Cana - Unhindered Power of the Holy Spirit

Unhindered: Week 4

Power of the Holy Spirit

Mission Team Recap Video!

UnhinderedSeries Slide

I am so proud of our youth and the youth of Community of Hope. Over the past 14 years, I have served three churches. Here, Community of Hope in Mansfield, and First Brownwood. This week, those three churches united in one mission, the House of Refuge. Brownwood supplied the mulch for the playground, Sean and Matt provided leadership, McKee Building Supplies provided the materials, Ms. Elsa provided the flowers, and the youth and adult volunteers provided the muscle to get the jobs done. It was so great to see those I once knew as children, now youth and adults involved in ministry to this community!

Here’s the thing though… it wasn’t about the work that was done… oh, that was important and it has made a huge impact on the ministry at the House of Refuge. But the biggest impact was the Holy Spirit working through these young people. I saw one of the youth loving and encouraging one of the ladies, making sure that she knew how important she was and is to the Body of Christ. I heard Anasia sing, and help lead worship… and it was amazing. I heard one of the college students from COH preaching and teaching. The Holy Spirit was moving in and through these young people!

And that is the focus of today’s message… the Unhindered Power of the Holy Spirit.

Sermon Slide

The Holy Spirit is the main “power source” of Christians – It is Holy Spirit that empowers us to live the unhindered life of Christ, but it is a power that we as the people called Methodist have neglected for far too long.

We have been looking at the fact that our Faith has been set free, it is unrestrained, it is unhindered. We have looked at the fact that that one word, Akolutos: unhindered was the final word Luke wrote in his Gospel story of the life of Jesus and the follow-up to it, the Acts of the Apostles – where the gospel was carried into the world! We looked at the Unhindered Kingdom: That we are a part of the Kingdom of God that has been loosed on the Earth. The Kingdom of God is the unimaginable love of Jesus poured out on you and me, A love that has unbound us and set us free, and A love that is unhindered.

Then last week we looked at the fact that we are to forgive as we have been forgiven. We are to forgive completely and perfectly. Our forgiveness is to be unhindered!

And, each of those lessons have led us to a message about the Perfect Love of God that is made real through the person of the Holy Spirit.

So, turn with me to Acts 1:8. Remember, Acts is Luke’s 2ndvolume. Volume 1 dealt with the birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Acts deals with the resurrection and Ascension of Jesus to the spread of the Gospel to the 4 corners of the World.

So, we pick up after the resurrection as Jesus is preparing to ascend from this earth and what does he say… Let’s pick up with verse 6...

Acts 1:6-8 NLT

So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”

He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

<Prayer>

Sermon Slide

Methodist’s Grand Depositum. That is what John Wesley called it anyway… it is the one thing that he felt God created the Methodist movement for. In fact, Wesley once wrote, “This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up.”

Wesley went on to say, “Where Christian perfection is not strongly and explicitly preached, there is seldom any remarkable blessing from God; and, consequently, little addition to the society, and little life in the members of it.” (Watson, Perfect Love, 18-20)

Kevin Watson writes about this in his book Perfect Love. Dr. Watson writes, “Entire Sanctification is the doctrine that defines Methodism’s audacious optimism that the grace of God saves us entirely, to the uttermost… Methodism exists in order to preach, teach, and proclaim the bold optimism that the grace of God is able to bring full salvation to everyone… When Methodists have lowered their expectations of what God can do in this life, spiritual and numeric decline have followed.” (Watson, 4-5)

And decline we have! As you look at the history of the Methodist Movement – Since the Main-Line denomination parted ways with the people of the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement, Methodism has stagnated and then been in decline. You may be surprised, but that started around 1900… about 125 years ago. But wait, you say… I remember when… We always think of the 1950’s – 1960’s as the golden age of the church. We remember new churches starting, building programs taking off, and all the good that came from that. But the truth is, the only reason we were showing growth was the fact that we were constantly merging with other groups. From 1926 – 1968, we saw the merger of the Methodist Protestant Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church North and South, and the Evangelical United Brethren to eventually form what we came to know as the United Methodist Church. That’s why it felt so good… but the decline had already begun years before. As Global Methodists, we are hoping to turn this trend around… but we must know where we’ve been and what went wrong.

The big question is, why? How could the fastest-growing denomination, reaching and baptizing more people in the United States and around the world than any other movement, begin to stagnate and then decline?

There are a lot of reasons, lack of evangelism, liberal theology, and more… but mainly because we forgot our first love. We stopped teaching, preaching, and proclaiming the doctrine of Entire Sanctification and the works of the Holy Spirit in our lives. You don’t think it’s true? Try finding songs in the old Hymnal about the Holy Spirit… then find songs we know that are about the work of Holy Spirit in the new hymnal. Ask anyone in the pews what it means to be Sanctified? We don’t know these things.

We think that receiving the Holy Spirit means that we have to speak in tongues… and “that’s for those Pentecostals, not us Methodists.”

The Holy Spirit working in us and through us is a lot more than just speaking in tongues.

Jesus felt that the person of the Holy Spirit was so important that he said,

John 16:7

But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you.

The Advocate is just one of the many names for the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture.

Some others of note are;

● Spirit of God (Genesis 1:2)

● Spirit of the Lord (Judges 3:10)

● Holy Spirit (Psalm 51:11)

● Spirit of Truth (John 14:17)

● Advocate or Helper (John 14:26)

● Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding (Isaiah 11:2)

● Eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14)

● Spirit of Life (Romans 8:2)

● Spirit of Adoption (Romans 8:15)

● Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9)

● Spirit of Grace (Hebrews 10:29)

● Spirit of Promise (Ephesians 1:13)

● Spirit of the Living God (2 Corinthians 3:3)

And this isn’t even an exhaustive list! Here’s a few more

● Spirit of Revelation (Ephesians 1:17)

● Spirit of Power, Love, and a Sound Mind (2 Timothy 1:7)

● Oil of Gladness (Hebrews 1:9)

● Spirit of Holiness (Romans 1:4)

● Spirit of Counsel and Might (Isaiah 11:2)

● Spirit of Knowledge and Fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2)

● Spirit of Glory (1 Peter 4:14)

As you go through the Old and New Testament, you will find the third Person of the Trinity over and over again.

In the time we have left today, we are going to consider 3 areas that the power, the strength of the Holy Spirit is alive today. These points are crucial to living the unhindered life as followers of God as made know through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

Strength to Share, Strength to Persevere, and Strength to Love.

We start with the Strength to share.

Strength to Share

When Jesus ascended into heaven He left the disciples with this command; Wait… and the Holy Spirit will come! In Acts 1:8, Jesus tells them to go back to the Upper Room and wait for the Lord… don’t do anything until the Holy Spirit, the gift, comes.

And then… when the Holy Spirit comes, you will receive POWER… and you will be my WITNESSES!

In Jerusalem – that’s your neighborhood, your town, where you live

And in Judea – that’s your country, your region, your people

And Samaria – this is where it gets interesting… Samaria was the people they didn’t like. Samaria’s the ones who aren’t like us… (Democrats… or Repubicans… Maybe it’s the Astros fans.... or even the Packers fans…

But through the power of the Holy Spirit – we are to love and be a witness to them… In other words to everyone, all the way to the ends of the earth.

We’ll get into that more next week, but His command was to evangelize and spread the gospel message all around the world.

Obviously, we can’t do this alone… We can’t overcome our prejudice… we can’t reach the ends of the earth… we can’t be Christ for all these people… at least not without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Flip over a couple of pages to Acts 4. Peter and John have been arrested for preaching the Resurrection of Jesus… which they witnessed! They were questioned, then they preached to the Sadducees and the Pharisees in front of the Chief Priest. All these ‘muckety mucks’ got together and decided they couldn’t really do anything to Peter and John… so we pick up in verse 18

Acts 4:18-20

So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.”

Now that’s bold. The same people they saw call for the execution of Jesus, are demanding them to do something… the power to stand up to that kind of authority doesn’t come from our own strength. It comes from the power of the Holy Spirit in them!

These “ordinary men” were able to do extraordinary things because of the Holy Spirit in them.

And the crazy part of this is that the same Spirit that enabled Peter and John is also enabling you and I.

We’ve been given power through the Spirit.

We have the strength to share with others and to take the gospel message to the very ends of the earth.

We have the power to stare down persecution, humiliation, and anything else the enemy may use to discourage us from telling others about Jesus.

It isn’t always easy, but that’s where the power of the Holy Spirit comes in… and that is where we get the strength to persevere.

Strength to Persevere

Back in 2003, I was knee-deep into my second semester in Seminary, I was serving a mid to large church as the Associate Pastor and Youth Minister, and we were raising our then 2 kids. Then I got the call that my dad was in the Hospital and it didn’t look good. Most of us have had those calls, I’ve had more than I care to admit.

I dropped everything and went to Longview where he was in ICU. What had been a visit to the hospital for a 1-day procedure had turned into respiratory arrest. The Orthopedic Surgeon prescribed Demerol for pain… My dad had COPD, and the Demerol caused him first to have major hallucinations then he went into Respiratory Arrest… and 13 days later, we were planning his funeral.

That was one of the most painful times of my life. But do you want to know how good our God is… how the Holy Spirit was working in me during that time?

The week before my dad went in the hospital, my “Life and Work of the Pastor” class went to a funeral home in Waco to visit with the staff and learn how to help people through that season of their life. I was learning what I needed for the next week.

I was in classes that not only gave me the flexibility to be with my dad, they also prayed for me… and worked with me.

In the middle of all that pain, God had me surrounded. God gave me the power to persevere.

We all suffer, we all experience pain, grief, hardship, adversity, trauma… we could share story after story in this room of what we have been through… and most of us will be able to talk about how the presence of God was with us during that time!

The truth is that there are seasons that we don’t have the capacity to work through on our own— We NEED help.

Thanks be for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we experience divine power…

y’all, the Holy Spirit is like our Adrenaline! It’s always there, but when we need it, it shows up in power!

Paul reminds us… “God’s grace is sufficient; His power is made perfect in our weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

And there is that word again… perfect. God is made perfect in us… we are to be perfect as the Father is perfect… we are to be going on to perfection. That’s not just a John Wesley thing, that’s a scriptural thing.

Through the Holy Spirit, God will give us the strength we need to share the gospel, to persevere, and lastly, to love.

Strength to Love

In the midst of all the hate in our world, the division and pain we see and experience because of feuds and fights... We need an advocate, a guide, a companion to lead the way. We need the unhindered power of the Holy Spirit, which God has graciously given to us already.

When Jesus tells the disciples in Matthew 5:44, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” He’s giving them an impossible command. In our human-ness it is incomprehensible how a person could “love” an enemy or pray for those persecuting them. But in Christ we are new creations. In Christ we have eternal hope that impacts our temporal life. In Christ we have divine power, strength, and ability to do the impossible things of life.

In Christ, we are going on to perfection. Or, maybe I should ask you, are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?

I bet most of you answered, “No”

That is a direct question from the teachings of John Wesley and the answer he expected to hear was, “Yes, with God’s help.”

We have the wrong idea about perfection. You and I think that perfect means we don’t, haven’t, and won’t make a mistake. We will have all the knowledge we need. We will have all the skills we need. We will not sin… we won’t make mistakes.

That’s not what perfect means.

Sermon Slide

I want to elaborate on two things that it means:

To Be Perfect means...

1) We are useful for the purpose we were created for… Screw Driver...

2) Becoming like Christ. Loving as he loved. Reacting as he reacted… like going to Samaria to share the good news.

Maybe the Beatles had it right… Love is all you need.

I want to close with this passage from John Wesley’s Plain Account of Christianity.

… (Perfect Love Prologue xxv-xxvi)

That is what it means to be going on to perfection… and that only happens when we allow the power of the Holy Spirit to be manifest in our lives.

How do you do that?

Ask for it.

Spend time studying God’s word – alone and with others…

Spend time in prayer…

Spend time in worship…

Meet with a small group to discuss how you are doing in your spiritual walk…

Ask God to Sanctify you… to make you perfect in love.

If you are able to do that, then you and together all of you, will change this community, this country, those like you and those unlike you, and the entire world…

And after all, isn’t that what we were called to do… isn’t that what we were created for?