A Spirit Drenching Experience (Video) — Shane Idleman

A Spirit-Drenching Experience

The title is, A Spirit-Drenching Experience. A Spirit-Drenching Experience. And I even see this out back when I'm watering the grass. One of my, two of my kids wanna get really wet, and two of the kids run in the house.

Right, what's the difference? Don't touch my clothes with that water. And the other one, spray me, spray me, I wanna get wet. Come on. And, but see, there's a difference there too, and there's a parallel in the church.

Many people want to receive all that God has for them, be drenched in God's Spirit. And if you've been following us for any length of time, you know I'm not talking about weirdness. I'm talking about people being filled with the Spirit of God.

That's what we desperately need. More than anything, that's what's gonna bring unity to our nation. That's what's gonna bring hope to our world and in the church. And there's so much bickering and complaining, even in the church, right?

What's gonna change that? Do you think the Holy Spirit bickers and complains with the Holy Spirit in me and the Holy Spirit in you or vice versa? The Holy Spirit's not divided. The Holy Spirit brings a sense of unity and of peace.

And I remember as I was actually coming up here reading Charles Haddon Spurgeon, C .H. Spurgeon's biography, every time he'd walk up the great steps at the tabernacle, he'd say, I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Knowing that he needs that unction, that power, that fire in order for God's Word to penetrate the hearts. And that's what we're gonna talk about this morning in theology, theology on fire is where we've been at.

We're gonna be at a little bit longer. We're talking about theology, the study of God. It's very healthy for a church to have a good, deep, rich theological basis. But they better have the fire. They better have the unction of the Holy Spirit and to be Spirit-led.

Many of you might not know this, but we sometimes, I don't know what song I'm coming up after. Maybe this one, maybe the next one, and we just were flexible with that. How long worship is going to continue?

I might shut my message down and go into worship. I mean, trying to be sensitive to what God wants to do in the church, having, of course, order. Paul talks about order and decency, but at the same time, being open to the work of the Spirit.

And if I could preach on this topic every week, I would. My top two favorite are salvation for unbelievers and the Spirit-filled life for Christians because it's the difference maker. And as we said earlier, we acknowledge Memorial Day coming up on Monday, acknowledging those who have came before us and have actually died for the freedoms we can now enjoy.

And I remember seeing a sign many years ago somewhere on Iwo Jima, the island there, Iwo Jima, off of Japan, right? We're close? And it said, when you go home, tell them that for your tomorrows, we gave our todays.

And it just really stuck with me because that's, we failed to realize the cost. Freedom never has a, freedom is never free. Never free. I want to be free in the Spirit. That has, it comes with a cost.

What's that cost? Dying to self and to be filled with the Spirit of God. I'm gonna be quoting a little bit from Wayne Grudem in his book, Systematic Theology. And I'm actually gonna be talking about the Holy Spirit in the summer, mid-June through July, on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

What some people would say, don't exist today. Others get too carried away with them. We're gonna try to find balance. What does the Bible say? Anytime you're confused about something, open this. Now, it's not always clear on some things like salvation, how does that work, God's sovereignty, man's free will, different things.

But for the most part, we can glean that the Spirit desires for us to operate in certain gifts and to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. So be here on Wednesdays if you can. We're gonna go through that summer series.

And when I quote people like Wayne Grudem or look at his book, I have his book on Systematic Theology, John MacArthur, of course, on Systematic Theology, Hodge on Systematic Theology, Norman Geisler on Theology.

And when you look to these people, we have to remember, we look to godly Christians for wisdom, but you must experience God yourself. So it's one thing for me to read them, but I have to go to this. And I usually look at commentaries, just say, okay, am I kind of in the right direction here?

Have others felt this way? But you want to experience God for yourself. And two examples, two extremes you've heard me talk about before, the circus and the cemetery. Right, church is either a circus, they think no matter, boy, the Holy Spirit, if we can get really loud, the Holy Spirit will be here.

And we can do odd things. The Holy Spirit, that's gonna bring him here. No, that's not. But if you're also a cemetery, he's already gone. Like Samson, they know not that the Spirit of the Lord has departed.

Did you know that many churches throughout our landscape, the Holy Spirit's not even there? I mean, technically he is, right? Omnipresent, you know, God's everywhere, but the Spirit's power, the Spirit's presence is no longer in many churches.

That's why it's dead formalism. And people just go through the motions. So I'm hoping you want spiritual life this morning. So the two extremes, either people don't want to talk about what they've never experienced.

Have you thought about that? Many churches, I have people come to me all the time, Shane, I've never heard about the Holy Spirit in our churches. I had a pastor's son tell me that 15 years ago when I was teaching a Bible study on the disciples saying, later in the book of Acts, Paul comes to the disciples, he says, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

And they said, we don't even know if there's a Holy Spirit. And because it's hard to talk about what you've never experienced, right? And the only thing, the only impression that people often have of the Holy Spirit is what they see on TV.

Or around hyper charismatic churches, and oh Lord, if that's the Holy Spirit, uh-uh. I don't want any part of that. So the rule then is, don't talk about it. Don't talk about him. Don't talk about, and the reason we say him, because God uses the noun there in a masculine form, talking about himself.

And there's Bibles out there, the gender neutral Bible. God's not he or she or, they're trying to be politically correct, but God uses his nouns, the noun, to describe a masculine sense there often. So the Holy Spirit is a person.

It's a part of the triune nature of God. I'm wanting to go through that in this area of systematic theology, because many people don't quite understand the Holy Spirit. They either, again, see what they've seen on TV, or they've seen friends.

Have you ever seen friends that say that the Spirit told them to do something? You know, there's people that shoot people. God told me to go blow up the abortion clinic. No, that wasn't God. No, it was the wrong spirit.

And you see this, and just, oh, recently, somebody sent me something on Big News Channel. I don't know what, Dateline or something, where they're interviewing, of course, of all people, the Pentecostal pastors who like to hold rattlesnakes while they're preaching.

You know, and dancing around and holding that rattlesnake. If he bites me, and he actually died recently. I think a year ago, he got bit in the rattlesnake, and he died. But they say that they'll do this documentary, and they'll say, and this man, bringing in the Spirit's presence, he believes in the Holy Spirit, and that's gonna keep him from the snake biting him and dying, and people get this weird, no wonder the Holy Spirit is misused and abused.

The reason why I believe, also, God can be redefined by people, but the reason is, I believe the Holy Spirit is God's agent where that's where the power comes from. The power to witness, the power to testify, the power to live the victorious Christian life comes from that, so the enemy wants to counterfeit the original so you don't seek it.

Now, the other side, though, I've been to many churches, they think that if you just get loud enough, and you just whip it up in a Holy Spirit frenzy, and you just loud worship, and praise, and brothers, and that's good if God's truly doing it, but somehow, we think the move of the Spirit has to do with volume, and actually, the more I read revivals and different things, I don't see a lot of volume, I see a lot of brokenness on the altar, and that's where God's moved, because usually when the Holy Spirit hits a person, it's deep repentance, but it's also joy, joy unspeakable.

The Spirit’s Outpouring in Acts

The Bible says when the Holy Spirit fell upon the 120 believers in the book of Acts, that they came out and they were joy-filled, joyful, praising God, just praising God, they're joy-filled, but they said, ah, there's a problem there, they're drunk with wine.

They said, no, they're not drunk, they're filled with the Holy Spirit. This is that what the prophet Joel spoke of, that in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have visions and dreams, and on my menservants and on my maidservants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

So what they were doing, they're speaking in tongues, this language that they didn't know, and they're glorifying and praising God. So people didn't know what to say, so they said, they must be drunk, because what are they doing?

I don't understand, they've never experienced it. And it's ironic, Paul would later say, do not be drunk with wine, which is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. I don't think it's an accident there that he shows the example of drunk, giving yourself over to the wrong spirit to be controlled and giving yourself over to the right spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now a topic comes up I don't even wanna touch on right now. People talk about drunk in the Spirit. I don't think that's what Paul was saying. He didn't say, don't be drunk with wine, but be drunk in the Spirit.

You know, he used the word filled there, filled capacity, filled with the Holy Spirit, because one of the byproducts of the Holy Spirit is self-control and boldness and different things. Now I walk slowly here, or easily I should say, on eggshells a little bit, because when the Holy Spirit hits a place, it's not pretty.

I'm not talking about weird, I'm talking about people on their face before God, revivals breaking out in Welsh in the 1700s. Evan Roberts, the Welsh revivals in 1904, 1856, the Keswick Conferences they've had, revivals off the islands of the Hebrides, the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening.

You see, it's not just people sitting at church singing a few songs and going home. God moves in a place, and people feel his power and his presence, and they're on the altar. They're singing, they're worshiping, because God is filling them with his presence.

So either the book of Acts and all these things I read are wrong, or we've got it wrong sometimes. We don't want to experience God. Now I'm not talking about many of you, but overall as a church and our nation, people are scared of this topic.

But I also realize, and I'm telling you up front, you can't just whip it up. You can't just bring it down. You can't have a revival conference and have revival if you're defining revival the way the Bible does.

Now I like revival conferences. We're actually having that type of conference in October, 12 speakers coming from all over, paying their own way. And we want to seek God in this area. And Charles Finney, the reason he caught a lot of feedback, or a lot of negative feedback, is because he thought you could have certain measures take place in a church that would actually usher in revival, almost like God was forced to bring revival if these certain conditions are met.

However, I think he catches a little too much heat because in one aspect he is correct. God will fall on an empty, not an empty altar, but he will fall on a person who empties themselves. If certain conditions are met in the Bible, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

There's no way around it. God's not going, nope, nope, not gonna fill you. He's waiting. The problem isn't him, it's us. The more we empty ourselves of ourselves, we will be filled with his Spirit. So again, volume doesn't fill you with his Spirit.

Humility does. Loud doesn't usher in the presence. Brokenness does. But sometimes you will get a little loud, right? Joy-filled, joy-filled. This morning I just found, I was up here, we meet at 6 .30 in the morning.

Now it's six in the morning because you guys keep coming too early. But, and the song came on, Reckless Love, that some people have a problem with that word, reckless love, God's reckless love, and according to how people look at it, could have the wrong thing there, because it's not reckless, but according to the world standard, it's very reckless.

Or when God leaves the one sheep and goes after the 99 that appears to, or I'm sorry, when he leaves the 99 and goes after the one that appears to be reckless, and that's actually why the author wrote the song, that you would leave the 99 and come and find me, oh, God's reckless.

And I just found myself just joy-filled in my heart and singing, I hope there's nobody next to me, because this is loud, and I'm just, I'm so joy-filled, I'm praising God. I can't, you might as well, you might as well stop a big water leak than stop somebody praising God.

I remember this, this is so funny. This is what happens. We're on 50th Street West, 15, 16 years ago, and a bulldozer hit a 10-inch, 12-inch water main. Whoosh! And the guy goes, Shane, I'm driving this huge loader, you know, the kind you have to crawl up in the seats like by that speaker?

He goes, Shane, pour a lot of dirt on it. Pour a lot of dirt on it? That's not gonna do anything. This thing, you're losing 1 ,000 gallons per minute. Throw a bunch of dirt on it. And next thing I know, it's down the street, heading towards Edwards Air Force Base.

All this water gushing down the street. See, you can't contain the power of the Spirit when He falls on a person. It just gushes out. You can, the Supreme Court, the courts will try to silence the voice of truth.

Won't happen. Politicians try to silence the voice of truth. It will not happen. It must speak. That is the spirit of boldness. How are you gonna stop that? You can't. I'm still in the introduction. I'm trying, I promised myself, I'm not gonna do a long introduction.

Jesus’ Spirit-Drenching Experience

A spirit-drenching, I'm telling you guys, I'm fired up about this message. All week, all week, when it was on Wednesday night, I was, why isn't this Sunday morning? Thursday, why isn't this Sunday morning?

Saturday, why isn't this Sunday morning? I mean, I'm ready because I've seen, this is the difference maker. This is the difference maker. Right here. This will make the difference in your life. Why can't I seem to find God?

Why am I so bored with church? Why don't I have what others have? Right here. A spirit-drenching experience. Do you know that Jesus had one? John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb.

Now, you might not agree with me on this, but I've prayed that for every one of our kids when it's in the womb. Lord, fill that child with your Spirit in the womb. You did it for John the Baptist. I have a similar calling, right?

And the voice crying in the wilderness could do it for me too, Lord, and that's a good prayer to pray. Lord, fill my children with your Spirit. Do you know if our kids would be filled with God's Spirit, you'd just end bullying?

You'd end half their problems if they're filled with the Spirit of God, training up a child in the way they should go, helping them be filled with the Spirit. The disciples, men and women, were filled with the Spirit.

Peter, Paul, Stephen, a spirit-drenching experience. They all had it. Everybody you read about in the New Testament that you like that was a hero of our faith, guess what? They had a spirit-drenching experience.

They were filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, if you're wondering what this is, in a nutshell, it's where love and boldness meet because you don't want one over the other, right? I just love you, but I'm not bold.

I don't know if you're filled with the Spirit, but I'm just bold. I just love the truth. Do you have any love? You might just love the truth like the Pharisees. So it's where love and truth meet, and I've noticed the more broken I get before God, the more filled I am with the Spirit, the more I love people, the more my heart breaks.

Why? Because the Spirit groans for things so deep that cannot be uttered. People say, what does that Scripture mean? I know exactly what it means because the Holy Spirit's groaning for righteousness. Look around us.

He's groaning for love and for unity and the things that upset the heart of God. He's groaning for that, and so that groan goes out in our own spirits. Oh, God, would you change things? Would you change things for the better?

And we start to see the heart of God. This is vitally important. So let me just ask you right out of the gate, have you had a Spirit-drenching experience? Or do you need to be refilled this morning? This service this morning is designed to refill your tank.

What we're doing at the first service, this is just flowing into the second service. The ending worship here is gonna flow right into the beginning of the second service. I did that in Lancaster for many years.

And then we got here, people said, well, parking won't work and children ministry don't work. I'm like, yeah, let's stop worshiping God so we can park closer. It's a good idea. I fell for it. Now, all of us had good intentions, and nobody's, but it was hard for me to keep, I'm not gonna keep beating this one because it doesn't seem like it's gonna go very far.

But I've been convicted lately that we just gotta get back to where, who cares if you park down the street? Remember, I don't know if I told the first, but second service, me and my wife visit a church in Los Angeles.

Oh, this parking garage, I don't like parking garages, by the way. It says six foot eight, my truck's six two, and I always think I'm hitting something. I'm driving really slow. So I get up there, and you actually pull in, and somebody pulls behind you.

And you're blocked in. So what do you do? You leave your cell phone number on the dash. So we get up there, I'm sitting on my tailgate, I'm texting the person, hey, we're ready to leave. 20 minutes later, we're ready to leave.

What is going on? And then finally, she walks up there, we're sitting on the tailgate. Oh, sorry, I didn't have my cell phone with me. Oh, well, thank you. I've been hungry for 30 minutes, where have you been?

So I left there, and I look at all this land out there, and parking, just look how blessed we are. And sometimes we just gotta think a little bit differently. What's the priority? And the reason we designed it like this is because to be filled with the Spirit, it takes a little time.

Does it take time to be filled? This morning, I was heading here, kind of in a hurry already, and guess what light was on? The gas light. So I go in the Chevron, come on, come on, one gallon. Mm, one gallon and a half.

Come on, one gallon and three quarters. Come on, come on, come on. Two gallons, oh, Lord. But see, it takes time to be filled up. I remember this when I was driving heavy equipment, and I had a big semi-truck, 50 gallons on each side.

And then I'd fill up the backhoe on the back. I was at the gas station quite a while. One gallon, two gallon. I mean, it was just, but see, the same thing. We see it's the same thing spiritually. It takes time to be filled up.

To be filled with God's presence, it takes time. It's almost like God's saying, how bad do you want it? When you seek me, you will find me. You can't just seek Him for five minutes. It takes time because here's what happens.

We come in bored. We come in with attitudes. Oh, there's the first song. There's the second. Oh, wow, the lyrics are really make. Oh, and then God starts to move as the flesh is starved. And now the music's over.

Now here comes Shane. I could've just kept worshiping because God's working on the heart. So it takes time. Acts 13, 52. And the disciples were continually, continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

It changes everything. And I wasn't joking about bowling because they're learning about that next door, about bowling kids. And we're not gonna, we have a zero tolerance policy here for that. Of course, we love the kids.

We talk with them. We work with them. And we wanna make sure everything's going on good with them. But we can't tolerate certain things here at the church. But if kids are filled with the Spirit, if families are filled with the Spirit, it does make a difference.

Because you wanna go hug them instead of hit them when you're filled with God's Spirit. So here's where I was trying to get to. Seven primary activities of the Holy Spirit. Okay, you wanna learn who the Holy Spirit is, we look to the Bible.

Seven primary activities of the Holy Spirit. As hard as I tried, I got through number one. So you know what's coming next week, right? So let's look at who is the Holy Spirit. Well, the first one is this.

The Holy Spirit is a person, not a power. So you have to remember that. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a power. Baptizing them. Jesus said, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

You see, we know this. A person's name in Scripture represents the character of that person, doesn't it? If somebody's name represents, when I say David, what do you think of? When I say Jezebel, Delilah, Moses, see, the name represents the character.

The Holy Spirit represents holiness and purity and righteousness. That's why those filled with the Spirit have to contend for those things in our culture and in the church. They're filled with holiness and righteousness and what the Bible calls righteous indignation.

For sin that goes against those things. The Holy Spirit gives us that passion and that desire. Also, when Peter confronted Ananias with the fact that he had told a lie to the Holy Spirit, he said, you have not lied to men, but to God.

You have not lied to men, but you've lied to God, to the Holy Spirit. Now, it is a mystery, and if I were to try to attempt to explain this, I would probably fall flat on my face because we worship one God.

God said, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. I am one God. But then he expresses himself as Elohim, which is a dual, not a dual, dual is Ella. El is singular, Ella is dual, and Elohim is the plural, the plurality of God.

So we see God as one. So theologians explain it like this. One essence, three persons. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We see them working differently. The Father in creation, the Son in redemption, the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

These three are one. So there is different teachings out there. One is called oneness Pentecostal or modalism. They believe that God is one mode. So that when Jesus was in the river, Jordan being baptized, and the Father spoke from heaven, the Holy Spirit descended upon him as a dove, and Jesus was in the river, they'd say that Jesus was a ventriloquist.

There's really got everybody right there in the river. But hermeneutically, you have a problem with that because the Father spoke from heaven. The Holy Spirit descended upon him. And Jesus said, when I leave, a comforter is going to come.

But we also don't want to walk the line of worshiping three different gods. Polytheistic, I believe that is, and different religions. So we're not worshiping, oh, here's the Holy Spirit over here, here's Jesus, and here's God the Father.

They are one, but revealed in three different and distinct persons. You might want to leave it at that. Right, because you start getting, well, is it like an egg? You got the shell, you got the yolk, you got the egg white.

Is it like water? You have the vapor, you have the ice, and you have the liquid. You know, but what can describe the Trinity? Nothing, really. So people attempt to, people try to. What we need to know is it's one God revealing himself in three different persons.

Here's the key about this. Because the Holy Spirit is a person, a person can be quenched and grieved, correct? Can a person be quenched or grieved? This happens all the time. A couple is newly married, okay, for you dating or newly married.

You're filled with passion. If you're not careful, you can grieve that spouse, not love that spouse anymore, and the person is grieved because excitement has turned into barrenness. Just like the Holy Spirit, there's a grieving there.

There's also a quenching that takes place, right? People say, I just don't love you anymore. Where did that come from? They're quenched, they're hurt. So the fire they once had is quenched. A person can experience that.

So the Holy Spirit can be quenched and grieved. This was just amazing, just thinking of this concept this week. Because things we do either fill us with the Holy Spirit or quench his fire. And if we keep quenching the fire, we're going to walk around with this Holy Spirit presence and power, just a heartbeat there.

Nothing more, nothing less, because we've quenched and grieved the Spirit. Now you think the Holy Spirit would just take over, but often that's not the case. He is allowing you to make certain choices that would either fill you with his presence and power or that you would quench and grieve him in sin.

But it's not just sin. There's a couple things I want to just throw out to you. One thing that definitely quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit, especially in America, what I think does probably one of the biggest damages, whether it's God healing through the Holy Spirit, whether it's the Holy Spirit moving in somebody's life, is materialism.

The more we want things and the less we want God, that will quench and grieve. When you say, God, I'm going to give up this, I'm not going to do this, I'm going to live below my means because I can seek you with all of my heart, that you begin to be filled with the Spirit.

And the more we seek other things, right, there's so many people this summer, what are they looking forward to? Now, take vacations, have breaks, please. But when it becomes an all-consuming passion, right?

I have to have all the jet skis and the boat and this and I've got to have the big house and I've got to work seven days a week so I can take off two weeks and just vacation and party. It's material, we're living for those things.

So that lifestyle will quench and grieve the Spirit of God. Materialism does it every time. It's really, you know what it's called in the Bible? It starts with an I. Idolatry. And that can come into all of our lives.

Can it? A person's working hard, working really hard. I remember in my case, I quit my corporate job and started working construction and wasn't making hardly anything. And then opened my own, started my own construction company and heavy equipment and the money was flowing in because the market was booming and it began to draw me away from time with God because now I'm too busy, right?

And I could tell, it was quenching and grieving. The Bible wasn't alive anymore. I didn't want to go to church as much, made excuses. So it can creep in in all of our lives. And then another hindrance is pride.

Being full of the Holy Spirit and full of pride is not gonna work. They're not gonna be in the same room. The Holy Spirit will say, well, I'm out of this room. You come get me when you need me, hot shot.

And we get prideful about things. We get arrogant about things. And anytime, like when I debated the atheists at the college or when I'm debating or talking to people, I have to get into a spot of humility before I go.

On Fox News, many of you watched a Fox News clip where I debated a pastor who agrees with same-sex attraction. And I had to go in there, ask my wife, fasting, praying that day. It's hard to fast in New York, by the way.

There's hot dog stands and everything. You had one, didn't you? You had one, right in front of me. Right in front of me. Right in front of me. That was, what was I at? Oh, so I had to, yeah, fasting and going, okay, Lord, I know what your word says.

Don't let me go in there and be haughty and arrogant and not seeking to listen but still being bold. So you have to go into these things because as soon as you get all, well, I've read the Bible. I know what it says.

I can, let me show him my natural debating abilities and you're just falling flat on your face because pride, humility, the Holy Spirit falls upon a broken, humble vessel. Yes, it's good to have knowledge but you better be trusting in God, not the knowledge.

Another thing that quenches and grieves is self-confidence. Trust in self. You know who you are, you self-confident people out there? I got this. I got this. Oh, if it gets tough, I'll go to God then.

I can fix this problem. I can fix this relationship. I can fix this issue of my work. I can go into my job and I can fix this. I can make a difference. Instead of spending time with God in prayer, being emptied of yourself to be filled with the Spirit.

So this self-confidence, who is confident in self? Just the word makes me sick. Right, just self-confident. Think about this church. We're gonna be self-confident that we're, God's just gonna keep building and adding and building.

Self, look at what we're doing. Oh, Lord, help us. Because God says, okay, I'm no longer welcome in that place because you've got this down. And many people are self-confident. They'll have their life laid out a certain way and they don't want to deviate from that.

Another way that you can quench and grieve the Spirit because again, we're talking about the Holy Spirit as a person. You can hold back on things that God is calling you to do. Hold back on things that God is calling you to do.

Anybody relate to that? God, I know you're wanting me to step out and do this, but I'm holding back. I know you're wanting me to do this or that and I'm just gonna, I don't feel qualified. Anybody say that?

Hello. That's what I said before starting the church. Are you kidding me? Where's the denominational backing? Where's six years of seminary? Where's speech lessons and how do you speak to people? Unqualified, God, I can't do this.

And then I turn to that funny scripture when they saw that they were untrained and unlearned men, but they knew they had been with Jesus. They spoke with power, they spoke with boldness, they spoke with authority because they were with Jesus and they were filled with His Spirit.

So any time we hold back because, you know, God, I can't do that because I'm not, I know you want me to do it, but I can't do that. And it's funny, churches often will look for board members with a big pedigree.

That's a real estate investor in our city. Let's get him on the board. That's the business owner. Let's get him on the board. Now, there's nothing wrong with good advice, but see self-confidence. And if God's telling you to do something and you're saying, no, I'm not qualified, Lord, I don't wanna step out and do that, do you think you're gonna be more filled with the Spirit or less filled with the Spirit?

Because the Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes upon a person who has deep faith and belief in what God is going to do. Now, here's the biggie. What quenches and grieves the Spirit probably more than anything?

Well, materialism is this, so we can nail two with one. Besetting sin, besetting sin, or sin that is continued, sin that is allowed. A person knows, I've gotta get this out of my life. I can't keep being angry and explosive.

I can't keep giving into this. I can't keep being addicted to this. I keep giving into this perversion. I keep, I keep, I keep, Lord, I want you. I want more of you. But you, we keep giving into a certain thing that God wants us to remove.

So if a person keeps doing that, are they going to be filled mightily with His Spirit? It was so bad that David wanted to die when he committed adultery and murder. He was just, he was not, he actually prayed, he actually prayed that the Holy Spirit, Lord, don't take your Spirit from me.

Would you restore? God, would you restore the joy of my salvation? God, my bones feel like, even my bones are hurting. The bones you have broken, Lord, that the bones you have broken, and God didn't break any bones, but there's such a deep pain and such a deep hurting, he said, the bones you have broken are going to rejoice.

Create in me a clean heart, Lord, renew a right spirit within me. I've fallen back so much, so somebody caught in sin is not gonna have the Spirit of God upon them, Samson. Isn't it interesting? Well, there's kids in here, I won't say too much, but he gave in to a certain area of his life, and people think it was immorality, sexual immorality, and it was, no doubt, but what actually took the power from him was his concentration, his consecration was compromised.

What I mean by that is God said, don't shave your hair, don't take this in, don't drink that, I want you to be holy and set apart from me, consecrate yourself. That reminds me of Joel, consecrate yourself, call the sacred assembly, call the holy gathering of my people.

So Samson began to walk away from what God has called him to do. He began to compromise, and they cut off his hair, I don't know how this is, maybe it resembles, it was a reflection on his Nazarite vow, it was a reflection on what God has called him to do.