I'd like to welcome you to Bridge Gospel this morning.
I'm glad you're here.
If you're here for the first time,
I'd especially like to welcome you.
You're welcome to have some coffee with us
after service and hang out.
And if you have any questions about the church,
I'd be glad to answer those for you.
I'd also like to welcome everyone
who's listening online this morning.
I'm glad that you're here,
and I believe that God will bless you
right where you are.
So I just have, I think, one announcement this morning.
We're having our Christian Entrepreneurs Group
Tuesday at 7 o'clock.
It will be here, back in the classroom.
It's just a group for people to get together
that are interested or working on
or in the process of owning or starting a business.
It's a chance for some encouragement,
a chance to get over maybe some of the practical
but also some of the spiritual challenges
of owning or starting a business.
So it's a good chance to have some accountability
and some encouragement.
So I will pray for the offering.
We don't pass a plate,
put a bucket in front of you or anything like that.
We have a box in the back,
or you may give online.
Just ask that you make your checks out
to Two Rivers Church.
They're the ones that have so graciously
helped us get this started out here.
So I'll pray for the offering.
Dear Heavenly Father,
we thank you
that every good and every perfect gift
comes from you.
We thank you for wages, bonuses, gifts,
and other types of increase
that you bring into our lives
to provide for us so graciously.
So how could we not but give back, Lord?
And we know that as we give,
it may leave our hands,
but it never leaves our lives.
So Lord, we thank you for the opportunity
to sow a seed
and to spread the gospel in Apache Junction
and around the world.
And all God's people said,
Amen.
Hallelujah.
So I also wanted to welcome Sharon back this morning.
She has been,
hallelujah,
she has been,
what's that?
You can.
I'm not going to stop you.
If you're new here,
this is Sharon.
She has been in Cambodia
for the last six months,
ministering,
providing health screenings,
and going to orphanages and schools,
doing a lot of teaching,
and a lot of doors opened up
while she was over there.
So we'll probably have a chance
for you to share in the next week or two
about your trip,
show some pictures,
have some Q&A,
but we just wanted to welcome you back this morning.
We're so proud of everything that you have done,
and we're excited to hear more about it.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
So today I wanted to talk a little bit
about the Holy Spirit
and who the Holy Spirit is throughout Scripture.
So we'll kind of start in Genesis 1 today.
I'll kind of let you join me there in the text.
Have you ever been sitting around the house
and maybe you're having kind of this lazy day
and it's a Saturday,
maybe the house isn't as tidy as it should be,
and all of a sudden someone calls and says,
hey, I'm in the neighborhood.
I want to stop by.
And you're like, sure.
And you hang up
and you kind of do this 90-mile-an-hour
flight of the bumblebee,
fluffing things,
sweeping things under the rug.
And I mean, you are frantic.
Like, I just ate Doritos.
They're all in my beard.
Like, I'm having a Saturday.
You know what I'm saying?
And you're frantic.
And all of a sudden it's like,
ding, dong.
And you're all sweaty
and you're going to the door.
Oh, hey, come on in.
Come on in.
Have you ever had that experience, right,
where you're just frantic?
And we feel like we have to kind of
get everything in order
so they don't know how we really live, right?
So we're just trying to make it look like,
you know, we have a nice clean home
and everything is...
Sorry, Jessie.
She's in the back.
But we feel like we have to bring order
to our chaos.
We don't want people to see our chaos, right?
I don't want people to see my chaos,
my unfinished projects
that are hiding in closets.
And my projects have projects.
That's when you start a project
and realize there's a whole other project
to get that project started.
So I have a lot of those.
But more importantly,
what I want to ask is,
have you ever felt a certain way like this
towards your relationship with God?
Towards feeling like
you had to kind of push everything in the closet
or you had to hide things
or you had to bring all the chaos together
before you could really meet with God
and have fellowship with God?
And that's what I'd really like to talk about today
when I talk about the Holy Spirit.
And I think that there's a potential
to be set free today
and have a closer relationship with God today
just through processing kind of this idea
of getting all the chaos put together
and not letting people see that chaos.
You know, we all love the presence
of the Holy Spirit.
We love the gifts of the Spirit.
We love the fruit of the Spirit.
And it's easy to think
that this is a New Testament idea.
You know, but the Holy Spirit
was there in Genesis 1.
And I think that's really important
to understand because
it reveals the nature of the Holy Spirit
and the intention of the Holy Spirit.
And I think it makes
everything that happens
in the New Testament,
the Pentecost,
the gifts of the Spirit,
I think it makes it
just so much more amazing.
And when people think
about the Holy Spirit,
sometimes they think
it's mysterious or emotional
or it's kind of this
third part of the Trinity
that's really hard to define.
And some people think
of the Holy Spirit
as bringing a feeling
and that is certainly something
the Holy Spirit can do.
Some people think
of the Holy Spirit
as a force or as a power of God
and that's absolutely true.
And some people think
of the Holy Spirit
as part of an experience
that we have as we worship
and that's also true.
And for others,
it's maybe just
a little more abstract.
And before there was
a Garden of Eden,
before there was
a nation of Israel,
before there was a temple
where people worship,
before there was the church,
before there was Pentecost
in Genesis 1,
we see that the Spirit
was there.
And I think that matters
because the great theme
across Scripture is this,
is that rebellion
produces chaos.
And we've seen that
through our study
of the rebellions
in the Old Testament.
And when creatures
rebel against God,
everything falls apart.
And we see that
in the Garden of Eden,
that Eden brings shame,
it brings hiding,
it brings fractured relationships,
it brings fear,
it brings death.
And the nations
attempting to do
their own thing
at the Tower of Babel
brought confusion
and scattering
and idolatry.
And then when we ask,
who is the Holy Spirit?
We're not asking
just about an abstract idea
or an abstract doctrine,
we're asking about
the presence of God
moving against our chaos,
reorganizing,
reordering things
that were destroyed
and unleashed
by rebellion
because where the Spirit moves,
the chaos gives way
to life.
So I want to start
at the very beginning
with the Spirit at creation.
Genesis 1.1 says,
In the beginning,
God created the heavens
and the earth.
Now the earth
was without shape
and empty
and darkness
was over the surface
of the watery deep,
but the Spirit of God
was moving over
the surface of the water.
So you see,
the Holy Spirit
is present at creation itself.
Genesis says that
the earth
was formless
and empty
and darkness
covered
the surface.
But the Spirit of God
was there,
it was moving,
it was hovering,
and this is the very
first picture
that Scripture gives us
of the Holy Spirit.
He's right there.
He's right over this chaos,
ready for God
to bring life
and to bring order
into this chaos.
And before creation
was beautiful,
it was formless,
it was void,
and the Spirit
was there.
And Scripture keeps talking
about the Spirit
in this way.
Job 33.4 says,
The Spirit of God
has made me
and the breath
of the Almighty
gives me life.
So the Spirit
is active
in bringing order
to chaos
and bringing purpose.
It's also active
in giving life.
Now the first task
that Adam and Eve
was given
was to bring order
to chaos.
It was to name the animals,
it was to start
tending the garden.
And I want to say
that there's something
very spiritual
about having an ordered life.
It's something
very spiritual
about having
an ordered life.
Taking care
of your family,
your home,
managing your life
and your business well,
it's a very spiritual thing
and it's so easy
to lose sight of that.
Because, you know,
before there was
this nation of Israel
and a church
and the Holy Spirit
and all this thing,
there was a man
and his family
tending a garden.
It was so simple.
And I think that
we need to do away
with this notion
that living a quiet,
simple, obedient life
is somehow subpar
or inferior
because I think
what matters
is how we steward
and manage our life
and how we honor God
with the simple things
in our life.
And I believe
that any average,
normal person
can honor God
with the way
that they manage
their life.
Amen?
Amen?
Psalm 33, 6 says,
By the Lord's decree
the heavens were made
and by the breath
of his mouth
all the starry hosts.
So that word breath,
like in the New Testament,
you'll see the word pneuma,
which is where we get
the word pneumatics.
Breath,
it's literally
the life of God.
So whenever I see breath,
I always think about
the Holy Spirit.
Now, rebellion,
rebellion never creates anything.
You ever see that?
The devil never creates anything.
Sin never creates anything.
Rebellion never creates
creates anything.
It only tears down.
It only brings chaos.
It only brings destruction
to what God has already made good.
So rebellion creates,
or God creates order,
life, beauty,
and rebellion sort of decreates,
disassembles things.
Rebellion never makes
the world more alive.
We see that in Eden.
Rebellion gives us shame
instead of innocence,
hiding instead of openness,
blame instead of trust,
exile instead of having a home,
death instead of life.
And at Babel,
the rebellion gave us confusion
instead of a shared worship of God,
and it gave us scattering
instead of unity.
And in the wider story of Scripture,
rebellion keeps pushing the world
towards corruption,
towards bondage,
towards false worship,
towards violence,
distortion, and disorder.
So when the Scriptures
talk about chaos,
it is often talking about
what happens when creation
is bent away
from the rule
and the order of God.
See, the problem is not that
we just need better habits
just to be a better person,
to self-help ourselves
into something that looks like
I'm a nice guy,
but the problem is that
human and spiritual rebellion
has completely disordered
what God has created
and made good.
And rebellion doesn't just
disorder the world out there.
It disorders people in here.
It disorders our love.
It disorders our desires.
It disorders our mind,
our homes,
our worship.
Our whole culture is disordered.
And it takes what God
has made for life
and it bends us
towards disorder.
But what rebellion destroys,
the Holy Spirit can renew.
Where rebellion scatters,
the Spirit will gather back together.
So the Spirit is not just
present at the beginning.
He is the divine presence of God
moving, he's active,
he's bringing our rebellion
and the chaos back into order.
Psalm 104.30 says,
When you send your life-giving breath,
they are created
and you replenish
the surface of the ground.
So Psalm 104 shows us
that the Spirit is not only
there at creation,
but he's the giver of life.
He is renewing.
He is keeping creation ongoing.
And when God sends his Spirit,
life happens.
Creation becomes animated.
The ground is renewed.
And what is depleted
becomes refreshed.
So he is the giver of life,
the giver of breath.
He is the one who renews
what has become dry
and depleted.
Isaiah 32.15 says,
This desolation will continue
until new life is poured out
on us from heaven.
Then the wilderness
will become an orchard
and the orchard
will be considered a forest.
Justice will settle down
in the wilderness
and fairness will live
in the orchard.
Fairness will produce peace
and result in lasting security.
My people will live
in peaceful settlements,
in secure homes,
and in safe, quiet places.
So we see when the Spirit
is poured out,
when life is poured out,
the wilderness becomes fruitful.
So this means that the Spirit of God
does not just hover over disorder
as a spectator,
but He's always actively
moving against chaos.
He's moving against disorder.
And He doesn't just visit
the emptiness and look
and say,
Well, you need to clean this up.
He's the one that's
actively transforming it.
You see,
the Holy Spirit
is the personal,
manifest presence
of God.
And the focus of our prayer
sometimes can just become,
Well, how do I get more power?
But I think the deeper question is,
Do I know Him?
Am I yielded to Him?
Have I made room
for what He's trying to do
in my life?
Have I allowed Him
to come in
and see my chaos
and make sense of it
and make order out of it?
Because the Spirit
isn't given
so we can have
these experiences,
but it's given
so that our lives
can be brought
from disorder
and rebellion
to obedience
and organization
and God's goodness.
And I think this is why
the gifts of the Spirit
and the fruit of the Spirit
all go hand in hand.
So the same Spirit
that hovered over the deep
is the same Spirit
that meets us
in our chaos now.
And some of us know
exactly what Genesis 1
feels like.
Formless,
empty,
dark,
void,
disordered,
exhausted,
noisy,
and maybe it's
functioning and present,
but it doesn't feel whole.
It doesn't feel good.
You see,
you can live in prison
and you can get
three meals a day
and you're in there
and you're biologically
functioning, right?
But are you free?
Are you functioning
to your fullest?
Are you doing,
you know,
everything that you're
capable of?
Or, you know,
you can own a house
and you can pay
all the bills
and you can take care
of the structure
of the house,
but until there's
order and goodness
in the family,
it doesn't become a home.
You see?
And some people
will live with
mental chaos.
They'll live with
relational chaos.
They'll live with
moral chaos
and just all this chaos
and it can get to a place
where it becomes
a spiritual numbness.
It feels like a wasteland.
But the good news
is this,
that the Spirit of God
is not intimidated.
He is not drawing away
from these kinds of places.
He does not avoid
our chaos.
He hovers over it.
He brings life into it.
He speaks order into it
and He renews
and refreshes
what looks depleted
and the places
that you feel disordered
or dark
or depleted
or collapsed,
they're not places
that the Holy Spirit
is avoiding.
They're places
that the Holy Spirit
is hovering over.
He's showing up
and He is working
because where the Spirit moves,
chaos gives way
to life.
Amen?
Now that does not mean
that everything
gets solved today.
It doesn't mean
that everything gets easy
but it means that
the Spirit does not
leave things
where rebellion left them.
He brings conviction
where we compromise.
He brings clarity
where we were confused.
And He brings holiness
and truth
and courage
and life.
So,
how do we
live in that?
My first point
is this,
is to stop
treating the Holy Spirit
like it's some sort
of force
to be commanded
or controlled
or brought in
when needed.
You see,
a lot of Christians
talk about the Holy Spirit
kind of like it's a force
that we tap into,
a power,
but a Holy Spirit
is not an it.
It is the manifest
presence of God.
You know,
it's not a feeling
and the Holy Spirit
is presence
whether we feel it
or not.
That's a difficult
thing sometimes.
We want to feel
the presence.
We want to sense
something,
but the Holy Spirit
is always there
and it's not like
a reward
for having our life
together.
Now,
prayer matters
absolutely.
Holiness matters
absolutely.
Our obedience
and yieldedness
to God matters,
but none of those
things can purchase
the presence of God.
They matter,
they matter
because prayer
makes us attentive,
but prayer makes us
aware
of what God
is doing.
And holiness
stops us
from fighting the Spirit
and obedience
stops us
from grieving
the very thing
that we say
that we want,
which is the presence
of God.
So there are ways
of us living
that can make us
more responsive
to God's presence,
but we can't earn
his presence
by being impressive,
by saying certain things,
by doing anything.
But a deeper prayer life,
yes,
it can be connected
to more signs
and wonders.
It can strengthen us,
but it's not a formula.
And some Christians
think,
well,
if I just pray more,
if I just did this more,
I'd finally see God
move in my life.
And I want to be
really careful
when I talk about that.
You see,
a deeper prayer life
absolutely can matter.
And a deeper sense
of surrender
absolutely can matter.
But they're not
a mechanism
for forcing God's hand.
You see,
we can't allow
our relationship
with God
or with the Holy Spirit
to become transactional.
You see,
God absolutely cares
about you.
He absolutely hears
every prayer
that you have ever said,
but he cares about
his will.
He cares about
advancing his kingdom.
And we may not
always understand
what that looks like.
You see,
when I gave my life
to Jesus
and maybe you gave
your life to Jesus,
you received
the same Holy Spirit.
You got the same one
I did.
Imagine that.
Not more,
right?
Not more,
not less,
not different.
It's all the same,
right?
The difference is not
in how much
Holy Spirit you have.
The difference is
how much you are aware
of what the Holy Spirit
is already doing.
You see,
you can look out
at the world
and you cannot see God.
You may look out
at the world
and see chaos
and rebellion.
You may not see God.
You may not see
the Holy Spirit.
You may say God
is not a part
of any of this.
Or,
you can look at the world
and you can see
that God
and the power
of the Holy Spirit
is sustaining
and organizing
and bringing order
to everything.
because He is active
behind everything.
And prayer
and our relationship
with God
makes us aware
of what God
is already doing.
And it makes us
participants
in what He is doing.
John 14, 16, and 17
says,
Then I will ask
the Father
and He will give you
another advocate,
talking about the Holy Spirit,
to be with you forever.
The Spirit of truth
whom the world
cannot accept.
Wow.
Because it does not
see Him
or know Him.
But you know Him
because He resides
with you
and will be in you.
You see,
you can't earn
God's presence.
You can walk
in a way
that makes His presence
more deeply enjoyed,
more clearly known,
less resisted.
You see,
God is always speaking.
He's always moving.
He's always ministering
if you are in Christ.
But you will never
have more.
than you do right now.
You will only become
more aware.
So we should seek
deeper prayer.
We should seek
deeper surrender.
We should welcome
every genuine gift
and every genuine move
of the Holy Spirit.
We should pray
for revival.
We should not slip
into the idea
that these are trophies.
Number two,
we can stop
making peace
with chaos.
You see,
the Spirit is holy,
which means that
He doesn't just
come along
and soothe us,
but He reforms us
and He brings
our rebellion
and our chaos
back into order.
Galatians 5, 22, 23,
it's the fruit
of the Spirit.
It says,
but the fruit
of the Spirit
is love,
joy, peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control.
Against such things
there is no law.
Now,
some of the chaos
that we experience
is circumstantial.
We live in a pretty
messed up,
fallen,
broken,
chaotic world.
But some chaos
is what happens
when we tolerate things,
when we tolerate
disordered desire,
when we tolerate
disordered speech,
disordered habits,
disordered priorities.
And, you know,
we can't expect
to have our disorder
blessed by God,
so we have to allow
the Holy Spirit
to come in and correct
and bring order
back to chaos.
And we can't make peace
with what the Spirit
is trying to confront.
We cannot make peace
with what the Spirit
is trying to confront.
What does that sound like?
That's just how I was raised.
Or,
that's just who this person is.
It's just the way
they are.
And these are statements
that cut off
the power of God.
They say,
well,
God can't move here.
God cannot change
this situation.
And these types
of statements,
they comfort
what is wrong
instead of confronting
what is wrong
and allowing the Holy Spirit
to bring order.
and when we allow
ourselves to get worked up
and we allow people
to push our buttons
and get under our skin,
we end up thinking
is that we're powerless
and God is powerless.
So we rehearse this
in our heads
and we get more worked up
and you get to a place
of despair.
And what despair says
is that God
cannot move
and God cannot change
this situation.
that it is hopeless.
Despair is the absence
of faith.
Despair is the absence
of faith.
So this despair
and anger
and resentment,
it becomes a loop.
And when you place
your faith
in the Holy Spirit
and you realize
that the Holy Spirit
is in control of you
and in control
of everything,
all of a sudden,
the powerless
and the anger
is gone.
And you can move forward
because the Holy Spirit
is bringing order
to chaos.
So we cannot comfort
what is wrong
and what is disordered.
But we invite
the Holy Spirit in
to bring order
to those things.
Number three,
we can invite the Spirit
into places
that feel like
they have been
decreated
and deconstructed.
And some parts
of our lives
sometimes can feel
very decreated
or disorderly
or uncertain.
They feel like
you're walking
on a floor
that could give way
under your feet.
I love the story
in Ezekiel 37.
I think it'll be
familiar to a number
of you,
but here's what it says.
It says,
the hand of the Lord
was on me
and he brought me
out by the Spirit
of the Lord
and placed me
in the midst
of the valley
and it was full
of bones.
You ever been
surrounded by bones?
He made me walk
all around
among them.
I realized
there were
a great many bones
in the valley
and they were
very dry.
He said to me,
Son of man,
can these bones live?
I don't like it
when God asks questions.
He already knows
the answer.
I said to him,
Sovereign Lord,
you know.
That is the biggest
non-answer
in all of Scripture.
Right?
That is a non-answer.
And then he said to me,
Prophesy over these bones
and tell them.
Tell them.
Dry bones,
listen to the Lord's message.
This is what the Sovereign Lord
says to these bones.
Look,
I am about to infuse
breath
into you
and you will live.
I will put tendons
on you
and muscles over you
and will cover you
with skin.
I will put breath
in you today
and you will live.
Then you will know
that I
am the Lord.
So I prophesied
as I was commanded.
There was a sound
when I prophesied.
I heard a rattling
and the bones came together
bone to bone.
As I watched,
I saw tendons on them
and then muscles appeared
and skin covered
over them from above.
But there was no breath
or no life
in them.
He said to me,
Prophesy to the breath.
Prophesy,
Son of Man
and say to the breath,
This is what the Sovereign Lord
says,
Come from the four winds,
O breath,
and breathe on these corpses
so they may live.
So I prophesied
as I was commanded
and the breath
came into them.
They lived
and stood on their feet
in extremely
great
army.
Now,
we may look
at the circumstances
in front of us
and say,
there is no way,
there is no way
that this pile
of bones
will live.
And we may turn
to God
and God may be
speaking to us
about these bones
and we may say,
Oh Lord,
you know,
because we
have nothing.
Right?
You ever been there?
And you're looking
at these dry bones.
They're not just tired.
I mean,
they're nothing.
And that can be
taken in the form
of our lives
and maybe it's
the marriage,
maybe it's our thought life,
maybe it's our prayer life,
maybe it's our sense of self,
maybe it's our capacity
to feel joy
and love
and trust God.
And I believe
that what this passage
is speaking,
that we need to name
that,
that thing,
the confusion,
the fear.
We need to speak
to the bones
like Ezekiel did.
You see,
the Spirit of God
is not afraid
of what is unformed
or abstract
or falling apart.
We have this idea
that we got to get
the whole place
cleaned up
and then God will,
you know,
come and hang out with us
and we'll have this
great experience with God.
But really,
when the Spirit moves,
this chaos gives way
to his life.
Number four.
The body of Christ
should look like
a reversal of chaos.
You see,
if the Holy Spirit
is active in a group
of people,
this people should not
look like the people
at Babel,
not scattered,
divided,
not controlled
by confusion,
but it should look
like a place
where the Spirit
is reversing chaos,
where people work together,
where there's more truth,
where there's more holiness,
where there's more unity.
And if the Spirit
is at work
among us,
we should be becoming
less chaotic
and more ordered.
Not stiff,
not artificial,
but alive
and clear
and truthful
and holy.
You see,
where the Spirit moves,
chaos gives way
to life.
So who is
the Holy Spirit?
See,
it's not a vague
force.
it's not an abstract
concept,
a theological concept.
The Holy Spirit
is
the manifest
personal
presence
of God.
the Holy Spirit
was present
at the very beginning
in creation.
He was moving
over the deep.
He was giving life
and order
to what was
disordered
and empty
and void.
He brought
order
to where there
was disorder
and He renewed
what rebellion
had been tearing
apart.
So if your life
feels chaotic,
disordered,
noisy,
or if your home
feels fractured,
disordered,
if your inner world,
if your inner self
feels
like chaos,
I want you to not
assume that God
is absent
from that chaos.
The Spirit of God
has always been moving
in places
just like
that.
He's always been
moving in places
where
there was nothing.
There was no hope.
There was no order.
There was no goodness.
Because He brings
order.
He brings hope.
He brings the goodness.
He brings life.
And He renews
everything
that was depleted.
He returns
the things
that were lost.
He returns
the things
that were stolen.
He fixes
the things
that were broken.
And the same truth
that we see
in Genesis 1
at the beginning
is still true today.
That where the Spirit
moves,
chaos
gives way
to life.
And I love
the gifts
of the Holy Spirit.
I see God
restoring people's lives
through the power
of the Holy Spirit,
through deliverance,
through healing,
through words
of wisdom
and knowledge
and miracles.
and we love
God for that.
But in the bigger
picture,
what God is doing
is He's reconciling
all people to Himself.
He is bringing
order to chaos.
So there's so much
more than just
that encounter.
There's so much
more than just
the gift of healing.
There's so much
more than just
the miracle.
We love God
for the miracles.
But in the bigger
picture,
He is restoring
and He is taking
chaos
and He's making
it into life.
We can't reduce
that to an experience
or a doctrine
or a force.
But we can welcome
Him to our lives
each and every day.
We can yield
to what He's doing.
We can pray
that He shows us
where He's already moving.
We can make room
for Him.
Because the Spirit
of God is still
moving today.
He is still
restoring chaos.
He is still
bringing goodness.
He is still
taking our
rebellion
and making it
good again.
And where He is
moving,
life begins.
Joel 2.28
says this,
After all of this,
I will pour out
my Spirit
on all kinds
of people.
That's you.
That's me.
I'm all kinds
of people.
Right?
I love this promise.
It's for everybody.
Your sons and daughters
will prophesy.
Your elderly
will have
prophetic dreams.
Your young men
will see
visions.
See,
God is not
holding anything
back from anyone
at any time.
He is not
holding back.
everything that
God promises
in His Word
is for you
and it's for today.
But we choose
how we participate.
We choose
how we see
the world.
We choose
how we perceive
what the Holy Spirit
is doing.
God is still
going to do
what God is
going to do.
He's still
going to win.
You turn to the
end of the book,
He wins.
He's still
going to win
whether you
have a great
time on the
way there
or whether
you scream
and scratch
and rebel
the whole way.
God is still
going to win.
But His desire,
His heart's desire
is to reconcile
everybody
back to Himself.
To forgive
people of their sin.
To forgive
people of their
rebellion.
And to usher
them into an
eternity
where they can
spend their lives
with God
forever
and ever.
Because that was
the desire that
God had from
the very
beginning,
if you go
all the way
back,
it was Adam
and Eve
in the Garden
of Eden
and God
would come
down in the
cool of the
afternoon
and He would
walk with them.
And that's
been God's
desire for
all of human
history.
And into
chaos and
into rebellion
and into
death.
And if
you've never
experienced that
in your life,
if you've
never walked
with God,
today is
the day.
Today is
the day to
set aside
the old
self,
the old
ways,
to set
aside the
rebellion
and just
to invite
God in.
You don't
have to
clean up
the house.
He doesn't
care.
He's good
enough friends
where He
doesn't care.
You got
friends that
come over
and see
your house
dirty?
That's God.
Right?
Oh, they can
come over.
Our house is a
mess.
It's okay.
It's okay.
You got to
have those
kinds of
friends in
your life.
So I
encourage you
today is
a day to
invite God
in to
submit yourself
to Him
the way you
are in
this moment
and say,
God, I
want you.
I want you
to be Lord
of my life.
I want you
to reorder
my chaos.
I want to
ask you for
the forgiveness
of sin.
And I want
to walk with
you all the
days of my
life.
And if
that's you,
I encourage
you to come
forward this
morning for
prayer, we
would love
to pray
with you.
If there
is any
need in
your life
that we
can pray
with you,
that we
can come
into agreement
with you
in prayer,
we would
love to
do that
after service.
So dear
Heavenly
Father, we
thank you for
your Holy
Spirit.
We thank
you that
your Holy
Spirit has
been active
since the
very beginning
of time.
And we
thank you
that you
are bringing
order to
our chaos,
that you
are reversing
the effects
of our
rebellion,
that you
made a way
for our
rebellion and
our sin to
be reconciled.
Lord, that we
cannot do this
for ourselves.
So we put
our faith and
our trust in
you and in
you alone.
And we
submit to the
power of your
Holy Spirit.
We submit to
your rule and
your reign and
your word.
Lord, I
pray over each
and every
person here,
I pray that
every household
represented to
here today is
a place of
peace and
hope and
joy.
I pray that
you can bless
everyone's hands
as they set
their hands to
things.
I pray that
they're successful.
Lord, I pray
that your peace
will prevail in
their lives as
the highest
force, that
your purpose
will prevail.
So Lord, we
thank you that
you are active
in our lives,
that you have
provided a way
for us that
we could not
provide for
ourselves.
So Lord, we
celebrate that
today and all
God's people
said, amen.
God bless you
guys.
Have a wonderful
Sunday.
Join us for some
coffee and we'll
be up here if you'd
like prayer.
God bless you.
