Saul's Conversion

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

turn your Bibles to Acts chapter 9. We are going to be going all through Acts chapter 9 this morning. We've been in our series Acts past the edges, so we do a big book every year, and this year this book is Acts. We go through it in kind of different chunks. This chunk is going to be Acts 6 through Acts 12. And really the whole thing flows out of Acts chapter 1 verse 8, which says, you will be my witnesses. And it begins to kind of push out from there. It says, you'll be my witnesses. This is Jesus talking to the disciples. You'll be in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. And so we started out this whole thing in Acts where the Holy Spirit lit the flame, started the church in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, that was Acts 2, where people are starting to hear the gospel in their own language. And then as we've been going through our series,

we've gone into Judea and Samaria. So Stephen, one of the first deacons, was stoned. He was killed, and that scatters the church in Acts 6. The church is scattered. And we've seen that go into Judea and Samaria. Now, today, we begin to see the beginning of the gospel going to the end of the earth. We begin to see that, but whenever we do, whenever we see that happen, if it's going to go to the end of the earth, if it's going to go past Judea and Samaria, there are a couple of things that need to happen first. So there's actually a couple of different steps. This is kind of step one. What we see in Acts 9 is the beginning, is the preparation for the gospel going out, and really, the gospel pushing past Judea and Samaria, and the reason why we sing worship songs to Jesus this morning. It's the reason that we know of Jesus Christ, that we worship Jesus Christ, that we have a relationship with Jesus Christ,

and it is because it didn't stay in Judea and Samaria. It went to the ends of the earth. And so, this step today, it starts with a person. Okay, so we're going to meet this person. Start in Acts chapter 9, verses 1 and 2. It says, But Saul, we're going to be talking a little bit about Saul today, but Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found anyone belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Okay, so Saul, we meet him, he is a valid threat. Okay, he's a legitimate threat. If you and I caught wind of a valid threat of a government official going to churches to see if they worship Jesus really, and then haul them off to jail if they do, that would make us a little nervous. Right? We'd definitely be checking. If you're new with us this morning, I'd be like saying,

Hey, so have you ever worked in government before? Like, I would be, I would be a little skittish, right? And I would be, it's a threat, right? And if we, if we, our natural response to that would have been fear. Okay. Verses 3 and 4. It says, Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Okay, so Jesus then is, you know, this is kind of the Holy Spirit, meeting Paul, blinding Paul to change, Saul, excuse me, he's not Paul yet, he's Saul right here, blinding Saul to change his plans. And this is a big, dramatic stop sign for Saul. Okay, it's probably what he needed from everything that we, that we see in verses 1 and 2, and everything that we know, because he was actually at the stoning of Stephen back in Acts 6. He was, he was present, he was collecting coats for people because, you know,

they couldn't throw the stones with that big coat on. So he's like, here, let me take your coat so that you can have better aim to kill Stephen. Okay, so this is Saul, this is this guy. He is, he is breathing threats and murder. Okay, the Bible is not being dramatic on purpose. It's not being melodramatic. It's not overstating its case. He's actually killing people. He's actually bringing people to jail. He's actually getting people out of their homes. He's actually making people lose their jobs, lose their families. And so Jesus wants to, wants to change Saul's plans in a big, dramatic way, gives him a stop sign. This is, this is Saul's response here in verses 5 and 6. And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city and you'll be told what you are to do. Okay, I just want to point this out. And for some of you, you might have heard this story. You might have been reading the

story recently. It's a, it's a common story. We, we talk about the Damascus road, right? We talk about all of this. What's happening right here is a flick of the wrist for the Holy Spirit. This is, this is nothing for the Holy, the Holy Spirit is not, is not scrambling because he's worried about what Saul's going to do in Damascus. He's not, he's not changing his plans. He's not like, oh, I didn't really think about Saul being this big of a threat. Maybe I should really do something now. No, no, no, no, no. No, this is a very, this is very, just a flick of the wrist. He just, he just, he could have stopped him anywhere. He could have stopped him at any time. The Holy Spirit's not worried about what Saul is going to do. The Holy Spirit's doing this at the exact right time. The Holy Spirit also was not even worried about the Christians that, that Saul has already put in jail. Even that, even those things are according to the plan.

The Holy Spirit's not scrambling trying to make the best of a bad situation. This is all going according to the plan and the timing of the Holy Spirit. It is not a hard thing for the Holy Spirit to blind a man on the road and to change his mind and to stop him. Okay? This is, it's not like, you know, the Holy Spirit's not like on the weight bench and like, oh man, I've never done 500 before. Like it's not, he's not, this isn't like some big topping feat for him. This is easy. This is light work. Let's look at verses eight and nine.

Saul rose from the ground and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was with outside and neither ate nor drank. So the Holy Spirit here is, is even making provision for Saul's healing. He's making a few things happen. Okay. Holy Spirit's in control. Look at verses 10 through 12, Acts nine verses 10 through 12. It says, now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to Ananias in a vision, Ananias. Ananias said, here I am Lord. And Lord said to him, rise and go to the street called straight. And at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying. And he has seen a vision, in a vision, a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. So, so I want you to just, I want you to see this and I want

you to remember last week, just a little bit, last week we looked at Philip, Philip the evangelist at the end of chapter eight and Philip is, is going and the Holy Spirit tells him, hey, go south to Gaza. Hey, go buy this chariot. Hey, talk to this guy who's, who's reading the book of Isaiah. Okay. The same thing is happening here with Paul or Saul and Ananias. Okay. Same thing that's happening. The Holy Spirit is directly intervening and directly setting things up. It's just way less comfortable for Saul than it is Philip. Okay. Way less comfortable for Ananias even than for Philip. Okay. And this is what we, what we need to see. We need to grasp this in the first couple of verses that the Holy Spirit, and I really want to drive this home, the Holy Spirit always, always accomplishes his purposes. The Holy Spirit always accomplishes his purposes. Always. And this, this is just another episode like with Philip. Now we see it with Saul and Ananias.

The Holy Spirit is, is doing things. The Holy Spirit's at work right now without our permission. First Thessalonians 5, 24 it says, he who called you is faithful. Surely, surely he will do it. It's not he who called you is faithful. Surely you're going to have enough energy or surely you're going to think of a way through it. No, no, it's surely he is going to do it. Psalm 138 8, 8 the Lord will fulfill his purposes. Philippians 1, 6 he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Ephesians 1, 4 he's, you were chosen if you were in Christ, you were chosen long ago before the foundations of the world to be blameless before him. Jude 1, 24 the purpose of the Lord is to joyfully present you blameless before him. We see the same thing in 1 Corinthians 1, 8, and 9 that he will sustain you to the end, that you're going to be guiltless. How? Why? Because of his faithfulness, not because of yours, because the Lord is going to

accomplish the purposes that the Lord has, regardless of how you feel about it, regardless of it's a Monday or a Friday for you. Ephesians 5, 27 the purpose, the Lord's purpose is to present us to himself in splendor. Why? Because he loves us more than the most committed marriage, the most committed thing, the most faithful thing that we could possibly imagine. The Lord God in heaven loves us more and his purpose in you, if you are in him, is to present you blameless before him. The Lord wants to make you like himself. The Holy Spirit is going to be doing that. You might say to me, you might say in response to all that, you say, well I don't feel that, that's fine, it doesn't matter how you feel, right? It doesn't matter how you feel, it doesn't matter if you have a bad day, the Holy Spirit is going to accomplish the Holy Spirit's purposes. And I don't even understand how. I don't know how that happens, but I do know it's real.

I do see it in Acts 9. I do see it in Acts 8. I do see it in the lives of many people that I talk to. I see it in my own life. And what these verses do, what this foundational truth does for us, it does two very important things. First, it is a great comfort to us. It should be, at least, a great comfort to us that we can have the hope truly that the Holy Spirit has not forgotten us, that the Holy Spirit is always going to accomplish its purposes. And in our battle against pain, against depression, against despair, against injustice, we can hang all of it on the hook of the Holy Spirit. We can say, okay, okay, God, I don't understand this, but I trust you. I don't see the end. I don't see how this death is going to bring life. I don't see how this job loss is going to bring glory to you. I don't see how this deep, deep frustration in my marriage is going to somehow give you glory. But I can trust you. I can hang it on the hook of the Holy

Spirit that the Holy Spirit is going to accomplish what the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish. There's great joy, great comfort in that. Here's the second thing it does. The second thing it does is that it spurs us on when we are distracted or we are unwilling. I don't know if you've ever seen a spur. I know we're in Texas, but some of you haven't, I'm pretty sure. A spur is a little, it's a wheel of spikes. It goes in the end of a cowboy's heel, and it goes into a really tender part of the horse, okay? Like, you don't do it like in the horse's shoulder or something, because the horse isn't sensitive right there. You do it about right here, kind of like where some of you were ticklish, okay? So you do it right there, and the purpose of a spur is that it is painful, but it is not deadly, okay? It'd be really hard to kill a horse with spurs. And the spurs,

what these verses do is they spur us. They get us going. They help us understand when we are indifferent, when we are distracted. So it's a comfort on one end, man, when we are despairing, when we are in pain, when we are in frustration, it is a comfort. When we are indifferent, when we are lazy, when we don't see the point, it is a spur. What we see in the rest of the story is the spur, okay? We see it three times. I want to point it out to you. The first one we see is with Ananias. Look at verses 13 and 14. This is Ananias' answer to going to bring healing to Saul. It says, Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name. Ananias has some valid concerns, okay? Ananias truly has displayed, up to this point,

has displayed a very high level of faith, okay? But to put it mildly, this situation does not seem like the wisest course of action. You want me to go to a known murdering government official who has the power to arrest me and end my life. You want me to go to him voluntarily. You want me to kind of raise my hand that I'm a Christian to this guy. Okay, doesn't seem wise, right? Doesn't seem wise. And so he does. He does. Saul receives his scythe through. Ananias praying for him, and then he is baptized, all right? What does the Lord say in response to Ananias' response, right? Look at verses 15 and 16. The Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and the kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. If you look at verse 15 carefully, you're going to see this is to the end of the earth. He's going to bring the gospel

past Judea and Samaria. He's going to bring it to the Gentiles, the people who aren't Jews, the people who aren't living in Judea and Samaria. And so the Holy Spirit's response to Ananias' valid concerns, the Holy Spirit's response is displaying Saul's mission. It says, Ananias, look, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Bigger plans are at foot. Bigger plans are happening. Okay? And so, Saul received sight, baptized, okay? Everything is going cool. We see it again. We see it again in verse 21, okay? Verse 21, Paul, who has regained his strength, at this point, Saul, gosh, I'm going to keep saying Paul, sorry. Saul, who has regained his strength, he begins to preach in Damascus at a synagogue, and here's what it says in 921. It says, And all who heard him were amazed and said, Is this not the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose to bring

them bound before the chief priests? The crowds now, like Ananias, have a valid concern. Isn't this guy just tricking us? Isn't he just saying like, yeah, believe in Jesus and anybody who raises their hand and says, okay, you're going to jail. Come with me. Let's go to jail. They can make, the crowds could make a biblical case to stay away from Paul, from Saul. What does the Holy Spirit do? How does the Holy Spirit answer? Look at verse, the next verse, 922. It says, But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. So Jesus powerfully blesses Saul's ministry. That's the answer. The answer isn't somehow to make some defense. Well, oh no, this thing happened over here. Well, I mean, he met him on the road. No, it's just the Holy Spirit just quells all that by blessing Saul's ministry. And so here's what we're seeing. We're seeing that the Holy Spirit,

the Holy Spirit often uses unwise, unwise circumstances to make a point. Okay. We have an example. We have several examples, I'm sure, in this body. We have one very prescient example, the haze. You guys are quitting perfectly good jobs, and you are going to raise support in a different state. That seems total. I'm sure that you have had people come to you and just say, hey, are you sure that you should be doing this? Are you sure this is the wisest course of action? I'm sure you have. And I'm sure it's very well-meaning people that have said that, right? I'm sure of it. It's nobody, I'm sure, being rude to you or anything like that. But the Holy Spirit often will often use what we would consider to be unwise situations to make a point. And let me just say one more thing. That's not a reason to ignore wisdom. I'm not throwing wisdom out of the window or anything like that. Wisdom is good,

but what it does, what it does, it cuts the difference between actual wisdom and playing it safe. It cuts the difference, a lot of times, with the Holy Spirit calling us to do, it cuts the difference between actual wisdom and playing it safe. What do I mean? Look at a couple of places in Scripture, 1 Corinthians 1, 21. It says, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? So in Scripture, what you see, and this is not just here, but I'll tell you what, I'll read Isaiah 29, 14 also. It says, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden. In Scripture, what you see is, you see there is a wisdom of the world,

right? And then there's actual wisdom. There's things that seem right to us. A course of action maybe that seems right to us, but then there's what the Holy Spirit is calling us to do. And sometimes those look different. Isaiah 55, 8 explains it this way. It says that the Lord's ways are higher than our own, that we have a way that we think things should go, things should be, things should run a course that they should, and the older we get, the more used to that we are, right? We've seen a few things. We know how this thing goes. We know the beginning, the middle, and the end of this parade. I'm no longer interested, right? Like, okay, I'm not, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go to that parade. I know how it ends. But sometimes the Holy Spirit calls you to go into a situation that you think is going to turn out of one way, and the Holy Spirit has different plans for that. Like, whenever he's

telling Ananias to go talk to a murdering government official and tell him he's a Christian, Ananias thinks, okay, that's going to go this way. I'm going to die. I'll die for you, Lord, but you realize, I mean, this just kind of seems wasteful. Crowds, same story. James 3:15 actually says that there is a wisdom, although it seems right, is demonic. There's a demonic wisdom, okay? I know we like to think of wisdom as a good thing generally, and kind of, we just kind of cover that. It calls it earthly, unspiritual, and demonic, right? In other words, there's a way that you can live life that seems right, kind of according to the wisdom of the world, but it's actually at odds with the Holy Spirit. So, could we talk about the Holy Spirit always accomplishing its purposes, and it does give us comfort in our pain, frustration, and despair? We also must see

that the Holy Spirit's purposes often run counter to our own. The Holy Spirit's purposes often run counter to our own, and it doesn't mean that we are just, you know, like, that we've got our, you know, our heels dug in, and we're rebelling against the Lord. It just means that we can't see the end, man. We don't know what's out there. We got to make plans with what we got, and we don't see it all. We don't see it all. We can't, and so sometimes with our limited vision,

maybe we see a few weeks out, and we start making plans, and we think things should go a certain way. We've got it all kind of lined out. We've got to cut and dry, but in the process of making that, in the process of going down that road, we maybe, often, we will run the risk of being at cross purposes with the Holy Spirit, okay? We're going to run that risk, and oftentimes, very often, in America and the South, we err on the side of playing it safe when the Holy Spirit is calling us to risk. We play it safe when the Holy Spirit's calling us to risk, and let me also say, this does not make risk more spiritual than playing it safe, okay? It's not like, just be as risky as possible and let the Lord bless you all the way through. That's not what I'm saying either. What I'm just trying to say is that this puts it on par with wisdom, right? That sometimes

wisdom is being, or putting yourself at risk. Sometimes wisdom is not, right? But just to say that wisdom and risk are opposites or something like that, that's not really biblical. You're coming up with a different version of wisdom, does that make sense? You're kind of drinking from the fountain of worldly wisdom when really the fountain that we should be drinking from is Holy Spirit wisdom, and that's harder because it doesn't follow our rules, okay? So that's hard to do. This is what we see. We see Ananias drinking from that worldly fountain and saying, wait, I don't want to die, and the Holy Spirit's saying, no, no, no, I got purposes for you. They just don't look like what you think they look like, okay? We've got to say it one more time. I said it happened three times. Here we go. Saul finds out that he's in danger, so from Damascus he goes to Jerusalem, and then we see it again. Look at Acts 9:26.

It says, when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. The Jerusalem disciples have a valid concern over Saul's past, right? Is this all a ruse to get into the heart of the matter, to get into the Jerusalem church where it all started? Is Saul trying to dismantle us from the inside out, right? And let me just say, these are valid concerns. They're not making things up. They're not trying to be rude to him. They're looking at his past and going, that does not wash. That does not make sense. I am not interested in this. It's better if we keep this guy at arm's length, and maybe they're smiling to him, and then behind his back they're like, I don't know. But I do know that Barnabas comes in. Next verse, look, verse 27. It says, but Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the

road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and how with Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So Barnabas vouches for him successfully. Okay, I just want to review this, and I want to go back a little bit further. I want you to just think of this. We don't need to go back and look at more verses, but just consider what we've read. The first thing, we have Paul, who is a threat. Okay. There's something happening that is working against the Holy Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit do? Blinds Saul. Saul's the threat. Holy Spirit blinds him. Second, Ananias. He's resistant. He's unwilling, and the Holy Spirit lays out a calling as a response. The Holy Spirit lays out Saul's calling. He's saying, look, I don't care about your unwillingness. I don't care about your resistance on this. There's a bigger plan at place. Third, with the crowds. They're unwilling. They're nervous.

They don't want to do what the Holy Spirit's asking them to do. What does the Holy Spirit respond? It just blesses Saul's ministry. And lastly, with the disciples. Their unwillingness. They're kind of digging their heels in. The Holy Spirit uses Barnabas as a response. There are times when you and I, when the Holy Spirit takes our unwillingness, takes it on, and will open our eyes anyway. The Holy Spirit is patient with us. The Holy Spirit's gentle with us. And we are, let's just say, we're talking to a family member that doesn't know the Lord. And you feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to just testify, to just say, okay, this has been happening in my life. Here's just a little bite-sized testimony. We talked about that last week. If you're interested, you can go back and listen to that through our website or on Spotify.

But you got a bite-sized testimony happening. You're having that conversation with a family member. And the Holy Spirit, and you're resistant to that, right? You're like, man, I don't know what to say. I don't know if I should say this. It doesn't seem wise. I don't want to derail the conversation. I don't want to alienate this person. I don't want to look like I'm condemning them. I mean, we come up with every which way to resist what the Holy Spirit's asking us to do. Whether it's the fact that we're unqualified, or the fact that we messed up that morning big time, or that previous night, or we didn't have our quiet time, or we don't know the answers, or we don't know what... I mean, the list is long. Our ability to create lists of reasons to be unwilling is long. And there are many times when the Holy Spirit in that moment takes our unwillingness

and is patient and gentle and kind and soft and says to us, hey, I hear you. Let's keep going. Yeah, let's move on. But I want to be very careful this morning, and I want to tell you in all love, do not count on that. Do not let that be your excuse for ignoring the Holy Spirit. I have five children, and I'm not going to name any one of them in particular, but there are many times, especially when they're little, many times when we would ask them to do something

and they wouldn't do it. I mean, that's a daily occurrence for a little kid, like five, six, whatever, really, really little kid. And they're just kind of unwilling, or maybe they get distracted, or maybe they're something, but they have resisted what you've told them to do, maybe clean their room. They've not cleaned their room. And as a parent, you are going to be gentle and kind with them to clean their room. You're going to say, hey, hey, let's go clean your room. Look, I'll even help you. I'll help you do that. Let's start here. Maybe you need a plan. I mean, you are working with them. But let me ask you as a parent, you just think about it. What's the point of you doing that? The point of you doing that is so that they will learn to do it when you ask them, that they will learn to do it for themselves, so that by the time they are adults, they can clean their own room.

Okay, that's kind of the hope. Some of you are still worried about your teenagers because they're okay. I don't even need to say it. Okay. But you know this as well as I do as a parent every once in a while, right? Maybe the last 40 times you've told them to clean their room, you've been real sweet and gentle. But then there's the 41st time you're asking to clean their room and you start talking through their teeth, you start saying, you, you got to clean your room. You let them know that you are unhappy. Okay. You need to drive the point home. You need to let them know that not, not, not threat of force necessarily, but to let them know that, that look, this thing that I've asked you to do is important to do. And if you thought the previous 40 times of me being soft with you means that I don't really want you to do it, then you're confused. Right? Does that make sense? So when the 41st time comes

and they're like shocked, you can tell the previous 40 times were something that they maybe just didn't understand. Maybe they didn't pack it in just right. When the Lord God in heaven is soft with you, is gentle with you, walks you through those things. I want you to hear this, hear me on this. The Lord is gentle and gracious and faithful and loving and kind, but there are, there's times when he will put a hand to your behind. There are times whenever he will help you,

obviously not physically, there are times whenever he will help you see that you have been unwilling, unrepentant, unmotivated, and that you need some spurring. And I don't say this like I'm somehow above it. I get spurred all the time. Okay? I get spurred through conversations with people, reading the word in prayer. I mean, I'm, I'm in this season right now in particular where I'm like looking back on a lot and I've just realized I have a ton to apologize for. And so I'm on that. I'm on that trailer, you know, just figuring out like what, what it looks like to repent and walk different. Listen, I'm in that season and maybe some of you are too. You're in that season because the Lord has made it clear to you that the way that you're living your life is unacceptable.

That it's not what he's called you to do and that is difficult. And to put it, just to put a fine point on it. And I really, I say this because not necessarily of the confusion in the room, necessarily, but because of what is common to hear today in churches that do not preach the gospel. Okay? I don't talk about this very often, but I will this morning. I need to say it this way.

The Holy Spirit is not begging you just to give a little bit so that he can show you what he did. It's the Holy Spirit's not like, oh man, if you just gave me like a table scrap, then, then I would be so much more effective. The Holy Spirit is already working just fine without you or me. The Holy Spirit has been doing things for millennia before we ever got here and will continue on for as long as the Holy Spirit wants to, in spite of our distraction, our inattention, our unwillingness, right? In spite of all that. And what the Holy Spirit presents to us is, you can join him or not. You can join him or not. The decision is yours, but do not be mistaken if you are in Christ when you are unwilling to follow what the Holy Spirit's doing. That is sin. It's not preference, right? It's not, it's not, oh, I just don't feel like it, but the Lord will understand.

Like, no, there's no place for that in Christianity. There's no place for that in following Jesus. And look, let me tell you, if you are beaten down this morning, please don't let me, you know, swing the hammer on top of your head. Okay. That's not what I'm trying to do. If you are beaten down this morning, all that is a comfort to you because the Holy Spirit hadn't given up on you. If you are not beaten down this morning, but you are, you are living the Christian life and you are, you are just picking and choosing like a buffet of what you're going to obey or not obey, stop. It will not go well for you. Almost like as if I would warn a child who just thought they had the fifth and tenth and a hundredth chance to clean the room without suffering any consequences for it. You would just, you would plead with that child. You'd say, listen, it's not going to go well for you. Not just for cleaning your room, but even being an adult.

That's not going to go well for you. You're going to get fired from jobs. You're going to have people that are deeply, deeply frustrated with you, won't trust you, your whole adult life. That's going to follow you. That's why we train children that way. Children, you can see it now. I hope, you know, it's the understanding. We're trying to train you to love people well. We're trying to train you not just to be, you know, you know, good citizens, but, but to really live a life where people can depend on you and you can love them instead of you having just to depend on everybody else just to make sure that you're not dying that day. Okay. The Holy Spirit is calling you to do things, not just because it's going to be hard spiritually and you're going to feel good about it later or anything. No, the Holy Spirit is training you, growing you so that you will contribute to the kingdom of God. And you might think, well, I'm too,

I'm too ineffective as a Christian. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm too whatever. Look, that's great. That's really cute that you think you have reasons. The Holy Spirit can't use you, but the Holy Spirit's disinterested in those things. The Holy Spirit's going to use you. The Holy Spirit's going to call you and you have a choice to obey that or not. And I say this with just all my heart. Look, I don't lose sleep as your pastor. I don't lose sleep on whether you obey or not because I hang that all on the hook of the Holy Spirit accomplishing his purposes. I don't, I don't feel the need. My reputation is not connected to the size of our church. My reputation is not connected to how holy you are or not or anything like that. I am fulfilling a call from the Lord Jesus Christ and I, and I will, I will be here, right? I will be obedient. I will do what the Lord's calling me to do and I hang all of it on the hook of,

of the Holy Spirit. Like, yes, Lord, do whatever you want. You're going to accomplish your purposes anyway. I'm just going to be obedient. I'm going to walk in that. I say this to you as just a fellow Christian. I say to you, don't live your life indifferent or resistant to the Holy Spirit. It is terrible. It will kill you bit by bit. It will destroy your relationships. It will kill your witness. You will be miserable. You will wonder why you're following Jesus at all because it's so bad. Don't do it. Don't do it. Let me put it positively. Let all of this, let all of this motivate you to join the Holy Spirit in the work. Let all this motivate you to do what the Holy Spirit is calling you to do. Be ready. And we talked about this last week. You and I were made, we were created to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. We were made to do this. We were called into this. So my encouragement to you may just pick up that call and cooperate. I want you

to, I want you to see it. I want you to respond to this. I want you to do this again. Look, I'm not going to turn around and ask you to like, okay, hey, we need more nursery volunteers. We need more, sign up for VBS. Yes, do all that. But hear me, I want you to cooperate with the Holy Spirit more than anything. Right? Whether that fits my immediate three-week plan or not. That's what I want for you. That's what I hope you want for me. That's what I hope you want for this church is that we're all cooperating with the Holy Spirit. However that looks, right? However that looks. Even if our plans kind of get derailed or move a lot, that's fine.

And so this morning, I just want to encourage you. I'm going to just, I can't really say it a different way. I'm struggling even to say it a different way. We have a time of response at the end so that you can respond. And a lot of times responding, you need help. You might not know the next step. You might not understand that it's fine. You might not say, I don't even know what to do. That's fine. I'm going to be back there. During this last song, I'm going to be back there. At the couch and those two chairs and those two lands back there. I'm going to be there and I want to talk to you. I want to help you take that step, whatever that is. Some of you were just like, hey, I need to be baptized. Great. Let's talk. Hey, I want to join the church. Great. Let's talk. Hey, I need prayer. I have no idea kind of what is supposed to be next. Fine. Let's talk. Let's do that. Here's my promise to

you. I'm not going to parade you in front of people. I'm not going to like bring you up at the front. You'd be like, hey, Susie here is, you know, wants to repent of gambling. You know, like we're not doing that. Okay. That's not, we're not, I'm not trying to do that. I want you to take that next step of the Holy Spirit and I'm trying, as a church, we want to put a few barriers between, between you and that is possible. Okay. I want to give you every chance. So I'm going to pray. We're going to sing a little bit. I'm going to be there during that song and after the service. And so if you want, man, just come on and help, get help. Respond to what the Spirit's doing. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this morning. I pray that you would help us be obedient, that you would help us to see what you were calling us to do, that you were, that you would help us to, to repent if we have been resistant to you. Lord, we love you and we

thank you. That's your name that we pray. Amen. Would you please stand as we sing.