6/14/15-Empowered by the Spirit to Serve
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. It is that part of you when you become a believer that urges you to act like Christians.
It reminds you to live as believers rather than live as what you once were before you came to the Lord for salvation.
That intimate time when you faced a hardship and you felt God as close to you as your neighbor sitting next to you, that was the Holy Spirit.
It is Jesus, here. When Jesus says, “I am giving you the Holy Spirit. He is basically saying, I am giving you, Me”
So what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit, it is getting up daily, and saying “Lord, I want you to rule in my life”
And the Holy Spirit can be resisted, that is actually what Stephen criticized the religious leaders for doing.
He was full of the Spirit of Jesus, and they were completely empty of it, and so the author here is saying, to be mature Christian, you have to be willing to say, “Lord, in every situation, I am going to do what you want instead of what I want”
“Lord not my will, but yours be done. Help me to study and know you so well, that in the blink of an eye, when the heat is on, and time is running out, I won’t have to think twice to know what to do.
Remember, it takes practice to be a Christian, but I want to see all of us here mature into strong believers.
The life of a disciple of Jesus requires that we surrender, that we throw ourselves down and say “God, give me a fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit, so that I would live the way you want”.
Every day you and I have a choice to make. Will we listen and be led by our base nature, our flesh, and what it desires, or will we listen and be led by the Spirit of God, and what He desires.
God wants us to grow in your faith, and the more you grow and mature, the more you will be guided by God’s Spirit instead of your own desires.
Are you ever frustrated that you can’t quite conquer that sin that has been dogging you and won’t leave you alone.
Just pause…and say “Holy Spirit, work through me” and He will. You have God on your side, but God does not want you to work alone, for that is why they here in the text and we here today were given the Holy Spirit so we could serve one another.
Every day we have a choice whether we want to operate by our limited way of seeing things, or to actively seek God, and say “Lord what do you want”
We gotta be a church that is led by God’s Holy Spirit. If we are led by our flesh, it does not really matter if we have great programs, a big budget or anything else.
We must be led by the Holy Spirit. If you are trying to discern leaders here in the future, ask yourselves, are they full of the Spirit or do they chase after the flesh? Decons, leaders, board members, Sunday School teachers,
Parents, children, everyone here, say “yes” to Jesus, and be filled with the Spirit. Look at the final verse here v. 7 it says three things happened.
God’s message was preached in ever-widening circles, the number of believers increased, and many of the Jewish priests were converted too.
The church keeps growing, because the solution worked. Church problems can be solved so long as we seek God, and do what He wants, and it was so blessed, that the gospel was even reaching and converting the very people that had Jesus killed.
The enemy is on the run, and souls are being saved and reclaimed with the gospel.
We can be that church. We can be the church, not free of problems, but that faces problems head on and discovers solutions without being rocked to our core, but it takes leaders. God may be calling you to be a leader. And with a servant’s heard full of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, nothing is impossible.
Remember, you have God on your side, and the last time I checked, that was enough.