 The one thing that the church has always had for society, when it goes through wars and plagues and economic depressions is the church steps in with hope. We're not shocked at darkness. Darkness is a reality. The one thing that we have in Jesus, the one thing that we carry is inside of us we have this hope of glory, which is Christ in us. Well, hello, radiant, everybody doing well? Doing good, it's great to see your faces this weekend and those of you who are online joining us. We love you, so grateful that you're joining us and we're saying hi to those at Portage and the Portage campus as well. And today I wanna invite you, if you would, to take your Bibles out, hold them in your hands, turn them on, whatever it is that you do and look at Acts chapter one. This is our second part of our Be Radiant series where we're taking a look at what does it mean to be radiant and what are our core values? You know, every so often you need to go back and you need to reevaluate the foundation stones. You need to examine the foundations, whether it's your house or whether it's your life. And today is part two in this five week process of us re-looking at what are the foundations of radiant church. Who are we? Who are we indeed in Christ? Today we're talking about our second core value which is radiant church is a spirit-empowered church. So look with me here. We're gonna read out of Acts chapter one and then Ephesians chapter three. Acts chapter one, beginning in verse number four, it says, and while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father which he said, you heard from me for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Verse six, he says, so when they had come together they asked him, Lord, will it you at this time? Restore the kingdom of Israel. And he said to them, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed in his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. Now I'm gonna turn over here to Ephesians chapter three and you can turn over there or you can follow along but I'm reading from the new living translation. Paul's talking to believers and he says, when I think of all this, I fall to my knees and I pray to the Father, the creator of everything in heaven and on earth and I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his spirit and then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love keeping you strong and may you have the power to understand as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep is his love? May you experience the love of Christ though it is too great to fully understand and then you will be made complete with all of the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God who is able through his mighty power at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we are able to ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever and everybody said, man, those are some power packed scriptures. One's written by Luke recording how the church began in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells his disciples, do not depart from Jerusalem until you've received power from on high, until you've received the promise of the Father which you've heard from me when I said to you that you will receive power when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit. In other words, saturated and completely filled and overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit of God. And he says you're gonna receive power, that word power and Acts chapter one is the Greek word dunamos where we get the word dynamite. Jesus told him you need dynamic strength and power before you leave Jerusalem. And then when we turn over to Paul's perspective and what we just read here in Ephesians chapter three, Paul uses the same language, power, that we need power in order to encounter the living God. We need power to be able to fully comprehend the love of God. We need power for the purposes of God to be performed in our life and for us to fully walk in all that God has for us. We need power, we need church. Listen, we need the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an optional part of our Christian experience, it is a necessity. Jesus told the disciples not to leave Jerusalem and to step into their missionary call and apostolic call without the Holy Spirit and unfortunately far too many of us, especially us Western-minded, post-enlightenment Christians, we think we're able to do things in our own strength and our own intellect that Jesus told his disciples they shouldn't even attempt. And think about this, the disciples in Acts chapter one were people that were uneducated, they didn't have a seminary degree. They were kind of backwards because they were all from Galilee. They were kind of considered, we would say like the disciples were Upers and so if you're from the UP we love you, but you call us trolls, we call you Upers. But I mean, these were not Ivy League educated seminarians. There was at least one corrupt tax agent, there were multiple fishermen, there was a member of the Jerusalem militia and there were a whole lot of other ragtag Galileans so when they went to Jerusalem, the higher ups, the educated, the religious leaders, the political leaders knew that they were from Galilee by the accent that they spoke with. But when we see them in Acts chapter one about ready to go to the upper room and pray for 10 days, they didn't know how long it was gonna take, but Jesus said, I'm about to leave, you go and you pray and you wait. It took them 10 days to receive the power from the Holy Spirit. We read about that in Acts chapter two and the day of Pentecost had fully come, God filled them all with the Holy Spirit. But while they're in Jerusalem, I want you to think about this, they did not have seminary educations, they didn't have social media accounts, how in the world did they survive without that? They didn't have a printing press, they didn't even have a printed copy of the Bible. They had the Old Testament, but they didn't have the New Testament, God was gonna use them actually to write the New Testament. They didn't have trains, they didn't have planes, and they didn't have automobiles, and they didn't have Uber. But yet when God filled that church, that early church, the early disciples, who didn't have any of the things that we have, they didn't have smartphones, they didn't have computers, they didn't have laptops, they didn't have iPads, they didn't have online resources, they didn't have the internet. But what they did have was they were filled with the power of heaven. And it propelled them to the four corners of the world. And in one generation, they were described as those who turned the world upside down. Now it has been said that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over, but yet expecting different results each time. I think it would be a good lesson for the American church to take a look at what we have done with our intellect, the reliance that we have put only on academics, I'm not anti-economic, I'm a book nerd. I love theology, I love studying that type of stuff, but we have put too much emphasis on, oh yeah, you're ready to do ministry if you've got a piece of paper that says that you've got a degree. They didn't have it. We put too much emphasis on our tools and our technology and our methodology. I'm grateful for all of that, we need that. But we don't need that to the exclusion of the Holy Spirit. It would be inappropriate for us to say, okay God, we don't need the Holy Spirit any longer because now we've got X. And when it comes to our relationship with the Holy Spirit, the greatest myth in the church is the myth of neutrality. What do you mean by the myth of neutrality pastor? Oh, it's this, that when it comes to the life and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, that well, I know some people have it, I know some people want it, I'm not really comfortable with it. Gifts of spirit make me uncomfortable and so I'm just kind of neutral. I know if God wants to do it, He knows where I live. He can just do it, He can just rock me if He wants to. But I'm just kind of neutral on it. We can be actually practical cessationists, which means we believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is no longer present in the church the way that it was in the book of Acts. That's theologically called cessationism. But we can be charismatic in our statement of faith, but we can be practically cessationist in our application of faith. And in the body of Christ there is an attitude that says we're not for or we're not against. That is the myth of neutrality. Because here's what I know, especially in the day and age that we live in, if you are not pursuing the Holy Spirit, you are probably under the influence of an unholy spirit. There is no neutral ground. Jesus in Matthew 25, when he talks about the 10 virgins, he says that there were 10 virgins and they had lamps and they went out to meet and wait for the bridegroom at midnight. And when they went out, five wise virgins went out and they brought their lamps and they also brought extra oil. But there were five unwise that went out into the darkness and when it took longer than they thought, they ran out of oil and they wanted to borrow oil from the other five. How many of you know, that's like a statement right there. It's like there is no such thing as secondhand anointing. You can't borrow somebody else's. You can't borrow somebody else's oil. And the whole imagery that Jesus is talking about is in the last days, in the end times, when darkness gets darker, we need to be people that have our lamps full, not half. So in our household, Jane and I are radically different people from one another. Jane does not like being up in the front. In fact, when we go visit other churches, she makes me sit in the back. I'm a front row guy. She likes to sit in the back. I like to be on the platform and teach. When she does it, you guys don't even know what a gifted is when you get Jane up here because there is weeping and gnashing of teeth that precedes her actually doing it. And when she does it, it's cause she loves you. It really has nothing to do with me. It's cause she loves you. Our personalities could not be any different. And it comes, it really shows up in the way that we manage our cars because she gets nervous when her gas gauge is below half. And for me, that's when the fun just begins. So I like to drive my car and see how far I can get unempty before I have to refill with gas. That's when the thrill, the thrill cycle starts. You know, when it goes ding, and it tells you you're low, you need to refuel. For me, that's like, let's go, it's challenge time. And so I like to see how far I can go. It makes her crazy. As soon as it's below half, she's like, honey, can you get me gas? And I fill it up for her in her car. But when she's in my car, it's my rules. And I'm driving, I mean, I like to drive and when it gets to the orange dot, or if it's electronic, it begins to, how many of your cars will tell you how many miles you have left before you're unempty? See, I think they're lying. No, I seriously do. I think that there's an engineer somewhere in Germany or Japan or even Detroit, that's like, you know, people aren't gonna listen to this. So what we need to do is build in like a gap of five to seven miles. And before that, and call that zero, but really they've got a little bit less, so they don't really, I wanna find out what that number is beyond zero. So I will drive to zero and then keep driving. And that's when your hands start sweating. And there's like, I know, I know, I know, I know I got one more mile. Now rarely have I ever, ever run out of gas. Until one day when I picked up my daughter, Ashley, from the Detroit airport and we were driving back on 94. And I knew that I had low gas, but I thought one more exit, one more exit. And Ashley and I hadn't seen each other in a while. So we're talking, we're just talking. Then all of a sudden, car just starts going, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, what is going on? What? And then pull over the side up. We were in Jackson. It was like right over in Jackson. And I'm like, oh no, because I bragged often that I never run out of gas. I know how to. So here I ran completely out of gas. I had to call Pastor Mike Popenhagen. It's a good thing we have radiant churches everywhere. So I call Pastor Mike Popenhagen, I'm like, Mike, here's a top secret. You've got to go get gas, bring it to me and never, ever tell anybody. So he went and got gas, crossed the medium, risked his life, filled my gas, put a little gas in my gas tank and we went on our way. So for me, I like to see, I like to test that. Jane doesn't. Here's the thing, that's fun to do with your car. It's terrible to do with your life. It's a terrible way to live your life. To live your life half full. Or to see how low you can get. The Bible tells us to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words, we need to be full and staying full and being refilled over and over and over. We need to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit because we need the Holy Spirit. We can't do it on our own. The Holy Spirit was given as a gift to us individually and given to us as the church corporately to empower us among many other things to help us fulfill our call in Christ Jesus. So let me make this statement. I think it's impossible for each of us to truly remain faithful to Jesus and to fulfill God's call upon our lives without the Holy Spirit's empowerment. Without the Holy Spirit's empowerment. If it wasn't that way, Jesus would have told them, hey, you can wait in Jerusalem or you can go now, but it's all good. But Jesus told them, you need this. You need to be full and overflowing with the Holy Spirit. And I don't believe that any Christian, myself included, can truly walk in the fullness of what God has called you to do without having an intimate empowerment by the Holy Spirit in your life. It's necessary. That doesn't mean you can't do great things. I'm not talking you won't go to heaven. I'm not saying that you won't even love Jesus. I'm just saying it's going to be like driving your car on an eighth of a tank and not refilling. You're going to find yourself just like the five virgins who were running out of oil in moments that you did not plan on being in. I will just tell you that this last 11 months of leading a church as a pastor without always seeing our congregation in person. I mean, probably about 50% of our church is back in person. But we've grown exponentially even by people that are online. But the challenge is I haven't been able to see so many people that we love and care for and that we pastor and lead. And in the middle of this last several months, there's been so many little changes. And I know a lot of you have experienced it leading your families or leading your life or your job or your career or teachers trying to lead online and do different things that we weren't prepared for. It had not been for the Holy Spirit this last year. I'll tell you what, it has nothing to do with my natural leadership ability. I would have been on empty. It definitely had nothing to do with my emotional tank because I was on empty many different times. But I can't tell you how many times I've cried out to God, God, I need your spirits empowerment. I need the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Lord, I preach this stuff, I need it. I need you. And you know what? God has been faithful every single time. And I'm grateful for it. And it's not just pastors. Every single one of us need this. And we don't need it during just crisis. We need it during every moment of our lives because this isn't a comfort zone we're living in. This is a battle zone. The comfort zone is when we get to heaven and when we see him face to face and we receive a reward and there's no more devil, no more sickness, no more enemies, no more temptation. That's gonna be glory. But on this side of eternity, we are in a battle zone. There is a real devil. There is a real enemy. There is a real war and we have real weapons and we need real power from the Holy Spirit. If I was in another church, they might've clapped there, but that's okay. That's okay. Oh, no, no, it's too late now. Nope, nope, nope, it's too late now. It's too late, it's okay. See, I believe not only on an individual level, but I believe it's impossible for our church, any church to fulfill its God-given purpose for the church without the Holy Spirit's empowerment. I'm just gonna make this message as simple as I can. If you write one thing down out of this weekend's message, write this down. We need the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit. Way more than we think we do. Way more than we might believe that we do. Way more than maybe we've ever been told we need the Holy Spirit to face the onslaught of the spirit of this age. We need the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to overcome temptation. We need the Holy Spirit to read the Word of God, which I preached on last weekend. We need the Holy Spirit. The letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. The same Holy Spirit that inspired the words of this scripture wants to illuminate them to our heart and bring about sanctification and transformation in our lives. In order to read the Bible well, we need the Holy Spirit. In order to pray, we need the Holy Spirit. Do you know that Romans 8, Paul says that when we come to the end of ourselves and we don't know how to pray as we ought to, it says it's in that moment that the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf with groanings and sounds out of the deepest place of our hearts that words can't even describe the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf according to the will of God for us. We can't even pray without the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to deal with difficult people. Anybody know any difficult people? Do not raise your hand if you're sitting next to them right now. Please. But listen, we need the Holy Spirit to deal with difficult people. Can I just be honest? We need a Holy Spirit to deal with ourselves. Sometimes I am the most difficult person in my own life. I can't even get away from me. There's times I'll see myself on video because they put videos of me on a walk into the service and I see myself up on the screen. And honestly, I'm just like, are you kidding me? I do not wanna see or hear my voice for a long period of time. Some people are like, oh, is that a narcissist? His name in the face is, trust me, I would never hear my voice after, if I could preach a sermon and never hear it again, that would be glory. Because sometimes I am the most difficult person that I deal with. The Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, I need that in my life. And as a church, as a radiant church, when we say that we are a spirit-empowered church, what I mean is, number one, that we acknowledge him, we welcome the person of the Holy Spirit. We acknowledge him. We acknowledge him. We say, Holy Spirit, come. The Holy Spirit is not a force. He's not the emanating power that comes from God. He is God. He is the third person of the triune Godhead. He is God. He is a person and people are a person's beings like the Holy Spirit is, has emotions, he has a voice, he has an agenda, and he's real. And we welcome the Holy Spirit. We acknowledge the Holy Spirit. You know, oftentimes there are a lot of churches and Christians who ignore the Holy Spirit because they're uncomfortable with the Holy Spirit. Maybe we acknowledge him doctrinally in our creeds, but there's a difference between acknowledging the existence of someone and actually having a relationship with someone. There are a lot of people I know and believe exist, but that doesn't mean that I have or want to have a relationship with them. God wants to have a relationship with us. Jesus wants to have a relationship with us. Can I blow your mind? The Holy Spirit wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to know us. He wants to be welcomed in our lives, and he wants us to know him. 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14 says, Paul writes, he says, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and then listen to this, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Be with you all. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We talk about fellowship with one another, but the Holy Spirit wants to have fellowship with us as well. When I think of fellowship, it's the Greek word koinonia, and it means brotherhood or relationship that are centered around a common purpose. And we have that with one another. I mean, I grew up and we always had potlucks in the basement of our church, New York Bible Church. I mean, Cinderblock Church, my grandparents went to, and we had potluck. You'd have church, then everybody to go to the basement, everybody bring a dish to pass. Mrs. Blackstone would bring her soggy taco salad. And the cowdries would bring the jello mold, and then you'd get some oatmeal cookies, and you'd have somebody grill up some hot dogs or some hamburgers, and everybody brought a dish to pass there, and we had fellowship, because you sit down at a table, and you eat, and you dine, and you talk, and you share, that's fellowship. Do you know the Holy Spirit wants to have that with you as well? He doesn't just want us to acknowledge his existence. He wants us to welcome him, Jesus didn't just allow the Holy Spirit, Jesus actually sent the Holy Spirit. And why would we think that Jesus would send something that was optional, or send something that was weird or strange or wasn't going to be good for us? See, when we learn and we grow in our relationship with the Holy Spirit, what we recognize is that what Jesus said is very true. The Holy Spirit is our comforter, he's our teacher, he's our leader, and what did Jesus say? He said, he will lead you and guide you into all truth, into all truth. The spirit of this age wants to lead you into all deception. The antidote to the spirit of this age is to be filled with the Holy Spirit so he can lead you into all truth. This is why it's so important, and so as a church, we say that we acknowledge and we welcome the person of the Holy Spirit, number two, we pursue the person, the power, the gifts, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We're intentional about this, this is important to us. So we're not just going to believe, but we wanna pursue the person that's relationship, the power, the fruit, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5.18, Paul said, to continually be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be filled over and over and over and over and over and over and over with the Holy Spirit. Why do we have to keep being filled with the Holy Spirit? It's because as human beings, spiritually we leak. And so God fills us and then we give it out, and sometimes there's little fractures or fissures or conflicts or crisis or battles that we find ourselves in, and the Holy Spirit is from a relational dynamic, it leaks and we need to be refilled over and over and over again. This is what it means to pursue the presence, the person, and the power of the Holy Spirit. We desperately need this. The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit that are listed in 1 Corinthians, listen to this, verses eight through 11 in 1 Corinthians 12. To one is given the spirit of the utterance of wisdom and to another, the utterance of knowledge, according to the same spirit. To another, faith by the same spirit. To another, gifts of healing by one spirit. And to another, working the miracles. To another, prophecy. And to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits. To another, various kinds of tongues. And to another, the interpretation of tongues. All of these, all of these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions each one individually as he wills. So who's the giver, it's the Holy Spirit. Who does he give him to, whoever he wants to? Here's what I want you to know. If you are born again, you have the Holy Spirit. And if you have the Holy Spirit, you have everything the Holy Spirit has to offer. Which means if the gifts that we just listed off, a better translation of that by the way is the manifestations of the Spirit. The way the Holy Spirit manifests himself. If you have the Holy Spirit, that means all nine of the gifts I just listed off are in you because they are manifestations of the Holy Spirit. We don't get the gifts without the Spirit. When you get the Spirit, you have the gifts. But unfortunately, what we do is we treat the Holy Spirit sometimes like a salad bar. And it's like, wow, I got my lettuce, that's salvation. And I hate chickpeas, so I'm not gonna take those. I like onions, croutons, bacon, of course. Everybody loves bacon. Put the bacon on there. And we kind of customize our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Instead of saying, Holy Spirit, everything that you have, I want. Everything that I have. It's amazing to me over the years how people like to customize the gifts of the Spirit. It's like, oh, I love discerning. I mean, I have the gift of discernment. That's awesome. But that's not the only gift you have. Well, God's only giving me the gift of discernment. No, he's giving you the Holy Spirit. You can have all of the gifts. Well, I really, really like discernment. And I like the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom. But that prophecy stuff, ooh, that's a little kooky. Or they might say, well, I like prophecy. I like healing, miracles, that would be awesome. Word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, miracles, healing, those are all fine, but that tongues thing. I mean, there is a whole segment of Christianity of things like one day God must have just had a wild hair and came up with this crazy gift called tongues. And it's like, whoa, what did I do? Well, it's there, so leave it. It's not gonna mess anything up, but only the crazies will go for it. It's like, Jesus, why didn't you stop me? What was I thinking? It was like one of those days, I guess. Instead of recognizing, that's a beautiful ability to pray in an unknown heavenly language that bypasses our intellect where our doubt and our unbelief and our pride is all located and the Holy Spirit praying out of us in a language we don't even understand that goes directly to the heart of the Father according to the will of God. And the devil can't understand it and you can't, but God does. What a beautiful gift and what a brilliant mind God has. Yay, God. I've had people say, Pastor Lee, do you believe in tongues? I believe it to the bone. I pray in the spirit every single day. Do you know why people who don't believe in tongues are terrible barbecuers? It's because they burn their food all the time. They're not using the tongues. Sorry, I just had to lighten it up a little bit. I just had to lighten it up because you're all looking at me like, really, he speaks in tongues? Yeah, okay. And I do because it's the beauty of spiritual language. I can't tell you how many times I have not know how to pray. And I've prayed in the spirit. And the Bible says in Jude, it says building yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. And just like putting jumper cables of heaven onto my drained soul battery, the Holy Spirit begins to pray and builds and recharges my soul. It's wonderful. It's not weird at all. Sometimes here's what happens. We've seen people operate in gifts of the Holy Spirit or in like, I call it cares minute carnival churches where it's like, you know, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. It's a crazy show. And so we've seen weird stuff done in the name of the Holy Spirit. And so people have said, Holy Spirit equals weird. And that's not at all true. There is nothing weird about the Holy Spirit. There's nothing strange about the Holy Spirit. People. And here's the reality. The Holy Spirit works through people. I grew up and before there was ever such a thing as bottled water, we drank out of hoses. If you had told my parents when I was a kid, someday you're gonna pay $3 for a plastic bottle full of water. They would have said, are you kidding me? When I grew up and you went outside to play in the summer and you got thirsty, you didn't like walking to the house going, hey, Mom, where are those Fuji? I'm really looking for like the 20 ounce of Fuji. Now you drank out of the hose or you drank out of the faucet. Can I get a witness up in here? You know what I'm talking about. All the under 25s are like, really? You like drink out of a hose? Yeah, drink out of a garden hose. And in the summer when that hose got really hot and you were right and then you turned it on and you're just like, what did that water taste like? It tasted like the hose. Was there anything wrong with the water? No, it just took on the flavor of what it was flowing through. Can I just tell you in the body of Christ there are a lot of hosers. And when the Holy Spirit is flowing through them, there's nothing wrong with the Holy Spirit. It's the vessel he's working through. Don't reject the water because of the hose. We believe in the gifts of the Spirit. We believe in the nine fruit of the Holy Spirit. Somebody's getting touched right now. We believe in pursuing the nine fruit of the Holy Spirit just like the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. Galatians five says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such, there is no law. What are these characteristics of? They're the personality traits of the Holy Spirit that when we are walking in the empowerment and pursuing the person of the Holy Spirit and letting his word get a grip into our hearts, it begins to produce the character of the Holy Spirit in us. We begin to yield to the Holy Spirit. Theologically it's called sanctification where he's making us holy. You're driving down the road and somebody cuts you off and you're not throwing sign language up at him anymore. Well, it's because patience, kindness, goodness, your words begin to reflect. Life starts to flow out of you. And it's like, you know, I used to get angry. I used to get defensive, but now kindness, care, compassion, faithfulness, I keep my word, gentleness. And you know, my prayer is that as I get older, not only physically, but spiritually, it's like, Lord, I am so sorry for the years that I wasted of not walking in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, would you make me more like you? Would you make me more like you? I want more of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in my life. I'm like everybody else. We're flesh and blood. We're human beings. We have a tendency to be the opposite of these things. I'm not very patient person. Sometimes instead of peace, I have stress. Instead of joy, I've got sadness. Instead of love, I've got anger. But I'm asking the Holy Spirit, Lord, I want this. Spirit of living God, you have permission. You have an invitation to make me more like Jesus. Last thing I wanna say is this number three is as a church, this is so important. We depend upon the leading and the working of the Holy Spirit. We depend on it. We depend on it. John 16 verse 12 through 14, Jesus said, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare it to you the things that are to come and he will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and he will declare it to you. When we look at the life of Jesus, here's what we recognize. Jesus, the Son of God, was led by the Holy Spirit. He was led by the Holy Spirit. Matthew four once says Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What we see when we read about the disciples is that the disciples received leadership of the Holy Spirit. He led them. In Acts 13 verse two, it says, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Paul and Barnabas under the work in which I've called them. So we see it in Jesus and we see it in the disciples. And do you know, you and I are called also to be led by the Holy Spirit. Galatians five 25 says, since we are living by the spirit, let us also follow the spirit's leading in every part of our lives. In every part we're called to be led by the Holy Spirit. Why that is important is because if we're not being led by the Holy Spirit, we're not inviting his leadership. We're not growing in our ability to hear his voice, sense his presence, pursuing his power. If that's not a reality of our lives, then we're being led by other things. We're being led by our instincts. We're being led by our desires and our deceitful passions. We're being led by our body. We're being led by secular culture. We're being led by the media. We're being led by people's opinions of us instead of being led by the Holy Spirit of God. And here's what I want you to know on an individual level and as a church, our number one priority is that we are a spirit-led church. We are not led by men. We are led by the Holy Spirit of God. We believe it's normal to be supernatural and we believe that you can be supernaturally normal because the Holy Spirit is not strange. He's beautiful, he's powerful, he's wise, he's good. And here's the best part, he's available. He's willing and he's ready to lead and guide, empower each and every one of us. I wanna invite you wherever you're at to stand with me as we pray today, speaking of being spirit-led. You know, Romans chapter eight says, those who are sons of God are those who are led by the Spirit of God. Almost every time I come out here to preach God's word, I have a prayer that I pray sometimes with our team, sometimes with Jane, sometimes just by myself. And it's this, Holy Spirit, lead me and lead this service. And today when I was praying about this weekend's message, I said, Holy Spirit, what do you wanna do? What are you saying to us? And it was a very simple answer. Just felt the impression, the prompting of the Holy Spirit to me to just say, lead them in a prayer of invitation because the open door is our heart saying, I want you and our mouth inviting the Holy Spirit to empower us. So wherever you're at, I just want you right now, if you would, to just bow your heads, close your eyes, make space between you and God. You might even just lift up your hands in His presence. It's a sign of surrender, of submission. When we worship, you might be new to a church like ours and wonder, why does everybody have their hands lifted up? It's for a couple of reasons. Number one, Psalm says, lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord. But in the New Testament, it says, I wish that men when they pray would lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting. And it's a universal sign of surrender, submission and worship. It's biblical, this is why we do it. So if it's new to you, add it into your experience with the Lord because it's exactly that. But I believe that today, whoever you are, wherever you are, the Holy Spirit wants to engage you on a deeper, more dynamic level than ever before. And it's not just about this moment, it's about the rest of your life. It starts now, but He wants to take you on a journey of revealing Jesus, glorifying Jesus, but then also entering in a fellowship with you as you pursue Him. But what He's looking for from you is a welcome, an invitation, a heart that says, Lord, I want you. Here's the simple phrase that I believe if we will utter this out of deep conviction and faith, the Holy Spirit will come rushing to us. He's in us, if you're a believer today, He's in you, but He wants to fill you, reveal Himself to you and empower you just like He does our church. And the prayer is this, Holy Spirit, I welcome you. I welcome your gifts, I welcome your work, I welcome your power, and I long for your fruit. Holy Spirit, lead me, fill me, overflow me. Now, Father, I thank you that you said in your word that if we ask you for the Holy Spirit, you won't give us a snake, you're not gonna give us a serpent. If we ask you for the Holy Spirit, if we hunger and thirst, we will be filled. I'm praying that beginning today, for many of us, this is the start of a journey of walking in the purpose, the power, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Lord, let it affect the way that we worship. Let it affect the way that we witness. Let it affect the way that we live our lives and make decisions. The way that we read the Bible, the way that we love one another. Holy Spirit, come, come and rest on us. We pray.