me. And we do that by, by the way, not by emotions. We do it by yielding. Show me. I'll listen. I'll obey. Teach me, Holy Spirit. He invites us to live with him and to walk with him. So walking with the Spirit is More about daily surrender than dramatic moments. Here's the third and final thing I'll share with you. Number three. The Holy Spirit produces fruit, not just fire fruit, not just fire. Now, many of us are in love with the fire because we've seen the gifts of the Holy Spirit moved in some dramatic ways. We've seen fantastic prophecy and miracles, wonderful words and words of knowledge and discernment, wonderful gifts of the spirit. But I want you to understand, Paul starts with. With fruit of the spirit long before he gets to gifts of the Spirit. And this is what is most concerning to us today. The Holy Spirit produces fruit first, not just fire fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness, meekness, self control. By the way, some of us could just start right there. We said in our marriage conference, my wife and I were, we. We were presenting. Part of the marriage conference was how to deal with conflict in marriage, which we've never had any of. And one of our points in that, in that message was the fruit of the spirit is self control, not sarcasm and how we speak to each other. Because one of the ways that we know that we're being led by the Spirit is we. We can be in conflict and still find unity and not have to speak to each other with sarcasm. Does that make sense? Because the fruit of the Spirit teaches us how to control myself. So the fruit of the Spirit, by the way, it doesn't get revealed on Sunday morning. It gets revealed under pressure. The works of the flesh, by the way, also get revealed under pressure. When you squeeze your life, what comes out? Anger, jealousy, rage, bitterness? Do you go towards pornography? Is it towards sexual sin and lashing out and acting out? It shows you what you're led by. But when pressure comes on and you're led by the power of the Holy Spirit, what comes out is kindness, meekness, humility, gentleness, patience, not sarcasm. The Holy Spirit produces fruit, not just fire. Long before miracles, long before signs and wonders and powers and tongues. And I was raised in a group of people that said the evidence that you have the Holy Spirit is you're going to speak in tongues. Let me just say it this way. The primary evidence of the Holy Ghost is transformed character. Character. Long before you can impress me with what you can do on a platform or when somebody hands you the mic or what you can do and call it the Holy Spirit, I want to see the character in your life first because I've told many a person here, you may be a prophet. You're not my prophet. I don't know you. I want to See the character in your life first. That matters most to me. And this is the difference between people who will elevate someone with some kind of gift without ever seeing their character and then be shocked when they burn themselves out. When they flame out brilliantly. Oh, I never knew. That's because you don't know them. But the Holy Spirit produces more than fake fruit. The fruit of the spirit is transformed character. So Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. Here's what we see. I want to put this on the screen. Spiritual fruit is. Look at this. Slow. It's visible and it's relational. The works of the flesh are impulsive, emotion driven. Fruit takes time, but you can also see it. You can see it at different stages. Like, look at that. There's a little bit of patience coming out in old Johnny. He's learning. Thank you, Lord. I see what you're doing. He didn't just lash out this time. Or you know what? Instead of going straight to the Internet and to that porn site, look, he. He got into his word. Look at that. That's a win. It's slow, but it's visible and it's relational. You learn this because you can see the daily fruit being grown in people's lives by having a relationship with them. When pressure comes on them, how they react when you start seeing the fruit of the Spirit come out. Thank you, Lord. That's proof of the Holy Spirit. There's transformed character. That's there not. Do they speak in tongues? They have transformed character. Long before we get to gifts, let's start with fruit. It says, those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. So here's what I want to say. I'll put this on the screen. The Holy Spirit doesn't just move you, he motivates you and mortifies you with sin. I don't want that junk in my life anymore. If you have the Holy Spirit living on the inside, if you're walking in step with him, you're going to be mortified with that sin. And when you find yourself making a mistake, you feel horrible. You're like, holy Spirit, please help me, God. I need your grace. Not so that I can do it again, but so I can get back up and start walking and step with you. I need help. The Holy Spirit is my helper. He's my advocate and he mortifies me with sin. So the Holy Spirit will burn away everything that competes with Christ and everything that competes with Christ's purposes. It's how we walk in freedom. How we walk in purpose. It's how we walk with integrity. And it's all done, Paul says, in the spirit of. Of love, with humility. It's amazing how many have taken the gifts of the Holy Spirit and detached them from humility. But Paul ties them both directly to each other. It's done with love. It's done humbly. It's done relationally with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit produces fruit, not just fire. He says, don't use your freedom, that grace that God has given you, to indulge in your flesh. Rather, serve one another. Serve one another. So it's not about these dramatic gifts and dramatic moments. Let's start with the quiet moments. In the quiet time, where you invite the Holy Spirit to come, where you take a good look at your life. Say, is my character transforming to look more like Christ, or is this just some fake fruit I put on in front of people? Because churches are still full of people that will look at those fruits of the Spirit and say, I can fake that. And there's a reason why churches get smaller and smaller and smaller because the fruit of the Spirit is a joke. It's hypocrisy. And people can feel it. When you walk into a church, you can feel when people are being fake nice to you. Come on, you can feel it. You've been to places. You walked in the mall. Like, oh, look at you, my friend. What a wonderful day. Like, dude, don't clean my shoes. Don't do that. I don't want your cologne. Like, you're not my friend. You know, that's how many churches feel. Why? Because you're not a fake fruit. To impress people. And calling that gifts of the spirit, like, come on, that's not what that is. We're here to serve one another humbly and in love. We've been given great freedom, great grace. Not to indulge our flesh and live like it doesn't matter. It's calling us higher to a daily relationship with the Holy Spirit. Not so that we can be put on some platform to look at my amazing gifts of the Spirit. No, so we can serve and do it with humility. My last thought is this. Gifts can impress people, but the fruit of the Spirit serves people. I want to finish up with that right there, if that's okay. I hope you've enjoyed this series. It's a lot more teaching and a lot more getting into the nitty gritty of this, but I feel like many of us have come from so many different religious backgrounds. And just the thought of Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, you have completely different mindsets than what the person sitting next to you has. So I thought let's just get back to the very basics of who the Holy Spirit is. Let's hear from Jesus Christ himself. Let's hear from the Apostle Paul and get rid of just religious thoughts and go back to just word. Who does the Bible say he is? Then let's develop a fresh new relationship with the Holy Spirit as we continue to walk with him and live with him, if that's okay. Would you go ahead and bow your heads and close your eyes for just a moment? I want to pray for you and invite you to ask the Holy Spirit to come. Some of us need to be filled with the Holy Spirit once again. I want to give you a chance to do that. Would you just say, holy Spirit, come. It's that simple. Holy Spirit, come. Would you cleanse my mind? Would you cleanse my heart? Would you help me to walk in step with you? I want to be led by your spirit. I want to learn how to submit to you. I want to become who you called me to be. I want to look more like Christ, not more like culture. I don't want to use this grace that God's given me to just keep doing the same stupid, evil things over and over and have to fake my way through Sunday mornings. I want real fruit. And that comes from daily walking with you, listening to you, obeying you. Will you please help me, Holy Spirit? Would you come? Holy Spirit, we invite you. We know that you're not threatened by order. We submit to you. We want to know who you are. We're not afraid. We trust you. You are God and you are good. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for helping us to become more like Christ. Now with heads bowed and eyes closed, maybe you came here today and you're saying, pastor, if I'm. If I'm going to be honest with you, I don't have a relationship with Jesus. I need a relationship with Jesus. I need it bad. My friend, you're exactly right. I want you to know that God loves you so much, he sent his Son to die for your sins, and he invites you into a relationship with him. And all of that starts with a prayer. So if that's you and you want a relationship with Jesus, I'm going to invite you to pray with me. I'm going to tell you the words to say, and I'm going to ask you to say these words right with me. And I'll help you. Just like somebody helped Me one time. If you need a relationship with Jesus, if you've been away from God, you need to come back to him. Let me just promise you, my friend, he wants a relationship with you. He wants to speak to you. He wants to lead you. He wants to show you his love. God loves you. We have a saying around here that if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. He loves you. So I want to invite you to pray this prayer with me. As a matter of fact, all of us are going to pray it out loud together so you don't feel embarrassed or ashamed and singled out in any way. But pray this prayer with me right here where you are. Just say, jesus, I believe you're the son of God. I believe that you came and died, and I believe that you rose from the grave so that I could have life and forgiveness. I need your forgiveness. Please take over my life and I'll give you the rest of my days in Jesus name, with heads bowed and eyes closed with no one else looking around. If that was you and you prayed that prayer, if you meant that prayer, and say, pastor, I'm getting right with the Lord right here today. I pray that prayer. I meant that prayer. Can I just see your hands all across this place? Would you lift them up nice and high and proud. Good, good, good, good. Good for you. I see you, young man. Good for you. Yes, sir. You guys can put your hands down. I want you to know that you prayed that prayer. I have something special for you. I have. There's a phone number that's going to appear on the screen right behind me. It's also, if you're watching online, there's a phone number right there for you. Would you text the words I prayed to that number? What will happen? I'll send you back the link to some things that will help you understand what just happened inside of your heart and what to do next. Because this is not the end of your relationship with Jesus. This is the beginning. And I want to help you. I'm proud of you. High Ridge family, go ahead and look up at me if you would. Let's stand to our feet together. I want to say thank you so much for watching us online. I apologize for my voice. That's about all I got. But would you do me a favor? If you feel like our. If you feel like our world needs to hear this message, would you hit the share button on whatever social media platform that you're watching this? And I would ask this of any of you. If you feel like this is a good, solid biblical teaching that will help a lot of people to have a better understanding of who the Holy Spirit is. Hit the share button. It's always a beautiful thing when you do that. I'm going to invite our elders and their wives forward to be available to pray for you for anything that you might need prayer for. They'll stay right here as the service ends to be able to take you to the presence of God. God still hears prayers. He still answers prayers. He's a miracle working God. And if you need help, if you need a miracle, this is your time to shine. For everybody else, let me pray for you and bless you, Father. Would you bless my friends with an incredible week? Would you walk with them, Holy Spirit? Help them to be in step with you? We ask these things in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus and all of us said together. Amen. God bless you as you go. Have an awesome week. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening in today. Our prayer is that you are encouraged and strengthened by the message. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review wherever you're listening. [00:41:31] Speaker B: If you want to be a part. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Of our online community, connect with us through Facebook or Instagram with the handle hyridgelv or you can check out our [email protected] lastly, if this ministry has impacted your life and you'd like to support its work, visit highridgelv.com give we appreciate your support and we're believing with you today for God's best in your life. Have an incredible week and we will see you next time.