SERMON NOTES
BEGAN - we would like to think that when Jesus left the earth, his ministry stopped. Not so.
CHOSEN - “you’re still chosen”
You can live life chasing or chosen. We don’t want to be clout chasers. Looking for approval in all the wrong places from all the wrong people.
Are you still focused on the wrong thing? Getting God to change other people rather than transforming you.
“It is not for you to know.”
The Holy Spirit will no longer visit, but inhabit. He doesn’t want a guest room, he wants all the access to my life. The power of His presence.
The presence of Jesus is powerful when you run out of stuff. What was empty without me, is now overflowing WITH me.
If you’re going through a storm right now, if He is on your boat, you won’t go down. When you put your little bit in the hands of a God who created everything.
The Kingdom was inaugurated with what they perceived to be His absence.
He never really leaves. However, he does change forms, and creates space where we need Him.
It’s difficult for us to believe that in the moments we feel Him or understand Him the least, He might be working the most. In the absence of answers, faith is born. In the absence of resource, creativity is born. When is the last time we thanked God for what He didn’t give us, because it showed us who we really are?
Ya ever have somebody that you thought you couldn’t live without, and then you did?
We like the CONCEPT of being used by God. We like the CONCEPT of a relationship with Him. But what about the moments when the kingdom becomes inconvenient?
There’s nothing more painful than in between. If it’s over, I can bury it. If it’s beginning, I can deal with it.
He did not leave them, He changed forms.
Maybe you weren’t ghosted, maybe you were gifted. He no longer wants to just be with you, he wants to be in you.
John 16:7, “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
I can’t go off of what feels good TO me, I have to believe that what God says is good FOR me.
Jerusalem was where they got the gift. Samaria was what they had to go through to get to the fulfillment of the mission. We all have “some area” where God is working through.
Instead of Jesus giving them something to DO, he gave them something to BE. I’m doing it through some area of your life that you never expected.
That place that you call lack, is the space where God’s spirit wants to live.
Read Acts 1 & 2.
Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Do you have questions about it?
If so, read chapters 10 & 19 as well.
What seems to be the difference between Peter before the Holy Spirit, and Peter after?
What do you think is the significance of Acts 2:36?