Apologetics Session 29 - Pneumatology - Part 3

for tonight, and Lord, we are just so looking forward to what you will teach us tonight,

Father. Father, your Holy Spirit, Lord, given to us by the

Father and through the Son, and Father, Lord, that your Spirit would speak to us tonight.

We pray that as we open up your Word, we read your Word, Father, that you would, Lord, just do some wonderful things in all of our hearts,

Father. We all want a closer walk with you, and we pray that you teach us in that tonight. And Father, for the ladies

I'm thinking of in particular, there's one lady in our church who is due tomorrow.

She's due to give birth to a baby, so her surgery is tomorrow. We pray for her, and we thank you,

Lord, that you would deliver a healthy baby, and we're so thankful for the life that you've given, Lord, through the birthing process.

What a miracle that is, Father. And Lord, I want to pray for, in particular, for our pastor's mom down in Florida, as she has been ill for a little while,

Father, and we pray for her, and I do want to pray for our pastor's wife's mom, too, Father, for the rest.

We pray and lift her up a little bit, too, Father. These are just precious, precious people, Father, and we love them in Jesus.

We thank you, Lord, that you would touch them and heal them. Lord, please, Father, especially be with these special ladies tonight,

Father. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're

Holy Spirit filled tonight. That's the goal. That's the goal every day.

And where we left off so far, we've learned a lot of things about the Holy Spirit. We've certainly talked about Him being

God. We've talked about Him being a person who has a will and a desire for our lives and who guides us and leads us, but we're going to talk more about that tonight.

The last thing we spoke about, though, was the fact that we were illuminated by Him, that we all needed to be illuminated by the

Holy Spirit to understand His Word, and also that He was the agent of God that regenerated our hearts.

He was the one that quickened us and brought life into us. And we also talked about us being baptized in Him, basically being initiated into Him, sealed in Him until the day of redemption, that that seal is never going to be broken, that the gift of the

Holy Spirit is going to be ours for all. It says in John chapter 14, it says, forever

He will be with us. And the last thing is the indwelling of the

Spirit. We're all indwelled with the Spirit. Everyone who's Jesus' child has the

Spirit indwelling in them. So that's a lot of things just to understand about the

Holy Spirit now within each one of us. And we're going to talk about what the Holy Spirit today produces in each of our lives.

And so it's going to get a little more personal, I think, today, which is great, because I think sometimes we look at these studies and we're thinking, we're accumulating a lot of facts, we're accumulating a lot of information.

Tonight's going to be all about a very personal relationship with Him and what He's doing in each one of our hearts.

So I'm really looking forward to this. So the first section

I'm going to go into now is the Holy Spirit teaching us, the

Holy Spirit comforting us, the Holy Spirit guiding us. So when

Jesus said that He was going to go away, He said He wasn't going to leave us alone. He was going to give another

Helper, one of the same kind. And that person, that one whom

He sent, is the Holy Spirit whom He sent. He said that the

Helper, the Spirit whom the Father will send in name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

And in 1 John, chapter 2, verse 27, it says this, And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you.

We're talking about the Spirit now. And you have no need for anyone to teach you, but His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in Him.

So we have a great teacher within us, all of us.

Anyone who has the Spirit, has the wisdom of God, the understanding of God, He wants to guide us into all things and teach us all things.

And it's like, whoa, really? What does that mean? Well, I think first thing we need to do is this.

We need to understand that He's going to illuminate His Word. He's going to teach us in our hearts what the

Word of God means and understand it. But we do need to be careful here, because people will take this 1

John verse about the anointing that we received, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. Some people have kind of got off the rails with that and saying, well, you know,

God said to me this, or I've got a message from God, and you know that His Spirit told me this.

And we're like, okay, we need to understand what John was talking about in 1 John. He's saying in that statement,

He was dealing with those people who were called the Gnostics, who claimed to have superior knowledge.

Those people were saying, well, you know, we have a greater understanding than you do about this, so we're going to teach you.

And He's saying, no, every believer has the same Spirit. Every believer has the same anointing from the

Lord to learn about the Scriptures and learn about God and what He wants for your life. And that was the rebuke that John was giving in 1

John. Jeff Kleewer points it out like this in his book. He says, the anointing referred to in 1

John chapter 2 verse 20 and verse 27 is a blessing of common knowledge that all

Christians have. It's not secret Gnostic knowledge, available only to the special initiated ones.

In fact, denying the latter is why John is bringing this up in the first place, because he wants all believers to understand that there's no one out there who's special and has some special anointing that you don't have.

You don't have the same Spirit, and He's going to teach you as well as He's going to teach anyone else in the body.

Now, obviously, the Lord has gifted pastors and teachers, and that's a blessing in the body of Christ. But in your personal life, you have the

Spirit teaching you the Word of God. Now, in addition,

Jeff says this, he says, now, but keep in mind this, the prophetic ministries of Agabus and other people in the book of Acts, 1

Corinthians also, 15, talks about prophetic utterances and Thessalonians. These are not authoritative or binding, whereas everything written in the

Scripture is authoritative and binding. So, if someone says to you, I have a message from God, and I believe that we should do this, that, or the other, the first thing we must do is measure that statement against the

Word of God itself, because the Holy Spirit is not going to contradict Himself. If He's revealed in His Word, you know, certain things about the way the

Church operates, certain things about the things we should avoid in our lives for sin and whatnot, He's not going to contradict that by giving someone a word of knowledge that goes directly against what

He's already revealed in the Scriptures. So, when we talk about 1 Corinthians 14, and we talk about prophetic utterances, it says the

Spirit of the prophets is accountable to the prophets, meaning that if somebody is going to prophesy and claim that they've had a word from God, there needs to be a company around that says, yeah, we believe that's from the

Lord, because we're looking at the Word of God, and we are understanding that you are filled with the

Lord. Someone just can't go off and say, I've received this, and then take it out of the blue and just do something new that no one's ever heard about.

Does the Lord lead? Yes, He does. But we need to be careful when we talk about, you know, this teaching that we have, if we try to go just, you know, off the rails all by ourselves.

So, that's a warning He gives in 1 Corinthians 14 32. But the encouragement here is that the

Spirit teaches us all things. What does He teach us? Do you know all things?

Okay, we're shaking our heads no, but we probably know a lot more than we think we do. All things we need to know for life and godliness.

Definitely, that's been revealed to us. So, let's read some of the scriptures. Let's read Psalm 119. Phil, I'll have you read this whole thing.

Yeah, all of 119. Just verses 97 through 100.

That's a pretty lengthy section, but I think you're up for it. So, 119 97 through 100.

Okay. Oh, I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.

Okay, I thought it was a little longer than that, but that was 100. But the point of that is, if the

Lord's Word is important to us, if it's paramount to us, and we love it, we study it, and we abide by it, we keep it, who does it say that we're wiser than?

Our teachers. And? 98 says our foes. And our enemies.

And even the aged. Those who have accumulated knowledge over a lifetime of existence on this earth.

There's a lot of knowledge that people can accumulate. And there's great, you know, intelligent people that have accumulated vast amounts of information.

But anyone who has the Spirit of God, and the Word of God abiding in their hearts, knows a lot more than that.

Let's think about some of these things for a second. Do we know how the universe was created?

Yeah, God spoke it into existence. We know that. We believe that. It's been revealed to us, and we understand that.

Now, we don't understand exactly how the Lord did it, but we understand how it came to be. We understand, obviously, who created the universe.

These are huge questions people have. And they argue about, you know, the whole chicken and the egg question.

Like, what's the answer to that question? The chicken came first. Every believer knows these things, you know, these great mysteries and things that confound people.

How about, you know, people are just in a quandary about where pain comes from.

Where does suffering come from? Why is, you know, why is there such a thing? How can we live in a world like that?

Well, we understand where that came from. And obviously, it's a very, you know, discouraging story to some degree, but God got the victory over sin and death and pain, and he's defeated that.

We understand that also. The world has no idea, like, why these things happen and why these things exist.

We understand why there's various species of plants and animals. You know, the speculation on that runs rampant, of course, and Matt's going to cover that in origins and creations and the lessons that he's going to go through.

We have insight into the unseen realm of angels and demons, and we have things revealed to us through the

Word of God in that realm, which somebody who doesn't know the Scripture doesn't have the Spirit, doesn't understand.

We understand exactly what's going to happen in future events, exactly in a sense that the

Lord has the plan, we know what the plan is, and we know that that plan is going to be executed to his perfection.

We understand those things. We understand why Jesus came, and we understand who God is, and we understand where we are going.

You understand a lot of things if you're a believer, and you don't flaunt these things, because where is boasting, right?

Because these things have been given to us by the Spirit of God. But when he says we know all things, you have a tremendous knowledge and wisdom given to you by the

Spirit who abides within you, and that's by the Word of God too. He's teaching us through the Word, but also through the things that he's prompting our hearts with.

So that's a little bit about teaching and what he teaches us. There's much more we could say about that, but I want to move on to guidance.

He says the Holy Spirit is our guide. Now, the

Holy Spirit guided Jesus in his ministry. He's also going to guide us as well, and Jesus obviously guided his disciples.

And just as the Holy Spirit is the one who is the same as Jesus, the one who is of the same kind coming alongside of us, think about this verse for a second.

In Luke chapter 12, verses 11 and 12, it says this, And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not become anxious about what you should speak in your defense or what you should say.

For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. And that's an encouragement from the

Lord Jesus that the Holy Spirit himself will be the one to guide you into that moment and lead you into that moment to handle the moment correctly from your accusers that are going to come upon you.

This is the exact same thing that Jesus did when he walked with his disciples. Do you remember when the disciples were walking through the grain fields on the

Sabbath and rubbing the grain with their hands? The Pharisees came and accused them, why do you do this on the

Sabbath? Why are you breaking the Sabbath? The disciples were probably sitting there like, you know, what do

I do? These guys are, you know. Jesus came to their defense. Jesus spoke up for his men.

And Jesus, through the power of God, refuted them even through, you know, quoting the Old Testament scriptures and saying this is the true meaning of the

Sabbath and really put them to shame. Remember also another time when they accused the disciples of not ceremonially washing hands before a meal.

And that was another occasion where I said, why don't you keep the traditions of the elders? Jesus came to their defense again and basically laid them out as he usually would.

But the spirit now that Jesus gave the spirit, he's doing the same thing with us. We have a lot of accusers too.

We may not go before governors and kings, but we certainly go before this world and those who would accuse us of being narrow -minded or those of us who would accuse us of being,

I'll say, hateful or bigoted because, you know, some of the misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the scriptures.

We lean on the spirit. Spirit's going to give us the right words at the right time to deal with our adversaries.

And we need that. And he's very, very faithful to be with us in those moments because we don't feel like we're able to, you know, come up with the right words at the right time.

But God's faithful and he will do. I don't know if you guys probably have experienced that even, witnessing or maybe being attacked at some point for your faith.

And sometimes it's okay to walk away. Sometimes you enter or you answer a wrathful word with a gentle tone to quell, you know, quell the issue.

But I trust that the spirit's going to give us wisdom in that time and in that hour. Hey Drew, just on what you're talking about right now,

I think this applies. It's Luke 21 verses 14 to 15.

They said to him, do not worry about what you will speak for the

Lord will give you the wisdom at that time of what you should speak. And your adversaries will not be able to resist or refute.

And he's faith, he's within all of us. The ministry that he has within us is just like the ministry

Jesus had with his disciples. And we see some other things that the spirit does throughout the book of Acts and then the epistles as well, but in the book of Acts in particular.

So in Acts chapter 8 verse 9, the spirit said to Philip, Philip who was a deacon and then became an evangelist, and the

Lord used Philip in a mighty way. The spirit said to Philip, go up and join this charity.

Philip had a tremendous ministry by the power of God in Samaria, preached to a whole city and the whole city was stirred up and many came to know the

Lord. And then the spirit sent him into the desert all by himself. And lo and behold, the chariot rolls by and he says, the spirit says, go and join this chariot.

Because the Ethiopian eunuch was there and he was reading Isaiah 53 from the chariot, just by chance, you know, that he happened to be doing that while Philip was called to be with him.

But the point is, is there's going to be divine appointments in your life also where the spirit says to you, go over there, talk to that person.

You know, go here, go there. He wants to lead us and he wants to speak to our hearts and he wants to guide us into, you know, the ministry that he has for us.

He wants to, you know, to really be our guide and our shepherd, just the way we think of the

Lord Jesus as being a good shepherd. The Holy Spirit wants to shepherd our lives. I'm going to read a couple more.

In Acts 13 too, it says, and while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me

Barnabas and Saul to the work to which I called the Holy Spirit again, leading in the church.

And then I'll read one more, Acts 16, six through eight. And they passed through the

Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

And when they had come to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia and the spirit of Jesus did not permit them.

And passing by Mysia, they came down to Troy. So the Holy Spirit was guiding them and where they could go because he knew where the gospel was going to be, you know, where he wanted the gospel to go.

And it's interesting again, because this is one of those Trinitarian things, because first he's called the

Holy Spirit, and then the very next phrase, he's called the spirit of Jesus. So it's like the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of God, the

Holy Spirit. We often see those things in the scriptures equated with Jesus and equated with the

Father. So if we're open to what the Lord has for us, he will reveal things to us by the spirit.

You know, we often want to know, you know, what, Lord, what do you want for my life? I want to know what you want me to do.

And I think we just need to see, you know, in these situations that we see the examples in scriptures, that if we just have our heart and our mind and our eyes and our ears open to what he wants, that he wants to lead us.

He doesn't want us to be just wandering around. He wants to lead us. You know, it starts with the word, it starts with prayer, and a heart that is willing to be led.

So, and you can be assured of this, that wherever the Lord leads, that's where the life is going to be that he promised.

When we start taking, you know, taking the wheel ourselves, we're not too good at directions, and our wives can attest to that.

So beyond his teaching and his guidance, let's talk about his comfort for a second.

Jesus is the great comforter, comforted his disciples many times. For instance,

Peter was often very rambunctious, and he would jump into things, and he would fail at times.

Jesus encouraged Peter in Luke chapter 22, verses 31 through 34. This was where Satan wanted to sift him as wheat.

And Jesus said, Peter, I've prayed for you, that your faith will not fail.

Not that he wouldn't be sifted, because, you know, that's what we would all want. We'd rather not do the sifting part, because that's the hard part.

But Peter was sifted. You know, he had made many mistakes, and the

Lord at times rebuked him, but the Lord was there and encouraged him. And even when he denied the

Lord after this, and a cop crowed, right, for the third time, one of the

Gospels says that Jesus looked at him, and I'm sure it was not a look of contempt for condemning.

It was, Peter, I love you, and I'm not, you know, I'm not abandoning, you're abandoning me right now, but I'm not going to abandon you.

And I'm sure there was a loving look that the Lord gave him. And of course, Peter was restored, as we know, and he was the one that the

Lord said, you know, would, you know, that he would give the keys to the kingdom, all the disciples really.

But we see Peter is a great leader after these things, even though he was the one that denied and failed the

Lord so badly in so many ways. And if you feel that way today, feel like you denied the

Lord, he wants to encourage you in that too, through his Spirit and through his

Word. Jesus isn't here right now physically to tell us these things, but that his Spirit is, and his

Spirit does the same things that Jesus would do. And we see Jesus also praying for his men in John chapter 17, where he lifts up the high priestly prayer and prays for the men.

And we see in the epistles where it says in Romans that even in times we don't know how to pray, the

Spirit is interceding for us, going before the Father, you know, straightening out the things that we don't even understand, you know, always being our advocate, going before us.

The Spirit through his Word in 1st Peter says that we can cast our cares upon the

Lord, just the way Jesus said, you don't be anxious for anything.

You see the birds, you know, they don't gather, they don't store in the barns, but yet your

Heavenly Father feeds them. And in the same way, the Spirit through the Word of God in Philippians chapter 4 says, be anxious for nothing.

He tells us not to be anxious because the peace of God will be yours if you lift up these things in prayer to me. And he also says, as I just said in 1st

Peter 5 .13, cast our cares upon the Lord because he cares for us. So the

Spirit has the very same ministry that Jesus had, except now he dwells within us.

He's not physically here, but spiritually he's speaking to our hearts all the time and wanting to minister to us, to teach us, to guide us, and to comfort us.

So we have him within us doing all of these things. That's a lot of power, and it's a life that is the abundant life.

We're going to get into now a section that I called Sanctification, Fruit, and Filling.

So fruit filling. It's getting close to Thanksgiving, we think of some pies maybe,

I don't know. Sanctification, our brother Ivan has already tackled this issue, and now some of you weren't here for that, right?

But I'm going to put up some things that Ivan put up before, and we're going to ask ourselves some questions.

Now, we've talked a lot about the Word of God tonight already. The Holy Spirit is using the

Word of God in our lives, and he's also ministering to our hearts, directly speaking to us. And MacArthur says this in his book on Biblical Doctrine, he says, while not limited to the work of the

Holy Spirit, meaning that the Lord uses other things to sanctify us, he says sanctification is often directly associated with the

Holy Spirit. Because remember, in John 17, the Lord said, you know, sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

So the Word of God and the Holy Spirit are going to work together to bring about sanctification in our lives.

What is that? It's setting ourselves apart for God's glory.

Being holy, being sanctified, means to be set apart for the Lord, and increasing in holiness unto him.

He wants us, for his glory, to be sanctified in worship towards him, to service towards him, love towards him.

He wants to see our lives come closer to him every day, and his Spirit works these things in our lives.

I'm not going to re -quote all of the verses that Ivan did, and I might have some different ones in here, but what

I'd like to show right now is a chart that's going to look very familiar to some of you.

It's going to look real familiar to Ivan, and I would have set this up ahead of time, but this thing always times out anyway, so.

Oh, I should have set it up ahead of time. Oh, I'm sure the

Holy Spirit prompted me to do that, and I maybe ignored his prompting.

That's not a good thing. So I need my cable over here.

Now, this isn't the full table that Ivan presented to us back in the day, but I picked my favorites from this table, and you'll see what

I mean in a second here. These cables never go the way you want them to go.

Well, that one's extraordinarily thick. I know. Now he's got it. Okay, here we go.

Oh, doesn't that look familiar there? Yeah. So the table that Ivan had before, he told us there were many views on sanctification, and I picked the ones

I like the best. Most of them are for the Reformed view, but I also have the

Keswick view and the Augustinian Dispensational view. So let's talk about these phases of sanctification, just for a second.

So the starting point of sanctification. Sanctification, you know, I'll let you guys read this, maybe.

Ricky, could you read this first part? Sanctification begins at conversation through state and faith reform.

So the Lord starts his sanctification work at salvation, and there's many verses in the

Bible that say you were sanctified, you have been sanctified, talking about the work of salvation.

But then there's a continual process that happens in our lives, conforming us to Jesus. So, Rick, could you read this next one

I have highlighted? God renews us in his likeness, conforming us to Christ, Romans 8 .29.

It is a continual process whereby the Holy Spirit works in us, 2

Corinthians 3 .18. And that's the verse that talks about us being changed from glory to glory as we behold him.

So now, man's responsibility. Mike, could you read that? Man is responsible to walk by the

Spirit, continually depending on the Spirit's power. Using God's power, Christians should avoid sin, which grieves the indwelling

Spirit. We must be willing to follow God's will and direction for our lives. Believers today are to reflect the holiness of God as an example of God's grace.

And I'm taking these as, you know, these are pretty good definitions. So if anyone has any questions.

But I'd like you to kind of look at how many times the Holy Spirit's name comes up here.

Ivan wasn't necessarily teaching us on the Holy Spirit when he talked about sanctification, but the active agent that God is using in our lives to conform us is the

Spirit of God. So, Matt, could you read the next one? Sure. Effects of Sanctification. The normal Christian being sanctified should have sustained victory over known sin.

The old nature is not eradicated, but is counteracted by the work of the

Holy Spirit in the believer. Sanctification is both positional and experiential.

Man is still influenced by sin, but not necessarily under its control. Man has a new potential, the ability to choose right and to do it consistently.

So I picked the Keswick one on that. I don't remember if Ivan remembers all the other ones, but that was the one

I liked the best. Because there were some that basically said, and we'll talk about this in a second, that there was a, there's a potential of being perfected in the flesh.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that. Yeah, and yes, the

Wesleyan view. Yeah, I didn't pick any from that, from that view. But yeah, there is a view that, and this, this one talks about that, that conflict between the old nature and the new nature.

And that's like the Galatians thing where the flesh wars against the Spirit, the Spirit wars against the flesh. But by the power of the

Spirit, we do have victory in Jesus, and we have the ability to choose right and do it consistently.

So I like that definition. And the, Dave, are you next? Yes. Okay, let's read this one.

By sanctification, the believer becomes more Christlike. However, perfection is not attained in this life.

The believer must continue to fight sin as long as he lives. So that's the battle.

And they're talking about the extent of sanctification as far as his physical life. But what about the final work?

These two verses talk about the final work, and there's other ones as well.

Joey, could you read that verse? Philippians 1, 6, for I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

We're going to make it. We're going to make it because of his work in our lives. And Bob, could you read this one?

Sure. First Thessalonians 3, 13, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our

God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all the saints. The work of the

Spirit will be completed, and we are going to be holy and blameless before him. That is guaranteed. That's guaranteed to every single believer.

So we strive in this world. We want to be obedient to what he's called us and led us to do.

A person who is being sanctified by the Spirit should be walking in the Spirit hand in hand, listening to him, obeying him, and be led of the

Spirit as Romans says. And when a person yields their life to the Spirit, the Spirit produces something called fruit.

Now, I want you to think about fruit for a second. I am not a farmer, but I understand very simple things about farming.

Jesus spoke of things like this often, in particular in John 15, where he talked about the vine and the branches.

How does a grape grow on a branch?

How is that grape produced? It's part of a cluster.

It is. I don't even understand how the cluster thing works, to be honest. You know, just the growth is amazing.

But it's like, does that little twig on the end of the branch say, you know, I think it's time for me to do something.

So I'm going to start like sucking and pulling, and I'm going to drag the nutrients out of the branch, and then the branch will drag it out of the vine.

And like, I'm going to make myself, you know, really juicy. Like, is that how the operation of the branch, and the vine, and the grape works?

No, I don't think so, really. I think basically, from what the Lord says, is if the branch abides in the vine, and takes its nutrients and sustenance from the vine, the fruit will be produced automatically.

So the command to the grape and the branch is not, you need to try to make yourself more holy.

The command to the branch and the grape is, you need to abide in the vine, because that's where the nutrients are.

That's where life is. And I think we get that backwards sometimes. Like, we want to, and I haven't talked about this,

I think, during sanctification. It's like, you know, who's doing the work of sanctification? Well, we have a responsibility, as it says, back in the, you know, man's responsibility.

And our responsibility is to listen to the Spirit, and obey His voice, but abiding in Him, abiding, you know, our thoughts being towards Jesus, our, you know, our hearts, our minds, thinking about Jesus, wanting to be with Jesus, and opening up His word, and coming to Him in prayer, and trying to be quiet before Him.

Being quiet before Him is a big deal. And we're not so good at that these days, right?

There's always something going on. Probably everybody in this room has a phone in their pocket, right?

Or in their hand. I appreciate that I haven't heard a phone ring, though.

I will say that. Oh, it's silent, but my body's on it, so. That's good. But those things call for our attention, don't they?

And it's hard to abide, and concentrate, and rest in Jesus while we're so distracted and busy.

Those kind of things happen. But if we do abide in Him, the kind of fruit that is produced, again, is from Ivan's presentation back in the day.

And this is the fruit of the Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit want to produce in our lives? Fruit.

Nice looking fruit. And a lot of people say love is really the fruit, and then the rest of these things are attributes of love.

We can look at it either way, that's fine. I like this forbearance in particular. The definition that Ivan had at the time was putting up with others.

I'll put up with it. Even when one is severely tired, though, that's interesting.

Because, boy, we get worn down. And sometimes there's not a lot of Holy Spirit responding.

When we get worn down, we kind of respond in the flesh a lot, as opposed to responding in the

Spirit. So is that self -control forbearance? Self -control is less.

It just dribbled on the other page. And they have verses here of an example of God displaying this attribute.

For some reason, they did not have self -control. But I'll tell you what. Um, let's think about the

Lord for a second. Jesus, and some of the things that he did. He said to Pilate, you know,

I could call right down now, how many legions of angels? 72. And I could take care of this whole thing.

And he obviously could have. I think the self -control, and it's maybe a bad way to look at it, because I'm looking at it from a human perspective.

But I also think of the temptation of Jesus when, you know, Satan is kind of, you know, really ribbing him.

Oh, yeah, if you're the Son of God, why don't you turn these stones to bread? You know, if it was me, you know,

I'd be, you know, what would you do to Satan? Because you have the power to do anything you want to do. But God was so, you know, so under control.

And so, like, you know, he couldn't be poked and ribbed and, you know, and cajoled into something that wasn't his will, or wasn't part of his character.

I wish we were more like that, right? You know, we have commands to be self -controlled. And abiding in the

Lord, he wants to display that same kind of self -control in our life. And I'll tell you, sometimes we have more control than we think.

Right. Let's just take a fictitious example for a second. Let's say there's some yelling and arguing going on in your house.

I don't want to get too into that. But let's say that's possible at my home or your home.

And a neighbor comes, knocks on the door. Is that yelling and screaming going to continue?

Or you get control of the situation and control of your emotions real fast so you can put up a nice front for your neighbor.

We can exhibit self -control. Sometimes we don't want to. Sometimes we want to let it fly.

And the Spirit gives us power to do so. But all the other gifts as well.

Actually, not gifts, but fruits. And when Ivan went through this before, he sent out a piece of paper.

He gave us a piece of paper and he said, let's take inventory for a second. And we never got a chance to go back over that again.

And I'd like us to sit here and think for just a second. The Holy Spirit wants these kind of things to be born out of our lives, from abiding in Him.

And it's like, how are we doing with love? How are we doing with joy?

There's a lot of things that can try to steal our joy. But in the Lord, there shouldn't be anything that really can steal our joy away.

Like nothing exterior should control us. Because it's all controlled in through His, you know, internal, you know, building up of the new man internally within us.

Peace. A lot of things would like to take our peace too. So, all these things, you know, the

Lord will bring forth in our lives. But when we look at this list, we think, well, gosh, you know,

I'm measuring up to this is kind of daunting, right?

It's almost like looking at 1 Corinthians 13 and saying, you know, love is patient, love is kind.

You know, it does not envy, it does not boast. And you can go on through the list. Does my life look like that?

And we can get discouraged to some degree. But what I would say to that is, you know, the fruit's going to come with abiding with Him.

So if we're not seeing fruit in our lives, we shouldn't all of a sudden try to bear fruit, like kind of grin and bear it and just kind of like do it up.

We need to get on our knees before the Lord and say, I know it's you working within me. I need you in my life.

You know, we're not trying to prove anything to the Lord, how strong we are, that kind of thing. What He wants us to do is come to Him and abide in Him.

And we all need to do this. And we're all growing in this. And sometimes it seems like we have a slip back at times.

You know, it's not necessarily that. I think Ivan had that chart up there. It's not necessarily a straight uphill, you know, like, hey,

I'm getting to the mountain peak. Sometimes it's a little, you know, some of this action going on. And we think, gosh, you know,

I used to be such a more patient person than I am right now. And I'm just not exhibiting that right now.

And praise God because, you know, His Spirit even does those things to us. You know, gets us to take inventory like this, like we're doing right now.

To take some time and think like, Lord, what do you want to produce in my life? Am I allowing you to speak to me?

Am I coming before you in my quiet time, in prayer time? Am I allowing your word to speak to my heart when

I read it? Or am I just kind of, you know, saying, yeah, that's for somebody else. Yeah, that guy, he could use some patience.

That guy always flies off the handle. Yeah, or are you allowing it to speak to your heart too? So the

Word's doing some great things in all of our lives. And I'm thankful that, you know, we all can encourage one another too.

Go ahead, David. I just have a question in Galatians and the Fruits of the Spirit. It doesn't, on my

ESV version, it doesn't say forbearance. It says patience. Is that the same thing?

Yeah, it's putting up with others, David. Okay, okay. I just didn't know what forbearance meant.

But my version says patience. So I understand what that means. It's probably like a King James kind of word.

Probably Dan could, Dan likes that word back there. It was in English. Yeah. You know, one interesting thing about this, and one of the takeaways that I took from it when

I was putting this together, was it's very difficult to live the

Fruits and Spirits outside of our church community, outside this community, outside this.

Part of this is a reflection of not only our individual responsibility, but also within the grasp of what our community is about.

And lifting, uplifting each other and encouraging each other and having that interplay of that.

And I think that's integral to that. I don't think, I think it'd be extremely difficult to be isolated outside our community and try to be that.

You need to have that togetherness also to have that flourish.

That's another part of, you know, when I read MacArthur's quote back a little ways, where he said, you know, not mainly, or not totally, but mainly the

Holy Spirit is the agent in the work of sanctification. But the word uses, obviously, is word. We talked about that.

But he does use the body of Christ, the church, to encourage us. Because all of us are in the world.

We're out there every day. And some of us are going through a lot of stuff. And to be in a fellowship where all the brothers are encouraging one another to rest in the

Lord, to trust in the Lord, it's going to be okay to have, you know, maybe some verses that are on your heart that you share with a brother.

And some of you may have gone through the exact same thing that another brother has done. And the Lord has already shown you some wonderful things in that experience that you can share.

with someone else. So the Lord's using all these things to conform us to his image.

And I'm so grateful for that. Because I get trapped in the thinking that I need to do better.

Like, you know, I'm blowing it. I need to do better. I need to do better. I need to focus more. I need to work harder.

I am all that. I am the perfect Martha from the Martha and Mary in the book of Luke.

I am a total Martha. And, but the Lord sanctifies

Martha's too, you know, he, he, he takes them and he uses what they have. He, you know, they have different ideas and gifts and, and he'll sanctify the

Martha's as well as the Mary's. So I'm grateful for his, for his work. So the last thing that we're going to talk about is being filled with the

Spirit. So that's a little bit different from what we've spoken of before. It's a very interesting topic because there's some confusion about what it means to be filled with the

Spirit. Some folks think that there is this second baptism going on where you receive the

Spirit at salvation, but you need this second gift of the Spirit. And that's where this, like, um, uh, this sanctification that some people have the idea that once you get the second gift of the

Spirit, that you're good to go. Like you're never not filled with the Spirit from that point on.

And if there's some second baptism that you get, it's either by the laying on of hands or by some miraculous gift that's, that's applied to you.

But not all believers are going to get this gift. And well, we don't see that in the scriptures.

We don't see that happening. We talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit already in the book of Acts and what we saw going on there.

So I think we covered that pretty well. The Bible teaches us clearly that we're all baptized into one body.

And 1 Corinthians 12 says that, you know, every believer has the

Lord, the Spirit within him. So the question is not whether the

Holy Spirit is within you, it's, you know, how much of the

Holy Spirit has control of you is really the issue with filling.

Um, and we see that there are actually a command to be filled with the

Spirit. So this is interesting. In Ephesians chapter 5, let's read this. Um, so who's read so far?

Is Bill next? Bill, could you read Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 through 18?

Philly's aren't playing, so. I don't think we have a score there. 15 through 18.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

Therefore, do not be foolish. Understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery.

But be filled with the Spirit. And that verse there isn't just being filled with the

Spirit one time, it's a continual be ye being filled of the Spirit. And that's a command.

Now, Paul is drawing an interesting comparison to alcohol, to liquor, saying that you can be filled with that too.

But being filled with alcohol is just debauchery or dissipation. And it's honestly, it's just a cheap substitute of being filled with the

Spirit, because the Lord wants you to be controlled and filled by His Spirit.

You can be controlled and filled by alcohol, but we know what that's going to produce. And it's interesting, right, because sometimes you hear alcohol being called spirits, like you go to the spirit shop, because it's a cheap substitute for the

Holy Spirit. Alcohol is not going to give you peace and joy like we just had with the Spirit. It can give you some temporary euphoria, but it's also going to ruin your life, you know, if you use it and get drunk and all that kind of sort of thing.

But the command here is to be filled with the Spirit. So it's like, oh, OK, well, what does that mean?

It's interesting because we think that it's a condition that only happens like sometime and then, but what we see in the book of Acts is this.

We see at the day of Pentecost, in Acts chapter 2, verse 4, that the believers are filled with the

Spirit at that point. Well, a few days later, when they're in tents in prayer in Acts 4, 31, same disciples, it says they are filled with the

Spirit again. So what is this filling that we get with the

Spirit? They're the same believers that have a movement of the Spirit in their lives at different times.

So it's not just a one -time thing. There's a command to be filled. There's also confusion about what the

Spirit produces in our life when He fills us. Many think that it's only miraculous.

OK, we know when we're filled with the Spirit because we see miraculous signs and wonders. Now, sometimes this certainly happens, but the evidence of the

Spirit's work is not tied to signs and wonders necessarily. Let's look up a bunch of verses now, so I'm going to need a bunch of readers, and we're basically going to be camping out in the book of Acts to see what happened when people were filled with the

Spirit. So, Ivan, I think you're next. You're going to be Acts chapter 2, verse 1, and then

Chad, Russell could read Acts chapter 4, verse 8 after that.

So that was a miraculous happening, the Day of Pentecost. The Lord said He would give the

Holy Spirit. This was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel in the Old Testament, that He would pour out

His Spirit, and this was miraculous, no question about it. How about Acts chapter 4, verse 8?

I'm going to read it for us here. OK. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them,

Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed?

Let it be known that all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom

God has raised from the dead. By Him, this man is standing before you. So in this case, it says he's full of the

Spirit. The healing has already taken place in the man that was crippled from birth, I believe, the man who was outside the gate, beautiful, near the temple.

But the Spirit moved in Peter to be able to preach boldly to the

Sanhedrin, who were the tremendous message of God's power and boldness to preach the gospel of who

Jesus is. So in that case, it was boldness to preach the word of God. Rich, could you read

Acts chapter 4, verse 31? And then Dan, could you go to Acts chapter 6, verse 5 and 6?

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the

Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. So they were praying, the

Spirit falls on them in a mighty way, they preach the word, and again, a miracle of just shaking the earth happened.

Dan, Acts chapter 6, verses 5 and 6. And the saying pleased a whole multitude, and they showed

Stephen a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Eremius, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.

So those men in Acts chapter 6, what were they chosen for? Does anybody remember? To be deacons, to be waiters.

To serve the widows, right? They were going to serve the Grecian widows. You got the lucky verse.

I really planned that out. The Holy Spirit planned that out. But the point is that those men were full of faith and full of the

Holy Spirit to wait on tables, to be servants, to have a servant's attitude and go before and wait on the people.

I'm gonna read a couple more here in Acts chapter 9 verse 17, Ananias anoints

Saul and he heals him of his blindness after Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus and Saul is filled with the

Spirit. And what's interesting there, it actually doesn't say that Ananias is filled with the Spirit, the one who is laying on the hands and supposedly the miracle of healing is going through him.

It says that Paul is and obviously being filled with the Spirit, you know, Paul from this point on is just dynamic for the

Lord but he had I'm sure multiple fillings of the Spirit as well. In Acts chapter 11 verse 24,

Barnabas preaching at Antioch with many coming from the Lord, again preaching the word with great boldness.

Let's read, Kevin could you read Acts chapter 13 verse 9 and Harry could you read

Acts chapter 13 verse 52. But Saul, also called

Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him. Elimus?

Oh, is that the whole verse? Well, filled with the

Holy Spirit is good but what Paul did there was what I was getting at too. So that man,

Elimus, was, can you read just the context around there? What, ten? Probably more, eight also.

Yeah, eight and ten maybe? Okay, go ahead. But Elimus, the magician, for that is the meaning of his name, posed them seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.

So this guy Elimus, we can just talk about it, this guy Elimus was standing in the way of the gospel for this proconsul named

Sergius Paulus. And Paul confronts this man and says, you know, you're in the control of Satan and what

Paul did was he blinded the man by the power of God. He said Paul, full of the

Spirit, confronted this man who was a worker of the devil. So again, this is definitely, you know, miraculous things happening here.

So did I get, Harry, I gave you Acts 13, 52? And the disciples were filled with joy and with the

Holy Spirit. Filled with joy. This is at the city in Antioch.

This is in the Galatian region. The church at Antioch that sent out Barnabas and Saul, this was the church that was further into, like,

Turkey, into that area. But it says they were filled with joy, and so the

Holy Spirit bringing joy into their lives. It doesn't say anything, it talked about conversions and preaching the

Word again, but it doesn't necessarily talk about, you know, miracles and signs. So we look at all of these things and we also think back to what

Ephesians had said about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Let's read back again the verses after the command to be filled with the

Spirit. Rod, could you read Ephesians chapter 5 verses 19 through 21?

Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart. Give me thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That's the picture of being filled with the Spirit. And by the way, there's a corollary, parallel verses in Colossians that say, if the

Word of God dwells in you richly, all of those things also happen in your life, where you sing to each other with songs and hymns and spiritual songs.

So if we combine all of these things where being filled with the Spirit produces these things in our lives, we see there's preaching with great power, there's healing at times, there are miracles, there's attitudes and gifts of serving, and there's joy.

So there's the whole spectrum of things that the Lord will do in our lives as we yield to Him and we give our hearts to Him to be filled by Him.

He's going to do some miraculous things. It isn't always... miraculous can be, you know, breaking my stubborn will so that I forgive someone.

At the beginning of verse 18, it's in direct contrast with getting drunk on wine.

Yeah. Being filled with the other kind of Spirit. Yeah. That's one way of control.

So these things are all evidences of being filled by the Spirit. Can I throw in something?

Yeah, go ahead. I remember John MacArthur specifically on 518, and you said it means be being continuously filled, and the point that he made was, you know, we think of a filling, we think of a glass, an empty glass sitting there, and we fill it with water, and the glass is filled, and we drink the glass, we pour the glass out, and then we fill it again, but what he said was, think of it more like the sail of a ship.

So you have the sail, and the air, wind is continuously blowing, and it's continuously filling the sail, so it's never completely depleted.

It's more of a dynamic filling, and that just really stood out at me. I think that that's a good picture because, like you said, it's continuous.

And then the sail drives the ship in the direction that God's leading you, so it's a filling, but it's also being moved by him as well.

Similar to what you said about the glass, David Jeremiah said, the glass leaks, though, we have to refill it all the time.

I've heard that before. I like what Phil just said better. That was a good one. So, one more thing

I want to say about the Spirit before we actually endeavor to say, well, how can we be filled by the Spirit? That's a big question, how can we be filled with the

Spirit? Well, the other thing about the Holy Spirit in the Church is the

Holy Spirit has been maligned, I will say, quite a bit, in the sense that, remember, when we first started this series,

I showed a video of people blaspheming the Holy Spirit by throwing him around, you know, kind of like saying,

I anoint you and, you know, crazy things. And in all those cases, you know, we have to consider this verse from John chapter 16, verses 13 and 14.

This is what Jesus said about the Spirit who would come. He said, The Holy Spirit will not draw attention to himself through signs and gifts displayed by power.

He will glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all things that are done by his power will do exactly that.

And I'm afraid that many things in the Church that we see draw attention to the

Holy Spirit and not towards Jesus Christ and glorifying him. Jesus said that his role isn't to do that.

So are those things counterfeit? You know, are those things inspired by him? I think we need to ask ourselves that.

So that's another thing about these things that we see the Holy Spirit doing in our lives. It shouldn't bring glory to us, for sure, and the

Holy Spirit is not looking for attention for himself either. He's looking to glorify Jesus.

So how can we be filled with the Spirit? Good question.

Many folks describe it as control. You know, we know we possess the

Holy Spirit and he loves us, but does the Holy Spirit possess all of us? The Bible tells us that we can quench the

Spirit, right? Can you imagine that, that we actually would have the power, let's say, to quench something that God would want to do in our lives?

That said, in one sense, if you're talking about quenching, it's something that wants to, you know, to be generated, to be growth, to basically be a positive thing in your life.

He wants us to do something, and that thing is going to be, you know, just following his will, you know, producing fruit.

Quenching him is basically saying, you know, no, Lord, I'm not going to do that. Whether we're afraid, or whether we think it's too much of a bother, or whether it's going to get us in trouble, we think, because the world's going to be against us, we can quench his

Spirit. We don't want to do that. We can also grieve his Spirit, right?

1 Thessalonians, or Ephesians 4 .30 says that. We can ignore his promptings to not do something.

I think that's what the grieving process is, where the Lord has specifically said, you need to stay away from this, you need to avoid this, this should be out of your life, and we do it anyway.

So I think those are the two flip sides, where he wants us to do something, and we quench him and say, no, we're not going to do that.

Or he doesn't want us to do this other thing, do it, and we say, you know, I'm going to do it anyway.

We have that potential still in our lives, and if we do those things in our lives, we're not listening to his voice, we're not listening to what he says.

We can obviously stifle our spiritual growth. Lewis Sperry Shaffer, who was the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, he said that if we're not quenching the

Spirit and we're not grieving the Spirit, that really in effect is being filled with the Spirit, because you're listening to his voice and you're following what he wants.

A .W. Tozer, who probably many of you know, you've heard of him, he has a book called

How to Be Filled with the Spirit. That's a what he says in the book, and this is actually a warning from him.

He says, again, I ask you, if you desire to have your personality, or do you desire to have your personality taken over by one who stands in sharp opposition to the world's easy ways, no tolerance of evil, no smiling at crooked jokes, no laughing at the things that God hates, the world hates the

Holy Ghost as bad as they ever hated Jesus, the one from whom he proceeds.

Are you sure, brother, you want his help? Yes. You want a lot of his benefits.

You want that peace, love, and joy. That's not in I, I added that myself. You want all of his benefits, yes.

But are you willing to go with him in his opposition to the easygoing ways of the world?

If you are not, you needn't apply for anything more than you have, because you don't want him, you only think you do.

Are we willing to stand for the Lord? Are we willing to submit our life to him fully?

Is that a scary proposition, or do we fully trust in him? And Tozer actually goes on and he says things like, you know, you can you can be comfortable, you can go to church, you can give to missions, but do you really want to release control of your life to the

Spirit of God? That's the question, and that's the way you're going to be filled with him, to release control of your life.

Do we want this? He gets it all. Our attitudes, our time, our finances, you know, everything we have.

Are we willing to do that? Jeff Clewer, our friend, explains it this way.

He says, but the believer demonstrates more or less evidence of this blessing being filled with the

Spirit, because there are times when we are more or less filled with the Spirit. Filling with the

Holy Spirit means being to surrender to his control. Surrender to him.

And then Paul Little, who is a guy I like a lot, says this, to test as whether or not you are filled with the

Spirit is not, have you received an external sign or been given a particular gift of the

Spirit? Rather, have you given yourself wholly and without reservation to God?

Are you genuinely willing that he should control absolutely and entirely your life?

And he says many believers come to a point of utter frustration in their service to the Lord because they simply fail to realize the need to be filled with the

Spirit if they are to act in God's power. Just as we cannot save ourselves apart from the work of the

Holy Spirit, neither can we live the life of victory or serve the Lord effectively without the

Spirit. That sounds a lot like Galatians, right? That's the whole reason Paul wrote the book of Galatians.

When we learn to trust in fully, allowing him to work through us, we are freed from the frustration of trying to accomplish spiritual and eternal results solely through our human ability, or more appropriately, our inability.

So, there was a lot of information in those quotes from all these people, but basically they're basically, do you want the

Lord to be in control of your life? It's what they're all saying comes down to, right?

You know, it's interesting for us, and this is really important for us to get to grasp this, as I talk to my brothers,

I'm thinking of the apostle Peter who was certainly with the Lord, watched him do all these miracles.

He denies them. The Lord gives him the opportunity to be the first one to preach the gospel through the book of Acts, and then you turn around and watch

Peter's talk to the Holy Spirit in the book of Galatians, Paul has to confront him for what he did in front of everybody.

And I think, the reason I'm saying it's important is because as close as he was with the Lord, and who he was, he still showed his sinful nature there, and so I think it's important for us to realize if Peter struggled, we're going to have to struggle as human beings, but we also have to recognize that Peter did not rebuke

Paul back, except of what he said, and he went on. Yeah, yeah, and you would think at that point

Peter would just be walking perfectly, and it just, you know, it's still that, you know, sometimes, you know, the cycle of, you know, who were following at the time, because he was fearful of man.

That's why he slipped in that particular case. He was fearful of what the Judaizers would say of him.

And, you know, we can all see ourselves go into those kind of realms. So the great thing is, that chart that Ivan showed where the lines are all lumpy, there was an end to that line, where perfection, holiness, and blamelessness are, it is going to be fulfilled in all of our lives, brothers.

We need to cooperate with the Spirit, and we need to yield to the Spirit. He wants all of that in our lives, but we are going to get there, by his power, by his grace.

Any other thoughts on walking by the Spirit, or filled with the Spirit, or anything else,

Dave? I like what Phil said, MacArthur said, about the mass being filled with the wind, and it seems like, you know, to have that mass filled with the wind, sometimes the people have to turn the rudder, and do the, you know, they have to turn the mass themselves, in order to keep it filled, and I think, you know, that's something that we have to keep reminding ourselves, that we have to keep doing things that would encourage us to be filled with the

Spirit, too. That would help us with our sanctification.

Absolutely. Well, I think, at this dormitory, too, the Spirit of God, the importance of the

Word of God in our lives, is because, again, 1 Corinthians 2 tells us, the natural man does not receive the things of the

Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. Neither can he understand, because they are spiritually discerned, or appraised.

The Spirit of God illumines and opens our hearts up to the truth. So, when we are dealing with somebody who is not a believer, who doesn't get anything we're saying, basically, it's because the

Spirit didn't open our hearts and minds to it. I think that's so essential. I remember that when

I'm dealing with people who don't know the Lord. Absolutely. Actually, and it goes a step further, it enrages them.

Yeah, actually, yeah. When you look at, you think about the example of, you know, Stephen, before he was martyred, he was filled with the

Holy Spirit, and the crowd around him, who knew he was speaking the truth, where, you know,

Saul, absolutely was enraged about that. And that's what the Holy Spirit pulls out of people.

Yeah. Yeah, it says they were cut to the heart. Yeah. Jesus said, if they hated me, they'll hate you too.

And they picked up the stones, obviously. So, I'm so thankful to just look at these things again.

We've all heard these things probably many times, but do you remember, he's teaching us, he's guiding us, he's our comforter.

You know, we never know what we're going to face next. You know, we don't expect to get that, you know, our wife has cancer kind of thing, or you know, or whatever it is, you know, a child has gone off the rails and isn't following the

Lord. You know, it's very upsetting. The Holy Spirit's there to lead us and comfort us and guide us.

And I'm thankful for all you guys too, because we all need encouragement for one another in regards to these things.

I appreciate you, Matt, because you look like you're exhausted tonight. You came here anyway. Can I ask you to close this up in prayer?

You got it. Lord God, thank you for this day. Thank you for these brothers. Thank you for this preparation.

Thank you for what you do in us through the Holy Spirit, God. Thank you that you do illuminate our hearts and help us to see the truth of your word, which is foolishness to those who don't have your spirit,

Lord. I pray, God, that you would continue to speak to us through your spirit, God, daily as we look to your word for guidance in how to live our lives,

God, and help us to find those opportunities to share the truth of the gospel,

God, with those around us. I pray that you would give us all a good trip home, keep us safe, so that we can come back together and learn more about you through your word.