The church breaks out of the city

Welcome

Good morning my name’s Craig

Intro

When I was a child, and even today, when it comes to birthday and Christmas presents I have always had a strong idea of what I wanted. As a child I’d seen it in the argos catalogue, as an adult I have so many things I’d love to do that there’s an endless list of stuff that I would need to do them. Often the thing that’s standing between me getting that which I want is money. As a child I always desired enough money to get the stuff I wanted. As an adult, I’ve got money, but there’s a process of checking with my darling wife who is my partner and support, to see if it’s appropriate to spend it in that particular way. Suddenly, having the money to buy the stuff I want, isn’t necessarily the way for me to get the thing that I want. In fact what we discover is that it’s about relationship rather than money.

I wonder how many of us as human beings, who perhaps are completely loaded but have still discovered that there are things they are unable to buy, or that even it is completely wrong to think that some things can be bought. Happiness for example, is something that even the wealthiest people in the world have realised cannot be bought. And so it is with the Kingdom of God.

Preaching in our Spirit Filled Church series looking at the first 8 chapters of Acts.

God

Acts 8:1-3 - The disciples dispersed due to persecution

Acts 8:4-8 The gospel proclaimed, demons delivered, people healed

Acts 8:12 People believed and baptised (immersion) (What about you? have you been baptised yet, if not and you believe, baptism is the next step)

Acts 8:14-17 Apostles sent and people received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands and prayers of the apostles.

Not prescriptive but descriptive

A warning - the example of Simon (Read the passage yourself)

Simon was known for thinking much of himself

Simon proclaimed himself great

Magic is not rooted in God, but in the enemy

People followed because he made a lot of noise

He saw power outworked and was attracted to the power for the sake of the power, not for the sake of the gospel

His heart wasn’t right before God (tried to pay, didn’t understand, even though he had believed he was still trapped in iniquity (sin)

Our heart attitude towards God, our own sin, and our intention for God’s gifts, all matter as we seek to operate in the gifts of the Spirit.

We

Sin acts as a barrier to being filled with the Spirit. We need to be aware of it, humble enough to seek to deal with it (confess and repent, seek forgiveness).

Billy Graham says “What is it that blocks the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? It is sin. Before we can be filled with the Holy Spirit we mist deal honestly and completely with every known sin in our lives.”

In order to be filled with the Spirit, we need to understand that God has given us His Holy Spirit as the seal on our hearts of our salvation, we may not feel His presence, but the fact is that if you are saved, you have the Holy Spirit securing your salvation. It’s not a matter of feel but a matter of fact.

We need to understand that God commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be filled with HS as Ephesians 5:18 tells us (present imperative tense, it is ongoing, not temporarily)

We need to understand that our sin impacts us being filled with the Spirit

We need to submit to the will of God, the will of the Holy Spirit. Let Him rule in every area of our lives.

We need to have faith in God’s leading in our lives, in the fact of one’s salvation and Holy Spirit seal upon our lives, faith that God will deal with our sin when we bring it to Him, faith that God will lead us, faith enough to follow His leading.

Pray

That God will reveal areas of wrong thought and sin in our lives, that God will help is confess and repent of these things, that God will take to heart the truth that His Spirit never leaves us but exists as the seal upon our hearts, that God will give us faith to trust the truth of His Word and His desire for us to be continuously filled with the Spirit, and that as a Good Father, He wants that for us individually even today given as a gift, that He might be glorified in us and that His people might be equipped for Kingdom work.