An Error Or Empowerment | First Wednesdays | Twin Rivers Church

so good to be with you um here's what we're gonna do i'm gonna open god's word we're gonna study it together and then we're gonna get back in that atmosphere as quick as possible uh because there's something just powerful when you give god's word and his presence together in your life and heart he does the miraculous and so that's what we're here for tonight um why don't you turn in your bible to acts chapter 2 and first corinthians chapter 14. and let me just say this you need to get something to take notes um if you need to get the little like envelope in front of you that's fine if you need to open your phone that's fine whatever you need to do you need to get something to take notes because tonight's a teaching that you will need to return to again and again and again and again and again while you're doing that let me say this um the reason the reason that um god's presence is such a a profound meets with us in such a profound way in our services is um is because we have campus prayer every week you may not know that but um we've got a group of people who join together every week at this campus the jefferson county campus and south county campus are here at this campus every wednesday from 6 15 to 7 and and i'm here campus pastors are here and we pray and we pray for god to work in your heart and and we pray for god to work through our church and um and so you may come in and go wow this is just this is awesome i mean i guess they're just lucky here or you know it must just be because he's an awesome preacher it's none of that um it's because we pray um we believe and with all our heart that um we have to pray because we need god's touch on our church and on our lives and on our ministry and so i would i just i tell you all that say this i'd love for you to join us um if you want to make a huge difference you're not serving anywhere you have a heart for prayer or you want to learn how to pray show up 6 15 every wednesday at this campus um for the jefferson county and south county campuses together st pete's a little different uh but show up for prayer campus prayer and you can help us continue to see god's presence permeate this place in such a powerful way so all right so um tonight's gonna be fun um when i was a freshman in college uh i took psych 101 and um in psych 101 there was one particular week that we did a group activity and the group activity was that we played a word association game and and i don't know if you've ever played a word association game but it's meant it's meant to show mental function um and so it works real simply um one person will say a word and the other person says what comes to their mind as quick as possible that's the way it works for example if i were to say to you um farm maybe the very first word you would say back is barn okay cow pig something like that okay um if i were to say to you vacation first word you may put back to me would be beach you know yeah florida beach something like that okay if i were to say to you pastor joe unanimously you'd say handsome so that that's this way this game works okay so you get it um if i were to say to you the spiritual practice of praying in tongues it would be interesting to hear the the responses that immediately come to you associated with that um i i think there's really some responses that that kind of are east and west some people would say goofy and then other people would say gift you know some people might say a bit strange and other people might say well you know something that's a blessing and some people might say a theological misstep and other people might say um something that has made a huge impact on my life and that's because in my experience there is no more debated topic or misunderstood topic than the idea of praying in the spirit um it's it's really uh so many people today have allowed so many external opinions um so many external traditions so many um honestly you know tv eccentric late night preachers to form their views or thoughts on the idea of tongues or praying in the spirit and so tonight i just want to approach it honestly because here's the way i feel about it if if praying in the spirit is in error i want to know because i don't want to do anything that takes us out of the bounds of scripture but at the same weight if it's an empowerment that supernaturally enhances someone's life i want to know because i need all the help i can get and i want everything that god offers me and so tonight i'm i'm just going to ask this simple question when it comes to praying in the spirit or tongues as as it's often called um is it an error or is it a supernatural empowerment and all i want to do is take that that question to scripture and one of the things i love about the holy spirit is he allows us to ask hard questions sometimes we avoid hard questions but he never has us avoid hard questions matter of fact he encourages us in first john um 4 1 he says dear friends do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the spirit you must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from god now um listen no one wants to to to point out abuses or mischaracterizations of the work of god more than the holy spirit can you imagine everything the holy spirit's been blamed for i mean people who say stupid stuff well the spirit told me to say that you know people who who have abused spiritually other people and claimed it was the holy spirit so nobody wants truth more than the holy spirit because he's probably tired of getting blamed for everything so he says hey you should test things you should he even you could say it this way you he encouraged us as encourages us to be cautious but not cynical cautious but not cynical and that's what i'm hoping to find your heart here tonight is that you would be cautious saying hey what's god's word say but not cynical because here's what you need to know um a closed heart can never receive fresh revelation from god and so your heart has to be open to say if if god if you want to change my my my tradition if you want to change what i thought was right like like god i'm open to to what you want to say but i'm cautious i want to hear you say it and i and i'm confident that the holy spirit can prove himself through scripture and through the peace that he guards our hearts with um just to give you a little context that's where i came from i grew up in a church and around people who who valued praying in the spirit but to be honest with you i grew up around it with very little teaching about it so therefore i i kind of had a general skepticism i'm just kind of like that i'm i'm probably skeptical of most things just in general um and so they're kind of like i prove it i want to understand how it works i need to i don't just buy things at face value and so i was a little skeptical it kind of seemed like to me that it was just for people who were hyper emotional or hyper you know kind of you know really getting into the jesus thing less reserved it just that's what it kind of appeared like to me so um as my life went on i was around it but i don't know that i ever really kind of desired it and then as i became a teenager and i attended things like youth camps or or retreats i i you know i had deep experiences with god i had moments with god that were powerful and and um and and i see it work in that way and so then there's this this idea brought in my mind that maybe that's just for like the best services you know like we we like we only eat cake at the best meals like those are for the best services that's when the holy spirit does something unique like that and um and so i kind of kind of just went on with that well eventually kayla and i got married um and we were married very young and we got married and as we were married you start to see kind of like how this faith you thought it was to be lived this way but then you're now you've got a somebody else who's got a faith and you see how they live it out and what i really noticed about kayla is is that she um she had something else i didn't have like there was a she she had a an intimacy with god that i didn't have she had a boldness that i didn't have she had a consistency that i don't know that i had when it came to my relationship with god and so it started a conversation between us and and she shared um through many things but one of the things that she had been truly discipled or taught scripturally the benefits of daily praying in the spirit daily praying in the spirit and the impact it would have on your life well that's the first i'd ever heard of the idea of it being daily or that it impacted your life i just again i thought it was like for these you know really big wow services or some moments and um and so it just caused me it caused a curiosity to come up in my heart and so i started studying this idea and realizing that that it is not something that's just every once in a while it's not just for for certain people it's not just something that happened a long time ago and doesn't happen today i really wanted to study and understand it and so what i'm going to give you are the four scriptural facts concerning um tongues that that so i wish it was i wish it had a little more pizzazz to the title but that's it i'm just going to give you four facts that um that scriptures say about um concerning tongues and and so it's real bible study oriented here's the first one um jesus endorsed it jesus endorsed it um many people say today that you know there's this kind of phrasing and it's common it's like well i'm just for jesus like i'm not for the church i'm not for organized this i'm not for that i'm not i'm just jesus just jesus is all i'm looking for okay well good i mean jesus is the center of all um but you need to know that if you're for jesus jesus was for speaking in tongues first of all he predicted it in um in mark 16 17 it says and these signs will accompany those who believe in my name they'll drive out demons and they'll speak in new tongues so jesus didn't like dodge the issue he said oh by the way if you follow me this can be part of it and now not only did he predict it but listen he prioritized it okay now let me be very clear jesus is the only way that we have a relationship with god so he's the beginning of our relationship with god he's the you know the the vehicle the path the way no other truth he's the way the truth and the life no other ways no other truths no other lives just through jesus okay so when you receive a relationship through jesus um that's all you need to go to heaven but um but he offers more after that and and you know scripturally or theologically called the baptism the holy spirit which is a separate work from um being saved and that separate work opens up the work of the holy spirit to you so let me say it this way when you're saved you become a new person but when you're baptizing the holy spirit you get power to live as that new person okay let me say it this way um you just need to be saved to go to heaven but you need to be baptized in the holy spirit to experience heaven on earth okay and one of the harsh realities for many believers is just this that you can have your eternity settled and still live with earthly struggle because you're trying to live out of faith in your strength and not in the power of the holy spirit so jesus knowing this prioritizes it for his followers and what i mean by prioritize it is this that jesus raises from the dead he's about to ascend to heaven and he had already told the uh he'd already told his disciples i'm going to send something better than me i'm going to send the holy spirit and he's going to indwell you and fill your life and he's going to be with you and he's never going to leave you and he's going to lead you into all truth and you know he's better because there's only one of me but he can be in every one of your hearts he says but listen he's going to use you and but you don't go anywhere you don't do anything until he empowers your life like i don't want you guys having meetings i don't want there to be strategy sessions i don't want you to give out titles i i realize you're ready to take this message i mean don't do anything until the holy spirit comes into your life and empowers you so this is how much of a priority it is for jesus so he instructs them the first thing to do in this big church he's launching is he says you go in that upper room and you wait and you pray until he comes you don't take a step without him okay so acts chapter 2 verse 1 catches us up to where they've been in that upper room and here's what it says it says when the day of pentecost which was a festival came that they was all jesus's followers at that time were together in one place suddenly a wind like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house that they were in they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came on eat to rest on each of them all of them were filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them all of them so jesus prioritized it now that takes us to point number two here's point number two um it said it it is god made it available for everyone okay so notice that phrase all of them so after this miraculous moment the bible tells us that they that jesus followers flood out into the streets speaking in tongues and it's it's a unique moment that god chooses because there's a festival going on called pentecost where people from all over the world have come to worship and together in jerusalem so it's like a massive um convention from people from all the known world have come which and the bible it tells us what those nations are i mean it's all over the world and they speak just tons of different languages all kinds of different languages i mean it would be like um like going on the street of like new york city and in the middle of a world fair i mean it would just be un very difficult to communicate the followers of jesus pour out of this room under the power of the holy spirit and they're they're speaking in tongues but what they're doing is they're speaking languages they don't know like they're praying out loud but it's coming out as you know um languages that they're they don't recognize and they're they're they're speaking of jesus to the people who are in this this this festival and peter who's kind of the ringleader at this point he steps up and starts to preach about what's going on now let me say this this is so important when they first started all everybody thought they were drunk so so let me just point out from the moment tongues appeared there was misunderstanding about it okay so peter stands up and here's what peter says in part of his sermon he says people are going what's going on here and he says in the last days god says i'll pour out my spirit on all people then he says well what's all people mean it means sons and daughters will prophesy young men will have visions old men will drink dreams even on my servants both men and women i'll pour out my spirit so i've underlined a few things for you to see first of all it says all people that's actually all nationalities all ethnicities okay so it's it's all like it's not just all people it's like all these nations that are present then he points out that it'll be on sons and daughters which says it'll be on every generation and then it goes further and he says servants men and women which is every gender which is significant because we're in we're talking about a culture that massively devalued um women it'll be on all women on men and at every economic level so so from the very beginning god's first announcement about the holy spirit is it's for everybody literally everybody no one excluded not for certain types and certain you know in these people and that tradition everybody it's available to them okay now that gets continued as paul years later writes to these churches that have been formed out of this moment so paul writes much of the new testament that we read and preach from and live from every every week and and paul doesn't hide the idea of tongues he takes it and says all right we've got to continue this now let me give you some instruction for it notice what paul says in first corinthians 14 5 he says now i wish that you all spoke in tongues paul is writing to a church and he's listing his desires he says you know if there's anything i could have as your leader here's what i want you to have i'd want everybody to speak in tongues and then he says in verse 14 1 he says you need to pursue love but there should be a hunger or desire in you for spiritual gifts including tongues and paul lists that list tongues in these spiritual gifts why does paul want people to be hungry for this well because in verse two here's what he says for one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to god for no one understands but his spirit is speaking mysteries so paul says listen guys this isn't just gibberish he said their your your spirit is communicating with god and so paul with this heart of a pastor is he says i wish everybody had this because i don't want anyone to not be able to communicate with god and this and now let me say this why would god give a kind of another language if you will to his people than the one they know on earth have you ever heard the verse that talks about his ways or above our ways his plans are above our plans okay if i went to silicon valley and i got a tour from mark zuckerberg of facebook and he took me through their headquarters and he took me through all of the the data centers and the the servers and he tried to explain to me how facebook worked all the algorithms and how they track things and um first of all i'd probably scare me to death to actually know all that okay but but listen here's what he would recognize very quickly there's no way i could understand what he's talking about because i don't have the capacity to understand at his level so he would have to dumb down the language to help me understand what he understands on a whole another language on another level so god says you know what i want to do there's no way because of their minds and their physical nature that people could truly grasp all that i have for them so i'm going to give them an ability for their spirit man to communicate to me on my level so that when they pray and they they interact with me they don't have to their minds are going to get in the way at times their physical the what the things they crave aren't going to be the things they actually need i'm going to do i'm going to push all that other way i'm going to give them something that helps them communicate with me on a god level okay now listen now some of us some people would say well that isn't a language because you can't understand it just it's gibberish it's not a language you can't understand it okay so so let me explain something when my kids were at a certain age each one of them in learning their ability to talk they would say things that i understood that you wouldn't understand for example sawyer um at a certain age called watermelon that age was 10 years old pray for him no i'm kidding i'm kidding that's a um ellie would when she would say she's going to do a checkup she would call it a ketchup sydney would would ask for her swip swaps flip-flops okay so if my kids at that age came to you and said hey i need will you help me get my swim swap you'd be like what is he what was she talking i i don't understand but i as their father completely understood listen other people don't need to understand it's not about you communicating with them it's so you can communicate with your heavenly father in an uninterrupted when your heart's in in in turned into so many different ways your mind's so messed up you don't know what to pray you don't know what is good bad up from down your heavenly father says i want to make sure nothing impairs our communication and i don't care if one of people understand it i can hear every word and i understand exactly what you need okay so so now listen this is this is the next this is the third one um the church was founded on it and continues with it okay so acts 2 41 those who believed what peter said were baptized and added to the church so the minute he finishes this sermon after this this great display um they they started a church so the holy spirit comes he fills them they they flood out preaching jesus and all these different languages by speaking praying in the spirit and all of a sudden they start a church and and the first sunday they're doing really well they have 3 000 people right out of the gate okay now um so so you may have heard before pastors teachers preachers mentioned the law of first mentions that the first time that something is mentioned in scripture it's significant it's god pronouncing on that so let me just say this the day the church came into existence god made sure tongues was a part of it okay and and it continues throughout the history of the church as you read the church what you're going to find is is that it appears again in acts 10 it appears in acts 19 it appears in many times in first corinthians a letter to a church ephesians and in jude and it continues until today now here's something you need to understand um if you hear a lot of commentary about today because today people will present to you like the the the idea of tongues churches that practice praying in the spirit churches that that hold on to that they'll they'll often say well that's just a small sect of unlearned people that that's just the those are like that's the fringe that's not like the real church doesn't doesn't participate in that and it's just statistically not true okay let me let me share this with you today there are 670 million spirit-filled believers in the world that's not a fringe group that that's not a to the side they don't have it together crew um by 2050 sociologists tells us that the church that is spirit-filled will have 1 billion followers so let me say this way um if population would go to say 10 billion by that time which i i don't know there would but let's say 10 billion a tenth of the earth will be spirit-filled believers sociologists also tell us that um it's the most diverse wide-reaching inclusive group that has ever existed on the face of the planet in a time when everybody is pointing out the the how diversity you know for genders diversity for ethnicities diversity for income levels and we're all split and there's the top one percent in the bottom this and there's there's black folk and white folk and there's you know men's issues and women's issues there's one group of people on the planet that includes everything and it's spirit-filled believers so this is not a fringe issue listen to this every 25 minutes 3 000 people come to christ in a spirit-filled church by the time this service is over somewhere around 10 000 people will have come to christ in spirit-filled churches around the world that's unbelievable we're not talking about a fringe setting here i mean this is not like a statistical or not this is the majority of the body of christ okay now listen let me just ask you this question if tongues was not meant for today then why does the new testament talk so much about it like why is there so much why spend time in an eternal book on a temporal issue doesn't make any sense i mean the the sheer amount of scripture you'll get tonight is not all of it paul wrote extensively on tongues because he expected it to continue and he wanted to make sure the church knew how to operate with it and most of the negative experiences that anybody's ever had or heard of come because we ignore what paul wrote about how it should function in the church okay so so let me give you an example paul writes there are three categories of tongues three categories of tongues and how they're to operate in our lives here i'm gonna give them to you here's the first one um it first one is it's a sign to unbelievers and this means it's meant to be used publicly publicly okay first corinthians 14 22 tongues then are a sign not for believers but unbelievers okay um now i want to help you understand how this works um pastor abby can you can you come help me real quick um get past abby a hand tell him just love and just just i'm telling you you're just always so smooth you just man listen so um this is a sign for unbelievers here's what it's saying is that there would be times that the holy spirit would enable someone to supernaturally speak a language they do not know okay um so supernatural just like on the day of pentecost they come out and they can speak languages that they didn't get rosetta stone to learn how to do okay now um pastor abby is bilingual uh he speaks multiple languages i and barely speak english okay um so one of the most beautiful languages on the planet is spanish um pastor abby is fluent in spanish um let's prove to them i don't speak spanish why don't you just ask me a couple questions and i'll give you the extent of if i can answer collateral quality see see so i think it's very clear that i don't have the ability he has i don't even know what i just agreed to to be honest with you i probably just gave him a raise i don't even know okay um so um obviously i i can't do and i don't want to because sometimes we just read this and we're like oh yeah that's that's great so this is what happens is they say um that they came out and started preaching jesus now translate you know for me i'll you know that they came out of that room and said listen up everybody jesus christ died so that you can [Music] but listen he didn't just die he rose again in victory so that you can have a relationship with your heavenly father and he has a purpose for your life your past can be gone you can have a future that in christ you can live as an overcomer special [Laughter] it's good though i tell you that much it was good that's good now let's listen listen listen this is this is so miraculous what takes two people the holy spirit says i can step in in a moment and make someone who is completely unlearned be able to speak clearly to reach people okay that's what thanks man give him a big god bless you that's amazing it's amazing okay and that's just one here's the second one then we can speak in tongues to strengthen the church this is publicly now this may be something you've seen before maybe some you've heard about it says first corinthians 12 10 to another miraculous powers to another she's talking about gifts to another prophecy to another distinguishing between spirit so he's saying some people have these gifts and to another speaking in different kinds of tongues and still to another the interpretation of those tongues okay so this what he's talking about is not what you just saw this would be if someone in a group a small group of gatherer of believers or a group of of you know people like in a worship service someone gave a message in tongues and it would sound like nothing you recognize understand it would be an unearthly language if you will and they would release that and then someone else would stand up and say this is the message god is saying to us based on what my brother just shared okay so it's it's put this on the screen it's tongues plus an interpretation equal prophecy so a tongue plus an interpretation equals prophecy prophecy is what builds up the church god's saying this right now to he's speaking directly to your heart about this thing that's what he's saying it is now um i'm going to show you where people get mixed up a little bit the first is for unbelievers the second is to encourage believers so pastor abbey and i unbelievers this one for believers okay so paul writes about that and he says first corinthians 14 22 tongues the a kind so this is for unbelievers then are assigned not for believers but for unbelievers prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers so if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues and inquirers or unbelievers come in they will say are you guys not out of your mind now without that understanding it just looks like paul just contradicted himself it looks like paul said hey this is for unbelievers but if you do it with a bunch of believers they're going to think you're crazy what paul you mean are we are we or not he's talking about two different things he's talking about if you can get up and speak spanish supernaturally it's going to reach from people who speak spanish but if you get up and share something that is is a heavenly language and there are unbelievers there they're going to go this is crazy and so what he's saying is there are certain um settings that it's appropriate to reach believers using tongues in certain settings that it's used to strengthen the church and tongues okay and that just makes sense if you came in here on a sunday and and and it was uh we had a bunch of unbelievers here and they heard some they would think oh my gosh that's crazy but on the other side if you're here and there's all believers and it's exciting and and there's passionate worship like there is night and there's a message inside it wouldn't it wouldn't freak anybody out because it's all believers so the holy spirit discerns who's present to discern what gift he gives okay and if if we choose not to adhere to this we create confusion now there's a third one here's the third one um the last one is for personal prayer and this is private private first corinthians 14 4 anyone who speaks in tongues edifies themselves but the one who prophesies edifies the whole church okay so the greek word for edifies is a is a construction term it means to construct or build up to you could say it this way it means to create larger capacity okay how many of you have seen maybe on television tiny homes we've seen these tiny homes back in the day when i i was growing up um we watched a show called cribs and it was the opposite of tiny homes it was like you could fit many tiny homes in a crib because it was like the lavish large mansions okay so what he's and i bring this up the difference between a tiny home and a mansion because i think we all would agree the size of the structure determines how much it can contain follow me so you can only fit so much stuff in a tiny home you can fit a lot of stuff in a crib now here's why i bring this up we have people who want crib anointings on tiny home spirits they want worldwide influence with no private building up they want supernatural displayed gifts with no private intimacy with the holy spirit and you can't have a tiny home structure and expect a cribs anointing okay now listen i'm gonna prove it to you the apostle paul writes i speak in tongues more than you all he writes that sounds a little braggadocious i mean to be honest with you paul's kind of like that you know but but listen he writes i speak in tongues more than you all now let's take a step back and look at paul's life after the lord jesus christ no one has influenced the world for the gospel more than paul we read his words we follow his his directives paul saw so much in his revelation of god he he saw portions of heaven and he said it's too much i can't even write about it the man walked into cities and his shadow healed people okay so listen to me paul says i talk in tongues more than everybody i pray in the spirit more than anybody and his ministry shows that his capacity could contain more than anybody else and so private time with the holy spirit allowing him to build you up increases your capacity for him to use you it builds you up okay but it doesn't just build you up for capacity it also builds you up when you've been torn down i can't tell you how many times just a few saturdays ago i went to pray and i felt so worn down just by everything in the world and everything going on and just just barely could put words together and i start to cry and pray in the spirit and there's something supernatural as the holy spirit comes in and starts to put back pieces that people tear down and pete puts back back things that that the world takes off and lies at the enemy he starts to take him out and renovate your spirit and put you back together and repair what the what what this world has broken maybe if you feel like your spirit is in disrepair it's because the holy spirit's not been able to come in and do his work of building you up okay now let me say this and this is so important god wants to build you up but he's not going to do it without your participation okay first corinthians 14 14 paul says for if i pray in tongues my spirit is praying but if i don't understand what i'm saying well then what shall i do so he's saying sometimes i get down and pray and i'm praying and i don't even know what i'm praying about you know my spirit's engaged but my mind doesn't know what's taking place he says well i'll tell you what i'm gonna do i'm gonna pray in the spirit and i'm also going to pray with words that i understand when i know what i will need to pray about i'll use words and when i don't i'm going to lean into the holy spirit and just trust him praying through me okay now look some people mistakenly believe that that this is just gonna like god's gonna come down and just take a hold of you and make this happen like like they just think you know and some people it's caused fear like they're concerned like i don't know if i want to be that open to god i mean what if i'm in the starbucks line and it's time for me to order and next thing you know i just burst out in tongues i mean sometimes ordering from starbucks sounds like tongues you know i mean that's not the way it works paul writes specifically he says if i pray meaning it's a choice it's a choice i i can the holy spirit's not gonna come in and grab my mouth and just make it say things that it shouldn't it's not gonna make my actions i mean that's just not the way he works he says if i pray i choose to engage in this so let me say it this way um you choose how built up you are so if you're torn down right now it's not because the holy spirit wants it to be that way everything we receive from god comes by faith you pray in english by faith you don't get a certified letter you read the bible by faith that this book has something to it that other books don't you attend services by faith you can also pray in the spirit by faith believing that though your mind doesn't understand there is a spiritual building up taking place in the inside of you now here's the last one the last one is this the enemy fights against it the first time it happened three thousand people came to know jesus do you think the devil was happy about that i think he was scared out of his mind an unprecedented threat that had never existed before and i think that that moment he immediately started to whisper in strategy that we have to cause a massive amount of misinformation on this issue which is why they perceive them immediately as drunks and i think ever since then he's tried to make it seem like crazy people i think he's tried to say that's only for certain traditions i think he's tried to get people to believe well that's supposed to end or cease um you know that's one first corinthians 13. the bible some people quote and say well they say tongues is going to cease in that exact same passage it says also that knowledge is going to cease now you could make a case that knowledge has ceased but if you read it in context here's what you're going to see paul's talking about love is the only thing that will last from this earth into eternity and we're not going to need spiritual gifts of knowledge or tongues once we enter into eternity because we're no longer going to be hampered anymore we're going to be able to see him as he is and he will see us as we are so that's the context of that so tongue hasn't ceased anymore the knowledge is ceased right now okay but listen that's all the enemy he's tried misinformation disinformation and and here's why here's what the enemy knows about praying in the spirit romans 8 26 in the same way the spirit also helps our weaknesses for we do not know how to pray at times as we should but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words and he who searches the heart knows that the mind of the spirit because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of god so when you pray in the spirit you pray the perfect will of god now listen listen why is that important that's important because there's times i don't know what to pray and there's times i pray in error there's times i pray god kill that person that cut me off in traffic and that's not the will of god but when you pray in the spirit you pray the perfect will of god because the spirit knows what god's heart is and he knows where your heart is and he brings the two together and the enemy's whole goal is to stop the will of god now listen here's what the enemy knows that it's essential for warfare spiritually ephesians 6 10 says finally brothers be strong in the lord and the strength of his might put on the whole armor of god that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the enemy then it goes on to list things like the belt of truth the helmet of salvation the breast parade of righteousness these things that we have to put on it comes to the end of the list of the things that we're supposed to wear to have the full armor of god on and here's what it says in verse 17 take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of god period can you see that i don't speak spanish and i'm not a grammarian that's not a period is it but yet when most people talk about the armor of god they they sort of spirits the end of it the word of god that's the end of it comma paul says praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication paul says in my list of the whole armor of god it includes praying in the spirit now could it be that the enemy has fought so hard on the last piece of armor because he wants us to go out without full armor on in our lives um in times of war armies develop code so that one nation can communicate clearly without the opposing nation intercepting what they say decoding what they say so that they don't know their troop movements they don't know the the stances for victory their strategies when you pray in the spirit god has given you heaven's frequency so that the enemy can't hear what's on your heart so the enemy can't can can't come in and work in what you're already fearful of it's a form of protection god has extended to you so that the enemy is clueless about what you need and what god's trying to do in your life um i'll give you an example uh in i was in raleigh north carolina a couple years ago preaching somewhere and i there's a pastor who passed in that area his name is jd greer jd told a story he said when he was in high school she was a teenager he was in high school he and his buddies snuck out at night and went on an unauthorized ski trip so that they load up in this this car they drive to a late night skiing they ski and then they're going to drive back home that night because they um and they're going to do it all without their parents knowing it's all in the cover of dark and so they've got to drive all night so they take shifts driving um but eventually they all fall asleep including the driver and he said that the the cruise control was set at 62 miles an hour and they at the point with which the driver fell asleep they went off the road and the road was was hugged by a 20-foot ravine so the car goes off the ravine and rolled several times landing on its head in a miraculous way all those boys kept their life okay so one of the strange details he said was the fact that as they veered off the road they hit a mattress that was laying in the road just randomly laying and it caused the car to spin out which drastically slowed it so so instead of going over the ravine at 60 miles an hour which would have almost been certain doom they they they kind of rolled off the ravine at a much slower pace so when he got home to his parents he was recounting what had happened and just celebrating that god had protected them and um he he he's telling his mom about this this random mattress and his mother says jd what time did all this happen and he said well i can tell you what time it happened because the minute that i woke up we were we were rolling the first time and he said and there was a clock right in the dashboard and he said it was 5 21 am 5 21 am and she says jd the holy spirit woke me up at 5 00 a.m this morning and she said i i didn't know what was going on but i knew something that he was calling me to pray for you and she says i didn't know what to pray so i prayed in the spirit for you from 5 00 to 5 30 a.m she said jd you listen to me the holy spirit protected you jd pastors one of the largest churches in the nation today his influence the number of people they baptized the number of people he's led to christ it would be hard to count but on that moment that night the holy spirit held up to his end of the bargain when he says for when we know not what to pray the spirit himself intercedes on our behalf listen to me he knows what you need he knows what you need better than you know what you need and if you'll allow those prayers to flow so will his power to your kids your kids you don't even know what your kids are into he does you don't even know what your spouse is struggling with he does you don't even know what's happening behind the scenes at your office and that they're putting together but he does and as those prayers flow out of you his power flows into every one of those situations and it transforms things and it it changes circumstances and it pushes back hell and it it causes the enemy to be confused about what he would like to execute in your life we're not talking about some fringe element some some misstep theologically we're talking about an essential for people who want to live in overcoming life so here's what we're going to do i just wonder for some of you if what has been misunderstood is actually a missing weapon that what has been just questioning is actually the very peace god is wanting to put back into your life to allow you to to navigate the season you're in so i'm going to ask you to stand on your feet there's really just two groups of people i'm talking to i i you know first of all if if you have received the baptism in the holy spirit and and this is something that is a gift that's active in your life but maybe it's went dormant tonight's the night for you to to to re-engage to say you know what why have i been praying what i think when i can have the mind of god praying over my circumstance so maybe tonight's the night that it's about taking something that that once was act and then dustin it off and making it a central piece again but then there's gonna be some of you who are here tonight and um and you've not been baptized in the holy spirit and listen to me there is no age there is no um uh you know too far gone too young the holy spirit's for everyone he everyone he made it clear everyone is available to all who want to participate even online you don't have to even be in this room for this work to happen in your life but here's what does have to happen first and foremost you have to ask the holy spirit to baptize you here's why listen we ask and every all of it's just it's a gift we don't earn it we don't plead for it we don't oh god and if i no no no it's a gift if i give you a gift it's just a gift but you have to you have to you have to ask and in the same way you received salvation by faith god i want you to come into my heart and lead me and guide me and i want you to be the lord of my life is the same way you ask the holy spirit holy spirit will you baptize me will you transform my life coming in and empowering me will you create an intimacy between us there's nothing here i am you can have all of me well will you give me this gift so first of all you have to ask the second thing i would tell you that i've learned over the years is is that that it's best received in worship and here's why the holy spirit said my whole job description is real simple it's to glorify jesus that's the holy spirit's job description i mean he does a lot of great things but at the end of the day he said i'm here to glorify jesus and he'll find anybody who's glorifying jesus and make his presence known in that in that person so that's why worship is so powerful is it causes us to to put aside our thinking and put aside all of our and and we just enter in and as we lift up jesus the holy spirit it's like a green light for him to come into our lives so let me be clear i'm not saying it won't but i'm saying you've got a much better chance of participating with the holy spirit if your hands are raised your eyes are closed your mouth is open and your heart is set on jesus now listen the last thing is this we receive by faith okay this is so important the holy spirit is not going to grab hold of you and make you do anything there's no there's not going to be any you know your mandible will not become anointed and move in the same way you started living by faith when you became a follower of jesus you have to to express by faith and so for for you that may just mean when you sense god's presence you begin to pray and your mind's going to talk is well this is not that you just open your mouth and you pray but but listen it's by faith it's by faith and then here's god's promise he says that those who take that step of faith rivers of living water will come out of the spirit man that's on the inside of him and what you're going to find is a mighty river from god's throne begins to flow in your life and a power's released and it starts to wash away all the stuff that so clogs you up and it starts to i mean rivers are used for mighty works of power you know and it's just you're just gonna it's gonna be a partnership between you and the holy spirit like you've been plugged you've been on your strength and all of a sudden it becomes evident you're no longer working on your battery you're working on his okay so so we ask we worship and we receive by faith that's it okay so here's what i want to do i want to lead you in asking and then they're going to take you back into worship um if you're here i'm going to go ahead and ask our prayer teams to come forward hey what's up guys we hope that this message you just heard blessed you to always get our newest messages and to stay up to date be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel and click that bell icon to be notified every time we upload now while you're here go ahead and check out our page and some other messages we've got and we'll see you next time

Channel: TwinRivers.Church

Views: 395

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Jesus, Church, Twin Rivers Worship Center, St. Louis

Id: HKR3gklrNk4

Length: 53min 55sec (3235 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021