Knowing the Holy Spirit

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

1. 0:00:03

   Somebody give him praise in this place. Hallelujah. We worship you, Jesus.

2. 0:04:35

   We need more of you, more of your Holy Spirit. We pray this morning in Jesus name, Lord, we need you. Lord, you show us throughout your word that we would never to get satisfied or content with where we are. But Lord, you would lead us and guide us into all truth that you would fill us and fill us again and fill us again. That you would move through us, that your gifts, Lord, you said that we were to desire the spiritual gifts. Literally lust after them, to desire them fervently. And Lord, we do. We want you to move. We don't want just knowledge, but we want the moving and power of your spirit, God. And we pray for this today in Jesus name. Everybody say, Amen. Amen. All right. You may be seated this morning. Just a quick announcement, just to let everybody know. I know we got new people here. We don't have the children's church thing. We don't have youth group thing. We don't do a lot of things that traditional churches do. But if children get unruly or loud and start disrupting, you can go down those stairs to the lower part. And there's a room on the side. And actually, the service is being broadcast down there. So is it still where they can see it or just hear it or both? See it and hear it. OK. So so you can go down there still here and see the service if your child gets unruly. And what we found over the years is that's been, you know, parents have started teaching their children how to stay in the service. And it's a little job. You have to work at it a little bit over time. But we found out that the kids being in the main service has been good because we've had kids that have grown up in this church. We just passed 15 years of fire and grace church. Your son grew up in here and they learned a lot of things. Yeah, they learned a lot of things that they wouldn't have heard. And I actually tell you the truth. There's nowhere in the Bible says do a youth group. Right. I find that a youth group tends to sow division in the church. But that's another story for another day. But anyway, that's just so you know, it's down there and you can still hear the service. All right. Y'all ready? Y'all got your Bibles this morning. All right. That's a good thing. All right. I want you to open it up. Let's see. Let's turn first to and I really I really don't know. We're going to go to a lot of different verses this morning. But last week, the Lord had me give you a message about knowing Jesus, knowing Jesus, and what that really means to know him intimately personally about being born again. And then throughout that message, I kind of touched on the absolute necessity on being filled with the Holy Spirit, baptized in the Holy Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit. Now, because of the debate and all that stuff that went forth there back in December, we've literally, I think, tripled the number of people watching and listening. OK, so we got a lot of new people watching and listening. And so I get a lot of questions.

3. 0:07:37

   And because I mentioned the baptism, the Holy Spirit last week and with the evidence, the initial evidence, speaking of the tongues, I got a lot of questions about that. So we're going to go into that a little bit today because it's important. There's still some of you in here that though you've heard me preach and teach on this several times, you are still not baptized in the Holy Spirit. Now, let me say this up front, because we have people from all kind of different backgrounds. I'm not saying that you have to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues to be saved when you get saved. And we'll show you by the word of God, when you get saved, the Holy Spirit does come in you. But the baptism, the Holy Spirit is clearly taught in the New Testament as a second work after you are born again. And it is to be filled to overflowing. And when you are filled with what the Bible calls the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of that is the gift of tongues. Now, yes, as you grow and mature, there should be the fruit of the Spirit in your life. All those nine fruits, including the one that's my favorite is temperance, self-control, right? Meaning the Holy Spirit gives you the ability to control yourself. But hear what I'm saying, even a baby Christian can be baptized or filled with the Holy Spirit and began with the gift of unknown new tongues, supernatural tongues, and then began to operate in all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. When I came back to the Lord at 19 years old, it was just about three weeks later. I wasn't in a church. I couldn't go to church, in fact, because I worked on Sundays. That's the whole reason my Christian boss hired me. He hired his heathen, unsaved, you know, 19 year old to work for him on Sunday. So he could go to church. So I couldn't go to church for the first year. But you know what I did? Read the Bible and prayed and truly had repented of my sin and given my life to the Lord. So about three weeks later, I make it to the book of Acts. So I start reading Acts chapter two where he tells them to go to Jerusalem and wait. Now, that is so important because what struck me, and I was 19 years old. I didn't know everything, but it was the Holy Spirit revealing it to me. What struck me was if the apostles who Jesus trained personally for three plus years needed to go to Jerusalem and wait to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, then how much more do I need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and operate in the Holy Spirit? And so I began to pray right there. And I was at the time I had been living there for a season with my stepbrother. We were just working summer break from college. He was from I think he was going to Oklahoma State and I was from going to Troy State at the time. We ended up in Oklahoma, then in Arkansas. He had left, but I was all by myself. So I was just there praying and said, Lord, I need this. And I felt as I prayed, the Holy Spirit come upon me. I mean, I felt his peace and his presence come upon me. And you say, well, how do you know if it's the Holy Spirit?

4. 0:10:38

   Well, if you got truly born again, the Holy Spirit bore witness with you. You had an experience with Jesus that you felt that was supernatural. And so that's always the way you know if it's the Holy Spirit, you're going to get the same witness that you did when you were born again. All right. And I remember the Holy Spirit came upon me, but I was sitting there holding my mouth shut. Let me go ahead and tell you right now, when it comes to the gift of tongues and allowing that river to flow, if you don't open your mouth and start in faith in some way, I'm not going to tell you how, because I don't know it's a step of faith you have to take. But if you sit there and hold your mouth shut, that's never going to happen in that regard, because the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you speak with other tongues as the Spirit gives you utterance. And this is probably one of the two biggest hindrances, I'm going to tell you right now, to people who say, well, I've prayed for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues, but I haven't received it. The two biggest hindrances, well, let's say three. The three biggest, number one, is unbelief and wrong teaching. That's held a lot of people back. Another thing is, and I'm going to show you and put up Acts 5.32 for me. A lot of people have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their lives because they have yet to truly surrender to the will of God. You understand? There's a lot of Christians who got born again, but now they're still living, they're living disobedient lives. Can I just go ahead and tell you, you can pray for the Holy Spirit all day long and you're going to receive nothing if you're a disobedient, flesh-living, sin-living Christian. Because look at this verse right here. I could read the whole chapter, but the apostles say, well, we are witnesses of these things, and so also is the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit whom God has given to them that obey Him. Now, if you've been seeking to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit or the evidence of tongues and then operate the gifts of the Spirit and that's not happening in your life, maybe it's time to ask, am I walking in obedience to the Lord? Have I truly repented of my sin? Have I surrendered my life? See, the key when I was 19 years old was, I didn't just repent of my sin, I gave up my life, my plans, my will. This is where a lot of Christians have not come to yet, that part where you're willing to forsake all and follow Jesus no matter what the cost. See, I had the modeling career, the movie thing was opening up, I had plans to play football at Troy, I had plans, I just rehabbed my knee and all that stuff, I had plans, I had all these plans. I was going into pre-med, I had all these plans I was going to do. And the moment Jesus revealed Himself again to me, because He revealed Himself when I was 11 and then He revealed Himself again to me when I was 19,

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