And the Place Was Shaken! (Imelda Hatchett-Mitchell, 11/18/23)

I'm so thankful once again to be here with you

at the Ringgold Seventh-day Adventist Church

to experience once again the fellowship

and the spirit and your wonderful warm smiles.

I love this church.

And I'm very thankful for Elder Sarah Young

and her having invited me back and for your new pastor,

Pastor Hudson, who has allowed me to stand here

in this pulpit.

Thank you so much, Ronald, for that beautiful,

wasn't that beautiful?

So meditative and a reflection.

Shall we gather at the river?

Ended with that one.

Because we know that soon and very soon,

we are going to see the King.

I thank God once again for my chauffeur this morning,

my husband of 40 years.

We just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary

on October 22.

He used to get teased by his friends,

saying that was the great disappointment.

And he had to remind them, he said,

it depends on how you look at that.

Because that was the day Jesus went into the most holy place

as well.

So let the church say, amen.

Amen.

So I'm thankful to have him here with me.

You all know he is retired.

He retired from the Pacific Union Conference

about seven years ago.

And so now he comes with me when I speak.

And he does still speak occasionally as well.

Let us bow our heads for prayer as we consider the subject

and the place was shaken.

And the place was shaken.

Let us pray.

Father, nothing in my hands I bring, only

to the cross of Jesus Christ, I cling.

I pray, Lord, for a fresh anointing of your Holy Spirit

as we hunger and thirst for a latter rain experience.

In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen and amen.

And the place was shaken.

You heard in your hearing, it was read, Acts chapter 2,

Acts 2:1–6

verses 1 through 6.

And so I'm going to continue a few more verses in Acts chapter

Acts 2 · chapter mention

2, beginning with verse 7.

And how here we every man in our own tongue,

wherein we were born, Parthians and Medes and Elamites

and dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia

and Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Panthelia, in Egypt

and in the parts of Libya, around Cyrene and strangers

of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians.

We do hear them speak in our own language, in our tongue,

the wonderful works of God.

Now, this is a very familiar passage.

And we often focus on different things in this passage.

I'm going to not focus on one thing,

but I do want to ask a rhetorical question

this morning.

What were they saying?

We don't usually talk about what they

were saying during that time.

We often focus on the fact that they

came from different parts of the then known world,

and they heard in their own language.

But I haven't heard a lot about what they were saying.

What were they talking about?

What were they doing?

The Bible says that they were speaking

the wonderful works of God.

They were testifying.

And you all know that I testify a lot.

So I don't speak without doing that.

But can you imagine them being there for that event,

and they were coming together, and they were receiving

the gift of tongues.

Whoever was speaking, they were receiving

the gift of other languages so that the people who

came from around the then known world

could hear the testimony about what God was

doing in all those parts.

They were testifying of the goodness of God,

talking about what he was doing in their lives.

And what a privilege we have as the people of God

to tell people it's the gospel in living color.

When you talk about what God is doing, and so they were there.

And they're in Acts chapter 2 where the people were.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The Holy Spirit fell.

And the Bible says that it was so loud.

Now, you know that my people tend to be loud,

and maybe some other people tend to be quiet, but it's OK.

You know, we have different cultures, right?

Everybody doesn't have to be loud like me.

And I attended Broadview Academy.

Anybody here familiar with Broadview Academy?

Broadview Academy, very conservative.

And I would sit in church.

Elder Richard Habenek was our campus pastor.

And there were about maybe about 10

African-American students at the time

when I was there in the 70s.

And I would sit in church every Sabbath and weep, just cry.

He was a very quiet man, but he was so powerful.

He was so anointed and full of the Spirit.

And he would speak, and I would just

weep because I would just feel the presence of God.

That's my response to the presence of God,

is weeping sometimes.

And but here, and this was the birth of the Christian church.

This is when the Christian church was born here in Acts 2.

And the Bible says that when the Spirit fell,

he was so loud that they could hear him.

They said, and she just read it, it

was like the sound of a mighty rushing wind.

That the people were saying, what on earth is going on

in there?

Isn't that the way that the church should be nowadays?

From the perspective of the Spirit

should be so evident that the community around here

should be asking, what's going on there at the Ringgold

Seventh-day Adventist Church?

I feel a presence of the Spirit coming from that location

there.

And I want to know what's going on there.

I love this church so much.

And as I look out here, there are more people here

than in some of our larger churches.

I think the Spirit of God is so evident here.

I feel his presence when I come here.

And I love that when you have your praise and share,

that you pray for the requests right then and there.

Because sometimes when we say, when people ask us to pray,

sometimes we forget, don't we?

I love that about my church.

During our prayer meeting time, we spend from 7 to 8.30

in prayer meeting.

The first hour is spent in giving prayer requests

and praying for each one that is given.

An entire hour is so rich, because prayer

is the breath of the soul.

And so here, when the church was born and the Holy Spirit fell

and the gift of tongues was demonstrated,

and they were testifying of the goodness of God,

the inception of the church was recorded here.

Do you remember when Jesus ran the merchants out?

And I did not even record the scripture here,

so please forgive me.

But when he ran the merchants and the money changers

out of the temple, he did it because they had come right

into the outer court where the Gentiles had gathered to pray.

Because you see, the Gentiles were not

allowed to go into the temple at that time.

And so there they were in the outer court.

That was their place to pray.

And so it wasn't so much that it was the business in the church

that Christ was unsettled with, because those people were

supposed to be there.

The people had to pay the temple tax.

They had to change funds.

And I believe that they were buying animals

to sacrifice even.

And so they were in the right place,

but perhaps for the wrong reason.

Sometimes we can come, and our intention

is not necessarily to worship.

Maybe sometimes our intention is because it's a routine

and because he said, for sec not the assembling of yourselves

together.

And so sometimes we can get caught up

in the routine of religiosity and not really

come for the right reason.

So it's not necessarily just about doing the right thing,

but it's what's in our hearts.

It's for the right reason.

And I'm just so thankful that when I come here,

I just sense that you all are here for the right reason.

Amen?

To worship God, there are smiles on your face.

You're welcoming us when we come in.

In the right place for the right reason.

In that text of scripture where it's

talking about the money changers and the merchants there,

he says, my house shall be a house of prayer

for all people, for everybody, even though they wouldn't

let the Gentiles in the temple.

Something a little bit wrong with that, right?

All of us who are here in church should be here

to rub shoulders with one another.

I was having a conversation with my husband

who were talking about Sabbath.

And how that sometimes we associate Sabbath with church.

And it's not necessarily just church.

If you look at the way the Jews did it and do it,

they actually do it correctly.

They meet on Friday evening.

They welcome the Sabbath with their families.

So Sabbath, I believe, personally,

was designed to be kept in the home, honored in the home,

and celebrated at church.

And so we come here and we rub shoulders

and we encourage one another because no man is an island.

We need each other.

And so when I come here and I feel welcome

and I see your smiles, that does me good.

We're doing this together.

It's not just something that we come and it's a ritual.

No, we come for corporate worship.

And the servant of the Lord speaks of the fact

that the latter rain may fall in a corporate setting

when we're together some of these times,

worshiping together, praying together.

When we were in pastoral ministry together,

my husband and I, every church he pastored,

he always had all night prayer meetings.

And I believe, maybe, you would do them once a quarter

or something like that.

And we would pray all night long.

Every hour, there would be a short sermonette speaker.

We would spend a lot of time in prayer.

And we would sing.

And there may be a special music.

And we would just call on the name of the Lord

and invoke his presence among us.

We are in the last days.

And we are coming to a time where just spending

a few minutes is not enough.

It's not enough.

And as I speak, I am also listening.

This is for me because I'm going to just confess.

Confession is good for the soul.

I've mentioned to Sarah, I said, Sarah, please pray for me.

This week, it was a different kind of a week.

It was one of those kind of weeks.

And I was just distracted.

And I was tired and fatigued.

And I couldn't get my mind together.

And I just didn't know what was going to happen today.

But I called upon the name of the Lord.

And we were in worship on Thursday.

And I texted Sarah.

I said, Sarah, I think God has spoken to me.

And I think he has a word for the people.

We are living in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament, didn't God say, in the Book of Exodus,

he said to Moses, let them build me a sanctuary

that I may dwell among them.

And it was during the time when they would

carry the tabernacle around.

You had the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.

And the people counted it to be holy.

And that was during the dispensation

before Christ had come.

But we are now living in the dispensation

where he has come.

The temple, that curtain was rent.

And the Spirit of God, he said, when he left, he came.

And he left.

And he said, I'm going to leave you the Holy Ghost.

And we know that the Holy Ghost is

the guarantee of our salvation, that we can't get out

of here without him.

And sometimes I think, in our culture, as Adventists,

we may consider the Holy Ghost as with the Pentecostals.

Well, yes.

And we are Pentecostals in that way.

Because the Spirit of God, he left the Spirit of God.

He no longer lives in temples of brick and stone.

I steal so many things from my husband.

I've been listening to him preach for so long.

He's sitting there saying, she got that from me.

I did.

We no longer live in temples of brick and stone.

We now live in temples of flesh and bone.

What is Paul saying to Corinthians?

He says, what?

Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?

We have the privilege of having him to live in us.

And I often find myself saying to the Lord, Lord,

I am no longer satisfied with you just coming to visit.

I want you to live in my temple.

I want you to come and stay.

But we know that he cannot stay in our temples

when our temples are so wayward.

I'm not saying we have to be perfect.

But if we're just watching whatever we want to watch,

and I'm convicted right now as I'm saying this,

we can't just eat whatever we want to eat.

We must honor him in our temples.

But we can't do it without the anointing.

We cannot do it without the Holy Ghost.

If the church started with the Holy Ghost,

how do we think we're going to continue?

How do we think we're going to make without him?

We must ask for him.

Matthew 7, verses 7 through 11.

Matthew 7:7–11

I can remember when I was young.

And sometimes our food would be low.

And sometimes we would have to come together as a family.

And my parents would come together.

And they would say, come on, children.

Put your finger on this text.

Matthew 7, 7, ask and it shall be given you.

Seek and ye shall find.

Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.

Verse 7 says, for everyone that asketh receiveth,

and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh,

it shall be opened.

Or what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread,

will you give him a stone?

Or if he asks a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts

unto your children, how much more

will your Father in heaven give good things to them

that ask him?

So for many years, I read that passage of scripture.

And I thought that it was talking

about temporal blessings.

Now, there is nothing wrong with asking

for temporal blessings.

In fact, we should ask for things that we need.

He tells us that if we have a need, that we should go to him

and we should ask him for the things that we need.

But this particular verse was not

talking about temporal blessings.

I stumbled upon, many years ago, stumbled

upon a different rendition of that same text

in Luke's version of that text in Luke chapter 11,

Luke 11 · chapter mention

very same text.

Ask and it shall be given you.

Seek and ye shall find.

Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.

But when Luke gets down to verse 13, he says this.

So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts

to your children, watch this now,

how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy

Spirit to them that ask him?

I said, oh, now I see what he was really talking about.

He was not talking about those temporal things that we need,

because we do understand that even before we ask,

that he knows what we need.

The greatest need we have and the greatest prayer

we can ever pray is for the Holy Spirit.

We need him now more than we've ever needed him before.

And I know that from experience, because I

try so hard to do the right thing.

And I often fall short most of the time.

We cannot do it on our own.

We need the Spirit of God to come and to live in us

and to give us the power to overcome the weights

and the sins that does so easily beset us.

In Acts chapter 4, when Peter and John

Acts 4 · chapter mention

went before the priests for preaching

about the resurrection, if you go to chapter 4 of Acts,

it talks about that time when they were preaching.

They were preaching their hearts out,

and they were preaching the truth about the resurrection

and the state of the dead.

And they were arrested.

And they were questioned about why they had done this

and whose name they had come.

And the Bible says in verses 8 through 10, it says,

then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit,

said to them, rulers and elders of our people,

are we being questioned today because we have done a good deed

for a crippled man?

See, they were picking on them because they

had demonstrated these rare gifts that

had been given to them.

And it says, let me clearly state to all of you,

to all the people of Israel, that he

was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene,

the man whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead.

And in the verses following, it says,

although they knew that Peter and John

had no special training in the scriptures,

they were not preachers.

They had not gone to the seminary at Andrews University.

They did not have all of these credentials.

But the Bible says that they recognized them

as men who had been with Jesus.

Is that how you're known?

I mean, I would love to be associated

with Christ in such a way that when people are around me,

that they know at least that I just love him with all my heart.

I may not act like it all the time,

but I love him with all my heart.

And the Bible says they warned them not to speak anymore

in the name of Jesus.

And they replied in verse 20, I want

to have this kind of holy boldness

that you get from the anointing.

They said in verse 20, we will not

stop speaking the things which we have seen and heard.

You can arrest us.

You can do whatever you want to do with us.

But we will continue speaking the truth.

And we will continue talking about the wonderful works

of God.

How is it going to be for us in the last days

when they are threatening to arrest us and to kill us?

And if we don't have the anointing,

see, we can say now, I'm going to stand up for God.

I'm going to speak for him even in the face of death.

But if you are not truly connected with him

and you don't truly have the anointing of the Spirit of God

in you, you may give up on that day to save your life.

They say, we will not stop.

We will continue.

And if you notice that when they, in the Bible days,

when Paul and all of them, when they were put in prison,

they never prayed to get out of prison.

They didn't pray to get out of their circumstance.

Many times, we don't want to go through, because we are human,

and we don't want to go through those hard times.

And so we spend a lot of time praying for God

to get us out of circumstances.

What we really need to pray for is

the anointing for the Spirit of God to go through it.

Because then if he wills that we get out of it,

he's going to let us out of the situation.

And as people watch us and see how we handle the trials

that we're going through, see, we

can help other people when we're anointed

by the Spirit of God.

I can remember, and you all have to forgive me,

I've only been here once in your pulpit.

And sometimes when I tell stories,

I don't remember which ones I've told.

So they're good and sometimes worth repeating.

But when we were married, maybe about 10 years,

and we were pastoring in the seaside area,

that's, in fact, is where it is written,

is this weekend for their partnership weekend.

In fact, the hotel that they're in,

we could see from the place where we lived,

when we lived in that area.

We were pastoring during that time,

and it was during the time that our children, all

of our children, were at home.

And if you know anything about our background, which

we haven't talked about today, we have eight children.

We have 30 grandchildren, and we have 17 great grandchildren.

And this was during the time I had

married my husband, his wife had left him

with raising six children alone while he was

studying ministry at Oakwood.

And I came along and discovered him.

Hallelujah.

To the glory of God, he has been just an amazing life companion

to me.

And with his flexible schedule in ministry,

even though he worked hard, he worked hard.

He went to prison visiting people.

He counseled people during the week.

He prayed on the phone with people.

And still now, he spends three or four hours sometimes praying

with people in his retirement years.

And we were there during that time.

I gave him two more children.

He had three boys and three girls, a perfect Brady bunch.

And then we got married, and I gave him two more daughters.

Our oldest is 54, and the youngest is 34.

She was born on our wedding anniversary,

and so she just turned 34 on October 22.

God has been good to us.

During those times, we had all the children at home.

And our oldest daughter at the time had had a baby.

And you can imagine with all the kids at home

and everything that was happening,

there were some frustrating times.

And I had stumbled upon a verse in the scriptures, Psalms 119,

165.

And it says, great peace have they which love thy law,

and nothing shall offend them.

And I began to pray and ask God.

I said, Lord, I need that experience.

Please help me, because I would sometimes

get frustrated with the kids.

And my husband would say to me, sometimes I

would raise my voice, and he would say,

babe, let's just pray.

He was so patient and so kind, and he

did most of the cleaning for most of our marriage.

In every way he could, he showed me

how much he appreciated my coming in,

helping him to raise the children,

and walking alongside him in ministry.

He did everything he could do to lighten my load.

That's why I don't look like I had that many children

and been married as long as I've been.

Honestly, he did everything he could do to lighten my load.

And so there we were.

I had prayed that prayer, and I said, Lord,

I don't want to be impatient with the children.

Please help me.

And so one particular Sabbath morning,

we got ready to go to church.

And the oldest girl who had had a baby out of wet lock,

and she was there.

She was frustrated too.

And she was fixing breakfast for the baby, what have you.

And I don't know, we had a little altercation.

I had asked her to do something, and she kind of snapped at me.

Now, mind you, we're only nine years apart.

My husband, he looks very young.

He's 77.

He looks very young.

But she was frustrated.

I was frustrated.

And we had a little argument that Sabbath morning.

And so here I am, the pastor's wife.

We have to go to church and smile.

And so I went to church, and I was sitting there on the pew.

My husband began to preach.

And I was really frustrated.

And the Lord began to speak to me.

And he said to me, he said, you know

that text in Psalms 119, 165, you've been praying

and asking me, Lord, I need patience with the children,

you know, long suffering so that I won't be offended.

I said, yes, Lord.

He said, I am going to give you that experience.

I'm looking around.

I'm like, huh?

He said, you've been praying for that.

He said, I'm going to give you that experience.

And he said, but before I do, I need

to let you know you've been praying the wrong prayer.

Oh, really, Lord?

Yes.

He said, I want you to turn to Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

Now, I'm sitting here having a conversation with God.

Isn't he a mighty?

He's just wonderful.

He deals with us.

He meets us where we are.

My husband is preaching, and God is speaking to me.

Galatians 5, and the fruit of the Spirit

is love, joy, peace, long suffering.

He said, you've been asking for one of the fruit

when you can have the whole package.

All you need is the anointing.

All you need is the indwelling of Christ.

And hence, one of my favorite passages in the book

Desire of Ages, which is my favorite Spirit of Prophecy

publication on page 324, where she says,

the only defense against evil is the indwelling of Christ

in the heart through faith in his righteousness.

That's the Holy Spirit, people.

That's the Spirit of God.

That's the anointing.

She says, the only way you can overcome

is to have the Spirit of God in you.

And I contend that it will take more than just

him coming to visit.

We have got to make room for him by praying and asking God

to kick out all of that stuff in us that inhibits

the full baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I want him.

I want him to take control.

And so I ask him.

I do ask him.

I get distracted sometimes.

And then sometimes, I don't ask him.

We cannot do this by ourselves.

We must pray.

And we must not just pray asking him for things.

We must pray.

And we must beg him for the indwelling of his presence.

Because that power, he says, that we shall receive power

after that the Holy Ghost comes upon you,

and you shall be my witnesses.

Many times, even our witness is not a strong witness,

because we try to do it without the anointing.

We need him.

And we must always be aware of our need for him.

Don't ever think you can do this alone.

Just having the truth, just observing the Sabbath,

just eating veggie links.

Come on now.

Sometimes, we can get a little beside ourselves

and a little too happy with ourselves

because of what God has given us.

And isn't it rich what he's given us?

In the book, Steps to Christ, in the Privilege of Prayer,

she talks about how the angels are just

amazed at how much we really need God

and how little we pray.

Acts chapter 4 and verse 31.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

And when they had prayed, Peter and John,

going back to that story.

And when they had prayed, the place

was shaken where they were assembled together.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

And they spake the word of God with boldness.

I say they were all in the right place at the right time.

Hence, these kinds of gatherings where we come together.

One day, the Spirit of God at the anointing at the light

of rain may fall on us in one of these gatherings.

Hallelujah.

I want to be where prayer is wont to be made.

I decided that when I was a young girl.

My father, you see, who died an Adventist pastor

at the age of 54, his heart having exploded in his chest.

He didn't have two seconds to say anything.

But he died while he was praying.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

What a way to go.

As a child, I always knew, and he would always

tell us, unless the house is on fire,

please don't approach my prayer chamber.

And we always knew that early in the morning, he was in prayer.

And this particular morning that he died

was like no other except this.

He got up, and he went into prayer, and he worshiped God.

And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon him.

How do I know?

He woke my mother up, which he had never done.

They had been married 33 years.

My mother married him at age 15.

She was 49 when he died.

And this particular morning, he woke her up.

She said, you've never awakened me during your worship.

He said, yes, he said, but he said glory was all around me.

She said, OK.

It was just strange to her, you know?

And so she said to him, he said, I'm

going out on the patio to walk around and get some exercise.

And he put his sweatsuit on, and she said, where's my hug?

And he embraced her for the last time.

And that's where she found him, laying on his back

with his eyes open.

A church member, he was pastoring a district,

and he was pastoring a church in Battle Creek, Michigan.

And a church member called to speak to him.

So she goes out on the patio to get him,

and that's where she found him, lifeless.

But can you ask for anything more?

It was traumatic.

I was very close to my dad.

That's why I hyphenate my name.

But he died in his prayer chamber in worship to God.

I said, God, I have no problem with this.

He taught me how to build a prayer altar

when I was five years old.

And he said to me, I wondered why he took,

I'm the youngest of five.

And he took a little special care with me

on a spiritual level.

And he said to me, he said this to me.

He said, I kind of got an inkling

that you would be wayward.

I was like, oh, really?

He said, I felt like I needed to do something with you.

Why?

I don't know.

But I thank God that I didn't really get to know.

I wasn't perfect.

But God protected me from a lot of things.

I grew up in the inner city of Chicago.

And although I went to church school,

we were all in the inner city.

And the influence was there.

I thank God to this very day for my father teaching me

the most important discipline that he could have taught me.

The most important thing that anybody in this room

could ever learn to do is to pray.

It is our connection with heaven.

It is our connection with heaven.

It is our connection with God.

It is our connection with the Holy Spirit.

In Desire of Ages, she goes beyond that.

And this is what she says.

Listen to this.

This is powerful.

When the soul surrenders itself to Christ,

a new power takes possession of the new heart.

A change is wrought which man can never

accomplish for himself.

It is a supernatural work, bringing a supernatural element

into human nature.

The soul that is yielded to Christ

becomes his own fortress, which he holds to the very end.

It is a fortress which he holds in a revulsion world.

And he intends that no authority shall

be known in it but his own.

A soul thus kept in possession by the heavenly agencies

is impregnable to the assaults of Satan.

That's powerful.

But unless we do yield ourselves to the control of Christ,

we shall be dominated by the wicked one.

We must inevitably be under the control of the one

or the other of the two great powers

that are contending for the supremacy of the world.

It is not necessary for us deliberately

to choose the service of the kingdom of darkness

in order to come under its dominion.

You don't have to say, I choose Satan.

But if you do not ally yourself with Christ,

with the kingdom of light, if we do not

cooperate with the heavenly agencies,

Satan will take possession of the heart

and will make it his abiding place.

Lord, have mercy.

I don't want him in here.

But in order to keep him out, the spirit of God

has got to be in the air.

We may leave off many bad habits.

For a time, we may part company with Satan.

But without a vital connection with God,

through the surrender of ourselves to him,

moment by moment, we shall be overcome.

Without a personal acquaintance with Christ

and a continual communion, we are at the mercy of the enemy

and shall do his bidding in the end.

Lord, help us.

As I prepare to close, Ronald, I'm going to ask you,

would you mind playing softly a Pasadena gentle savior

or anything of your choosing very softly

as I prepare to close?

I'm going back to the story where

I was sitting in the church and the spirit of God

began to speak to me and told me I

was praying the wrong prayer.

So at that point, I decided, OK, I

need to start praying for the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

I need to ask for him to come in.

And so I began to pray that prayer.

Sometimes I fell off the bandwagon,

but he would always remind me.

You remember that time when you were sitting in church,

that Sabbath?

And so I began to pray again, Lord, fill me

with your holy presence.

As the time passed and the children began to grow

and we went to another church and life happened,

I discovered that he had kept his promise to me.

Those things that would frustrate me so bad,

that would make me raise my voice,

those things became less and less and less.

And then I said, Lord, I thank you

because I feel more of your presence.

But Lord, I need you even more because I'm still a sinner

and I still experience frustration and depression.

Impression without expression equals depression.

You know, if I'm just keeping it in

and I'm not really letting it go and giving it to you.

I remember one time I had gotten upset at my husband

and I was kind of reading him his rites

and from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

And he looked at me and he said to me,

I'll never forget this.

And I talk about it all the time.

We were living in Seaside on Hewby Street

and we were in the bedroom.

And he looked at me and he said, OK.

He said, so I messed up.

He said, how do you think God feels about me right now?

And I fell out laughing.

I started laughing because it was so the truth.

Isn't that how God looks at us?

It's hard to have a problem with people

when you see them through the eyes of God

and you can only see them through the eyes of God

when you have the anointing.

The church started with the Holy Ghost.

The people were praying and waiting on him to arrive.

And I do believe that that is the way the church will end.

And so today, I want to do something a little different.

It may make you feel a little uncomfortable,

but it's what the Spirit has placed upon my heart.

I would like for us to have what you call a Pentecostal prayer

where we all pray out loud for the Holy Spirit.

I will begin, but then I will move away from the mic

because I want everyone who would like to participate.

And even if your lips are just moving,

there's no pressure here.

But I'd like for all of us at the same time

to call upon the name of the Lord

and ask him for the Holy Spirit.

And so I begin.

Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray,

first for the forgiveness of sin.

There's anything in me, Lord, that is unlike you.

I pray that you remove it now.

In the name of Jesus, and I ask that you

would anoint me with your Holy presence, oh God.

I present before you, Lord, this entire congregation

and anyone who would like to join me

as we open our mouths to ask you for the anointing

of your presence.

Lord, we can't do it without you.

We cannot live this life without you.

Lord, please come.

Come, Holy Spirit, we need you.

Come, sweet Spirit.

We pray.

Come and anoint us in your own special way.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us.

Melt us, mold us, use us, fill us.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us, Lord, we pray.

We need you, Lord.

If we ever needed you before, we need you.

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, come, Holy Spirit.

We need you.

Thank you for stopping by the Ringle Church this morning.

And as we go down from this place,

we pray we will ever be determined to beg you each day

for a fresh anointing of your Holy Spirit.

We pray in Jesus' name.

And the church said together, Amen.

Amen and amen.

Amen.

Amen.