Desire Earnestly...
Desire Earnestly... • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewIn our earnest desire for spiritual gifts, we must recognize our purpose that we may rightly see the purpose of the Spiritual Gifts.
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Desire Earnestly...
Desire Earnestly...
1 Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.
Give brief description of the cohort and how it energized the felt need for the Holy Spirit’s power in action.
The AG is a Pentecostal Fellowship. It is my humble opinion that we should start acting like Pentecostal believers again.
I don’t mean thrills and chills and shouting. All that is good and I shout as much as you, but there’s more to the Holy Spirit than goosebumps.
The Holy Spirit is not a hippie energy that requires crystals and resonance… The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God who lives in us upon our being born again into the Kingdom.
When we make the decision to follow Him, to serve Jesus, to abandon our lives for His, we are born into a new family, a new Kingdom, as a new creation…
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
When you make the decision to follow Jesus, when you are baptized with Him into His death and raised again with Him through the cleansing of the water and the blood, you have become a new creation…
This is more than acting different… We put a lot of emphasis on how we act, but it’s more than just outward acting…
22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’
23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
There are many who do the right thing with their hands, but practice lawlessness in their hearts.
Before we dive any further into this journey of the empowerment afforded to us by the Spirit, we must also recognize that the gifts of the Spirit are not a sign of God’s approval on your lifestyle
The Gifts of the Spirit are not a proof of your Christian maturity.
Many will say to me on that day, LORD, LORD, did we not prophesy.... did we not cast out demons… .did we not preform miracles?
These who will say these things have experience in the supernatural, they have worked in the anointing of the Holy Ghost, they have seen these things come to pass by their own hands, YET Jesus says to them…
I never knew you.....
It’s more than seeking the gifts. We don’t seek after the gifts. We can earnestly desire the gifts, and Paul says we should, especially that we prophesy…
But the gifts should be a byproduct of seeking after Him.. Doing His will… Chasing after His heart…
Paul continues in 2 Cor. 5:18
18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,
All these things… What things? The things that v. 17 mentioned.... Old things have passed away, behold new things have come and these things are from God!
The things you had before were from flesh and from death, but new things have come and they are from God!
These new things are gifts and fruits, both borne from the Spirit of God now dwelling inside your heart…
If you’ve accepted the call of Jesus to lay down your life and follow Him, this is your inheritance that you have life eternal and it starts right now!
Once you get saved, it is not God’s will for your life that you just sit back and wait for heaven…
Behold new things have come! They have come to you… They don’t just await you where you’re going, they have come to you now and they are from God!
All these new things are from God…
Continue v. 18.. “Who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation...”
The ministry of reconciliation… Gave us the ministry of reconciliation… Who?
Gave us.... Who has he been talking about all this time? THE BELIEVER! He gave every believer a ministry…
You have a ministry. You have work to do. When you were reconciled to Him, He gave you life and purpose.
You now have a mission! This is now your job… You thought you were coming to receive, but you’re here to train, to be equipped, for the working of the ministry....
You have this ministry.. You have this as your purpose… Whether your job is a doctor or a baker, a custodian or a roughneck, your mission transcends your career.
Your mission is that of reconciliation… What is reconciliation? Paul continues in v. 19:
19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Namely… Namely… Specifically… that God reconciled you to Himself, not counting your wrongs against you, and now He has committed to YOU the WORD… THE WORD… THE WORD…
He has committed to you the word of reconciliation… the message of the cross… the hope of the Gospel… the good news of Jesus Christ…
He has committed to you the word of reconciliation… you are His witness…
You are His messenger… You carry the responsibility of being His ambassador to the world…
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
As believers, we appeal to the world… We beg you… on behalf of Christ… as though God were making an appeal through us....
As though God were reaching out through us… Our representation of His message in the world is more than just sharing a story, it is also being that which He has called us to be…
It is not just doing, it is BEING that new creation…
We are ambassadors to the world…
When a foreign ambassador brings a message to another country, they carry with them certain authority, and they represent all of the kingdom and the King from which they are sent..
We as ambassadors represent a Kingdom that is not of this world… We carry authority that is not our own… We speak with power that is backed up by a King....
And not just any King… He’s the King of all Kings… He’s the highest authority of any land…
He’s insurmountable… He’s unchallenged… He is absolute… It’s no wonder demons tremble at His name… they have a unique perspective on the breadth of His awesome power…
So when we come in His name, bearing His authority, spreading the message of reconciliation, we are embodying His purpose for our lives.
I am sick and tired of this watered down version of Christianity that has no power, requires no commitment, and is satisfied with church as usual.
When you decided to give your life to Jesus, this wasn’t an insurance card to keep you out of Hell.
Repentance is only a first step… It is not true repentance if you stop at the turnaround… It’s simply a pause…
Repentance is only repentance if you turn around and start chasing Him with everything you’ve got. Nothing less will be accepted, nothing less will make it into heaven…
This is not a feel good Gospel, it is a radical call to arms.. You’re signing up for a war on Hell, taking back territory with every weapon in our arsenal not weapons of flesh, but weapons that are made mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds…
Strongholds are not offensive they are defensive… Which tells me if we are waiting on the fight to come to us, we have lost all focus on what we should be doing!
We are ambassadors to His Kingdom! We have the ministry of reconciliation!
Our earnest desire of the spiritual gifts, is not rooted in showmanship or recognition…
Jesus said those who pray so people would notice have received their reward…
That means if you do it to be noticed, all you get from that is that men notice you…
This is not being noticed, this is taking back territory… this is reclaiming what the enemy has stolen!
Our earnest desire for spiritual gifts must be a byproduct of our desire to see the lost saved… to see the ministry of reconciliation go forth....
It is our mission to see the world come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ…
He is the hope of our salvation… He is the promise of the Father…
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
We beg you on behalf of Christ… be reconciled to God…
As we dive into this emphasis on the Gifts of the Spirit, let us start with renewing our commitment to the call…
Let us renew our driving force for life…
Just a few verses earlier Pauls says this…
9 Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
14 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;
Our ambition is to please Him and it is His love that controls us…
I know that I am convicted of my own apathy at times. We as humans will go through seasons of passivity, but now is the time to renew our commitment to our purpose…
Now is the time to renew our commitment to being ambassadors of Christ....