[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
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[00:00:13] i knew I was lying on the floor. I wasn't lying in a bed, I was lying on the floor and I knew it was cold and hard beneath me and I was sort of just, you know those moments where you're regaining consciousness and you're just sort of working out where actually am I?
[00:00:31] And I could hear noises around me. Like there was lots of people, you know, that sort of, you know, general people shuffling and moving about. I knew there was lots of people around me and I could hear someone speaking.
[00:00:44] I think they were speaking through a PA system of some sort.
[00:00:49] And before I opened my eyes, I just knew that, hey, I was in a great place.
[00:00:56] Like I'd been asleep, I'd been out of it, and yet coming round, it was like, yes, something had happened.
[00:01:06] And I felt really peaceful.
[00:01:09] Do you know, like coming out of a really deep slumber, you just sort of wake up and you just go, that was really good.
[00:01:17] And I opened my eyes and looked up and saw this corrugated iron and metal pipes and all kinds of things, you know, I was in an industrial world warehouse of some sort somewhere.
[00:01:30] And then I started to move and look about and I saw thousands, hundreds, maybe thousands of teenagers around me. Now that's enough probably to give you a little scare, but thankfully I was a teenager. At the same time, there was a few adults and there was a stage and some instruments scattered around that weren't being played. And a man on the stage talking about Jesus.
[00:02:01] And that's where everything sort of comes into focus. I knew where I was.
[00:02:05] I was at a conference, a Bible week similar to what you've just seen on the screen, One called Stoneleigh that was done by New Frontiers.
[00:02:16] Who The Umbrella over Catalysts.
[00:02:19] And I've been there a few days. We've been there a few days. We'd been praising and worshiping God. We've been hearing God speak. And at that morning we were worshiping, there was hundreds of teenagers jumping around, of singing, of dancing, of clapping.
[00:02:39] And then someone got up on stage and they said, I'm going to pray for the Holy Spirit to come.
[00:02:48] And as he did, people started to move around, people started to bow down, people started to fall under the weight of the Holy Spirit.
[00:03:00] And I closed my eyes, I held up my hands and I felt a great sense of something, you know, that indescribable feeling of there is Something else here and the weight pressing down on me. I can't struggle to hold up my hands, my knees are weak.
[00:03:21] And then that feeling of someone coming alongside, putting their hands on my back, on my shoulder.
[00:03:27] And then lights out, that was it, I was gone.
[00:03:33] And when I came round, you know, there were hundreds of other teenagers scattered around the building. All those nice neat rows of chairs were all sort of a mess.
[00:03:44] Someone had to clean that up. Later, there were teenagers lying down, sitting in different forms. They were being prayed for, just eyes closed sometimes.
[00:03:57] Teenagers looking like they'd been crying, do you know, weeping. Others radiant with beaming smiles.
[00:04:06] And through it all, a man on the stage talking about Jesus.
[00:04:14] I don't know if you've ever experienced that there was through the 90s. There was a time when those experiences were regular.
[00:04:25] We had them both through the conference and many Sundays here together as a church over a number of years.
[00:04:33] It wasn't my first experience of the Holy Spirit, though.
[00:04:37] I think my first experience was before, or one of them was even before making a commitment to come to Christ. I used to come to church. I was late. I had an excuse, right? There were other things going on.
[00:04:51] I was late to church, I would come on Sundays, I would listen to the preach and then we get to worship time at the end, response time.
[00:04:59] And for some reason I would just cry.
[00:05:03] I was a teenager, I was just weeping and I didn't know what was going on.
[00:05:08] Before I knew, before I knew God as in a personal relationship, he was working upon me.
[00:05:17] And hey, when a period of intense outpouring of the Holy Spirit came, I wasn't scared about it.
[00:05:27] I wasn't frightened. Why? Because I knew what people had said, their experiences. I knew what they talked, I knew what they had said. It was like for them, how they had felt peace and joy in the midst of it.
[00:05:43] And I knew what I wanted was to be in the presence of God, to really experience him.
[00:05:52] Now, I know this isn't the experience of everyone in the room, right?
[00:05:57] We have all been on different journeys and you've come from different, different walks, different churches that you may have been part of. Maybe this is your first church, you know.
[00:06:09] And so over a few weeks we're going to start talking about the Holy Spirit and particularly about gifts. But this morning I just wanted to help us talk about the encounter of the Holy Spirit, because as a church, right, we believe in the all powerful, almighty sovereign God.
[00:06:31] He is in charge. Amen. And he is the one that created the cosmos, everything, the universe, everything that we See, he created it and he is alive today. He's not a God that just created it and walked off. He is a God that is with us, that is here interacting with.
[00:06:50] And how he interacts is. We describe. He's the God of the supernatural, not just the natural realms, but he is the God of miracles. He is the God of not only just sustaining creation, as the Bible teaches, but of breaking into creation, of doing things that we don't expect, of doing it beyond the natural, but in all of it. He is a God of mystery.
[00:07:16] He is a God that cannot be contained, that can't be put in a box, that can't even be adequately. Adequately. I can't say that word anyway. He can't be described by human words. No language can adequately.
[00:07:31] That was almost there, wasn't it?
[00:07:33] I don't know. Anyway, he can't be described, right?
[00:07:38] But he is a God that is beyond and comes near. He is God that transcends, transcends. He is above, whatever that means, and he descends. He comes close to us. He is a God that is spirit beyond this reality.
[00:07:58] And so while we describe God in those terms, what we've got to do then our problem is how do we make sense of that in our life?
[00:08:08] How do we make. What does that mean for us? How do we interact with God and how does he interact with us? And it comes crashing into our experiences. Do you know, all the things that happen to us? And we try and make sense of all of that.
[00:08:26] And so we need to make sense of situations like the story that I was telling you to start with.
[00:08:33] Do you know, and start to make sense of things like miracles, how much does God work miracles?
[00:08:43] How often should we expect to see them?
[00:08:46] Do you know, when we read through the New Testament, when we read through the Gospels with Jesus interacting and the disciples in Acts and the New Testament, how much of that are we expected to see today?
[00:09:00] Don't know where you are on that. What about when people talk about revelation from God? They speak from God. Prophecy and dreams and visions. What do we think about that?
[00:09:13] What about those healings and miracles?
[00:09:16] What about even those strange babbling languages that people seem to pray in?
[00:09:22] So I want to acknowledge, yeah, we've got a whole spectrum of it.
[00:09:27] And maybe I'll put it into a little quadrant. Okay, mark yourself on this quadrant. Okay, I've got one angle, the up and down. That's kind of like, how comfortable are you with like these encounters with God? Maybe I use the word zealot. I just kind of like I couldn't think of a word. But maybe you're fully on board with it, you know, these spiritual encounters with God. Maybe you're enthusiastic, you want to find opportunities to experience God's spirit, but maybe you're a little bit more skeptical of it down the bottom.
[00:10:06] Maybe you're just not sure about all of these strange stories and people doing strange things, you know, in God's, you know, inner time of worship. Maybe you're a bit more down that scale.
[00:10:20] And then the cross one. When we think about gifts of the spirit, maybe you think you have gifts of the spirit, that you practice them regularly, that you seek them, or maybe you're down the other side and you're a little bit doubting, is this really from God? How do we know about it?
[00:10:41] What about some of the abuses of where people use it? Wrong turn to the person next to you.
[00:10:48] Where are you on that quadrant? Where would you put yourself?
[00:10:53] What square would you put yourself?
[00:11:16] Great. Hopefully you found a place.
[00:11:20] Found a place on it.
[00:11:22] And you know, if you've been here a while, we talk about spiritual gifts, we talk about using them. We talk about encountering the Holy Spirit, we talk about using things like gifts in all of church, whether it's evangelism or whether it's our kids ministry or, you know, in your own life, in your home life, in your work life, using it.
[00:11:45] But I have to recognize that also we know you've probably heard of stories of people abusing spiritual gifts. Do you know that people have misdirected people or misinformed them intentionally or tried to use them to. Or pretend in them to gain or authority over others?
[00:12:07] And so actually there is a sense of healthy skepticism.
[00:12:13] There is a sense that we shouldn't just accept everything on its face value, but we should question and we should ask about it.
[00:12:24] But because that happens, should we put them all in a box marked too dangerous to handle and seal it up and put it aside?
[00:12:34] I don't think so.
[00:12:36] I don't think that's what God has for us. And over this series, we unpack some of it. There's going to be one next week where a guy called Steve Braden, who's coming to preach about prophecies and revelation, he's coming to here to preach about it.
[00:12:54] He's a man very gifted in that, by himself.
[00:12:58] And I'm really looking forward to him being with us. And then we've got a few later on over the summer where we talk about it.
[00:13:06] But let me start by talking about encounters with God. Right?
[00:13:14] So you might have heard of these sort of outpourings of the Holy Spirit in recent times, through the 90s and other times.
[00:13:22] But do you know, one of the questions that people say is, hey, just a modern thing, right? People have kind of sort of made it up in the modern times, but encounters with the Holy Spirit go back many, many generations. You know, if we go back to. You might have heard of the azusa Street Revival, 1906, the birth of modern Pentecostal churches, where they had a revival over a number of years. It was in la, in California.
[00:13:54] And they had meetings where they talked about people being in the Holy Spirit, of falling down again and again and again.
[00:14:02] That was a place where lots of people talked about it and the gifts of the Spirit being outworked. A very modern thing.
[00:14:12] But reports go back many, many generations. So if we go back to the 18th century, the 1700s, Jonathan Edwards, you might have heard of him as a great theologian, preacher in the Reformed tradition, really preaching through alongside the greats of Luther and Calvin, before he was a great theologian, but during a time called the Great Awakening, another revival in America. He said there was many occasions where the Spirit would come upon people in quite powerful ways. He wrote it was a very frequent thing to see a house full of outcries, faintings, convulsions and such like, both with distress and also admiration and joy.
[00:15:03] That was a common thing during those times.
[00:15:06] And you may think, hey, that's just Americans, you know, they're a bit excitable, aren't they? But let's get over the pond. 18th century again, John Wesley, a big name that we would know, an Anglican as he lived, a member, you know, a prominent member of the church in the uk, but the founder of Methodism as it became. And he would preach to thousands in outdoor meetings in churches all over the country.
[00:15:34] And he writes in 1739 about a meeting the day before, he said, God began to make bare his arm before more than 2,000 witnesses, one and another and another, was struck down to the earth, exceedingly trembling at the presence of his power.
[00:15:56] And there's many, many more stories, both from big meetings and individuals. If you've ever heard of Blaise Pascal, a great mathematician and philosopher, wrote about a time when he felt the Holy Spirit. He had an encounter for over two hours, and the Word most on his mind when he wrote about it was fire.
[00:16:18] He had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit. So it's not a modern thing, but the other question people say is, hey, it's not in the Bible, but There's so many occasions where we see people encountering God in powerful ways. Paul on the road to Damascus, he encounters Jesus and what. And his reaction is he falls to the ground and he's blind for three days.
[00:16:48] After that, we see both Peter and Paul. They say when they're praying at different times, they fall into a trance and see visions of God where God speaks to them. You read the Book of Revelation where John himself writes about four different occasions where he says he used the term in the Spirit, where he sees God, God reveals things to him. Even in one of them, he's in the vision itself. And before God, he falls down before him.
[00:17:18] And we go back to the Old Testament, don't have time today but talk about the Old Testament and people trembling and falling down before God.
[00:17:27] And while we can't say, hey, that's exactly the same as these other experiences today, we can say that there are powerful encounters with God in which people react and they tremble and they fall and I bow down in some way before God.
[00:17:48] Amen.
[00:17:49] But what about, what can we expect today?
[00:17:52] What is it right to expect today? Because as we read through Acts, we get this sort of growing expectation that we should encounter the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:04] So in Acts 4, 31, it says, after they prayed, the place where the meeting was was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
[00:18:17] And we see this in days like Acts 2, where Pentecost happens and they speak in foreign languages and Peter delivers a powerful message.
[00:18:28] Or in Acts 5 where it says the apostles did many wonders and signs and people were healed. Or Philip was transported somehow by the Spirit many miles to a different place.
[00:18:41] We see that encounters with the Holy Spirit seem to be a regular thing, although we've got to be careful not to condense time in through Acts and just go, hey, this happened. But it was over many years, but it seemed to happen.
[00:18:58] And so the sort of thrust, what he's trying to get across is, hey, shouldn't we expect them to happen today?
[00:19:07] Shouldn't we expect the Holy Spirit to move today?
[00:19:13] But the question I want to sort of get more close to is how should we expect to encounter the Holy Spirit as Christians, as a church, what are we expecting for?
[00:19:30] And why?
[00:19:33] What is the purpose of these encounters?
[00:19:37] Now, the language when we get to encounter of the Holy Spirit with Christians in the New Testament is connected with this phrase filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:19:53] So in Acts 4, you know, said the Holy Spirit, there was this powerful encounter and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:20:01] And that language is a, you know, it's not just a comment, it's a reality for the people being filled with the Holy Spirit, right? You write about it like I know, you know, if I wrote about it, it would be like, I know I, I have at some measure, some description been filled with the Holy Spirit, right?
[00:20:25] It's not just a once off thing, it's an ongoing thing. At times when we encounter, we are filled with, you know, in some way the Holy Spirit is put more in us than before in a way.
[00:20:40] And when we encounter the Holy Spirit like that, then there's three things that seem to happen.
[00:20:46] Both an empowering for transformation and also lastly for a particular purpose that I'll get to.
[00:20:56] Because first we see the church being filled with the Holy Spirit for doing things that they can't normally do. Jesus says when he leaves them, he leaves the apostles. He says to them, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you and you will be my witnesses.
[00:21:18] There's a coupling together, isn't there? The Holy Spirit comes on them and they get to do something that they can't normally do.
[00:21:28] They are supernaturally empowered by the Holy Spirit. And I said earlier about the apostles and the disciples were doing wonders, signs, miracles, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It says of Stephen, it says he was full of grace and power and was doing great signs and wonders among the people.
[00:21:52] Now we can get a bit excited and read in the New Testament and thinking, hey, shouldn't that happen in my everyday?
[00:22:03] It seemed to happen all the time in the New Testament. Shouldn't it happen in the everyday? Shouldn't I just pray for someone and a miracle should happen, but we know it doesn't, does, doesn't happen, doesn't happen in the everyday. And so our kind of. I think a lot of us can get into the cynicism side and think I shouldn't expect it.
[00:22:31] And maybe that's some of our problem. We don't even expect it at all.
[00:22:37] But there is an expectation, isn't there through the New Testament that when we pray for things, whether it's power to speak at the right time, to speak right words, to tell people about the gospel, when we speak, when we speak prayers of healing over other people, an expectation that some of these things should occur some of the time, right?
[00:23:06] And also we get into the New Testament, we get into the Word, the letters of the New Testament. It talks about a range of gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would give gifts of revelation, of prophecy, of words, of Wisdom of knowledge, but then more general gifts, gifts of service, gifts of encouragement, gifts of leadership, gifts even of administration.
[00:23:35] Do you know, do you pray for gifts of things like that, of gifts of encouragement to be able to be the best encourager in your workplace?
[00:23:51] That's something that we should be expectant for.
[00:23:55] So expectant of empowered, but expectant of being transformed.
[00:24:03] The fruit of spirit is a not a pineapple.
[00:24:07] We know that song, don't we? It's love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
[00:24:17] The Holy Spirit comes upon us and fills us to transform us to be more like Jesus.
[00:24:25] This is an expectation.
[00:24:27] We should expect to be more like Jesus tomorrow than we are today. And I mean tomorrow in the general sense, not tomorrow. It doesn't mean that you can't make a mistake tomorrow. Okay, but to be growing for you. Ezekiel, back in the Old Testament, when he prophesies about God's spirit coming upon us as the new people after Jesus, God says, and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
[00:25:01] Do you know the Holy Spirit comes upon us so that we can work out God's commands upon us and do the things that he taught us to do.
[00:25:12] But what's it all for?
[00:25:14] Well, two things. It's for the building up of the church. You know, when we read things about the gifts given, Paul writes that it's given for the common good. Each manifestation, each gift of the Spirit is for the common good. And that we should be eager for these gifts so that they are used to build up the church.
[00:25:36] Do you know? None of these gifts for our own fame or to big ourselves up or us to look good in front of other people, but they're so the whole church can be encouraged and built up and strengthened in their faith.
[00:25:54] But ultimately I want to say it's for the building up of the church, but ultimately it's for the glory of God.
[00:26:04] God sends his Spirit on us. Why?
[00:26:08] So that we might reflect his glory.
[00:26:11] Do you know Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, he writes about us being the temple of the Holy Spirit.
[00:26:16] And he says, glorify God in your body.
[00:26:22] Glorify God with who you are, with what you do.
[00:26:29] And one Peter says that God supplies us with these gifts. Why? So that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
[00:26:42] So you know those things that we want to encounter the Holy Spirit and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Why? To be built up, to build up the church and to glorify God.
[00:26:55] Amen. Amen. If the bands could come back up, that would be great. And we'll go back into a song.
[00:27:03] And over the next couple of months, as I said, we're going to do a deep dive into some of the gifts of the Spirit.
[00:27:10] But I want to say, as I said, I recognize that we are all in different places on the journey. You may be really comfortable with gifts.
[00:27:21] You may have had many experiences of deep encounters with the Holy Spirit, or you may not have.
[00:27:28] You may be on the edge.
[00:27:32] And I want to say that you don't need these deep encounters with the Holy Spirit to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Right?
[00:27:41] You don't need these powerful encounters to be empowered or transformed.
[00:27:47] Because the Holy Spirit is in us.
[00:27:50] He has been given as a deposit guaranteeing our salvation. As Paul writes, we are temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives already in us, and so he's already living and working in you.
[00:28:04] As we give over, as we recognize him and recognize how he speaks and directs us and submit to him as he leads us, then he works in us and changing us to be more like Jesus.
[00:28:22] But you know what?
[00:28:24] Despite that, I still look back at those times and I still say, God, do it again.
[00:28:36] I still want those encounters with God.
[00:28:41] I still want to know His Holy Spirit in a powerful way, because I believe those times were connected with a real sense of healing in people's hearts, a real sense of freedom, a real sense of transformation and empowerment in a way just in a greater measure.
[00:29:06] And so I pray God, do it again.
[00:29:10] God, would you do it again? Would you send your Holy Spirit upon us?
[00:29:15] Would you transform us more and more? Lord, we want to be like you.
[00:29:21] We want to be more and more like you. And we know that's only through the power of the Holy Spirit. So, God, send your Holy Spirit upon us.
[00:29:32] Send that fresh wave of the Holy Spirit now, Lord, just come upon us now because we need you.
[00:29:41] We need you. Let's stand.
[00:29:44] Let's worship God.
[00:29:46] And if the.
[00:29:48] If the prayer, if the ministry team would like to just make themselves available just down here, I want to encourage you.
[00:29:57] If you want to just during this song or afterwards, just ask to be prayed for, for another filling of the Holy Spirit that just come down and be there amongst the ministry team. They will be with you.
[00:30:14] But also if you just like, if you are feeling a bit distant from God at the moment, do you know, if you're feeling, hey, I'm just feeling a bit dry.
[00:30:28] I want to experience God as a reality in my mind, in my heart right now. I want to get a sense of closeness with God. Then I want to encourage you. Come seek prayer because the prayers are answered, prayers are powerful.
[00:30:46] So come Ministry team, if you'd like to go over there now, make yourself available, come down for prayer if you'd like it, and otherwise we're going to worship God.
