Living Waters of Grace 09.12.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

He's called our comforter. He does not expect us to do life

in our own strength. And I want to know that deeper

myself personally, because there's days that I get

frustrated too and burn on and overwhelmed and discouraged or

whatever. And and I don't want to stay in

those places. I want to immediately connect

with the fact that I need the help of the Spirit of God.

And when we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, He will

definitely come through for us. Amen.

The Holy Spirit is like a sturdy railing, keeping you balanced

when life's weight feels too heavy.

In today's message, Pastor Clark portrays how God is your

comforter. Not expecting you to face life

alone might hit days of frustration, burnout, or

discouragement. Feeling overwhelmed?

Instead of lingering there, you can turn to the Spirit for help.

He's ready to come through when you call, bringing strength and

peace. God knows your struggles and

offers his Spirit to carry you forward.

Now here's Pastor Clark in the book of Acts chapter one with

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Father God, we thank you Lord, for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the only hope that the world has.

And Lord, you told us clearly that you are the way the truth

of life, and no man comes of the Father.

But through you, everywhere we live, we have an opportunity to

share our relationship with you, Lord, with other people.

I pray, Lord, that you would work in our hearts as a church

family, as a body, where we work, where we live,

friendships, Father, neighbors, that you would open up doors of

opportunity for each of us on a daily basis to be able to share

the gospel with people. Lord, because we know that you

love people and you want us to love people and and father,

we're around people every day that are on their way to a

crisis eternity if they don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord

and Savior. We don't grasp that many times

we get up and we live our lives and we see countless hundreds of

people every day and we don't perhaps at times sink.

I wonder where they're going to spend eternity.

And Lord, you tell us in your word that the only way we can

spend eternity with You is to have you as our Lord and Savior,

to have our sins forgiven, and to have you come into our life

and change us to become like you.

And so, Father, we just ask that we would be used by you.

We know this is Your will. We know the book of the Acts was

written by you, penned by you through Luke the Evangelist to

help us see the beginning of the church and how it thrived and

how it grew and how it increased Lord.

And so Lord, we hold one another up and pray for one another.

We ask Lord God today by your spirit's power, by your Holy

Spirit's power, that you would truly minister to us through the

word of God today and that the book of the Acts would it is a

living book. It's, it's the Acts of the Holy

Spirit through the hands of the apostles.

And so God teach us to trust you and to know you and to walk

deeper with you. And, and God, we, we do all

these things for your glory and for your honor, and we pray

these things in Jesus name, Amen.

God bless you guys. We are in the book of the Acts.

We're starting the series and Acts.

We finished the Gospel of Matthew.

And so I felt that it would just make sense to to see what

happened to the church immediately after, you know,

Jesus was getting ready to ascend into heaven to be with

his father. Before, though, I go to the book

of the Acts. I wanted to talk about the Holy

Spirit a little bit. I've taught this book several

times before, the book of the Acts, and I don't know if it's

because I'm getting older, things are sinking in more, I

don't know. But boy, I'll tell you, these

truths in the Bible are just hitting me at different levels

than ever, ever before. So I wanted to ask you a

question. Have you ever heard this phrase?

God helps those who help themselves.

Do you believe that's in the Bible?

Well, some people do, and we're all conditioned to sort of live

in our own strength. I don't know about you, but I'm

when I review my life and I think about my life, I'm

astounded at times of how much I'm trying to do in my own

strength, which is ridiculous. And so the reason I want to tell

you a little bit about this personally is that the I need to

be reminded about this as much as you do.

And in the book of John chapter 14, it says the heading verse 15

John 14 · chapter mention

of John 14. And Jesus promises another

helper. He says, if you love me, keep my

commandments and I will pray the Father and he will give you

another helper that he may abide with you forever.

The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it

neither sees him nor but you know him, for he dwells with you

and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I

will come to you. And then he says over in the

book of John 15, he says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

And he that abideth in me, and I in him the same bringeth forth

much fruit. Without me you can do nothing.

Really think about that. Without Him we can do nothing.

And then He also tells us about this importance of this witness

that we have the privilege to be able to be part of.

He says in the 25th verse of John 14, These things I've

spoken to you while being present with you.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send to my

name, He will teach you all things and bring to remembrance

all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace

I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give

to you. Let not your heart be troubled,

neither let it be afraid. You have heard me say to you,

I'm going away and coming back to you.

If you love me, you would rejoice because I said I am

going to my Father, for my Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come

to pass, you may believe I will no longer talk much with you.

For the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me

but that the world may know that I love the Father.

And as the Father gave me commandments, so I do arise.

Let us go from here. And so we have this opportunity

to share our faith. That's why God established the

Church to help us learn how to communicate to one another and

to the world their need of Jesus Christ.

And so perhaps you're here today and maybe you have never really

felt comfortable sharing your faith with other people.

Well, you're not alone, right? We're all beginners at this, and

we're learning how to openly find opportunities to share our

relationship with Jesus. But what I love about the Word

of God, the Comforter, the encourager, the Helper, it says

in John 1526 And the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you

from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the

Father. He will testify of me, and you

also will bear witness because you have been with me from the

beginning. So the Holy Spirit dwells in the

lives of the believer. So we have the supernatural

power and authority and ability to speak to people about their

need of a Savior, Jesus Christ. It comes from the Spirit of God

in us. He is the ultimate witness.

He's the one that testifies of the truth.

And the Holy Spirit always works to magnify the Lord Jesus.

He doesn't draw attention to himself.

And so as we study the book of the Acts today and begin to work

through this, my prayer for us as a church is that we would

find opportunities in daily life to share our faith with other

people, that we would pray and ask God to open up doors and

opportunity that we might be able to present the Lord to

others. And Speaking of crew, we support

a missionary with CREW as a church.

We have for quite some time. He was a student at Northwestern

University studying engineering, had an opportunity to have all

kind of countless job opportunities making big bucks.

But for some reason, the Lord had dealt with him and worked

with him to be part of crew. So he's moved up in the ranks of

crew to be a leader, and we get his newsletter.

His name's Nick, and he comes here periodically.

But I wanted to read some prayer requests.

He asked. Pray for all the students who

attend the winter conferences in January and February.

They do that all over the world, that they would take away

practical next steps in walking closely with God and continue to

grow closer to Him. Back on campus.

Pray that those in the local communities who got to hear

about Jesus and who made decisions to follow Jesus during

the outreaches at the conference would be connected to their

local churches and continually grow in the knowledge and love

for God. And he asked for a prayer for

himself. Pray for me in this season of

discernment as I process my next steps and what I will be doing

after my program ends in June. Especially pray that I would be

trusting God in the unknown. So that's Nick, so hold him up

in your prayers. So let's go to the book of the

Acts. It's right after the Gospel of

John, and we're going to start working through this book just

like we went through Matthew, verse by verse and chapter by

chapter. And before I start again, the

Holy Spirit, he wants us to know him in a deeper way, in a

personal way. God the Father, God the Son, God

the Holy Spirit. He's the helper to comforter and

He wants to help us. And I pray that we have the

humility whenever we're stressed out and we're burnt out and

we're overwhelmed and we're tired or whatever, frustrated in

life that it would dawn on us that we need God's help.

And we just say, Lord, I'm not in a good place right now.

I need your help, Holy Spirit. And that's wisdom, isn't it?

Because He's called our comforter, He does not expect us

to do life in our own strength. And I want to know that deeper

myself personally, because there's days that I get

frustrated too and burn on and overwhelmed and discourage or

whatever. And, and I don't want to stay in

those places. I want to immediately connect

with the fact that I need the help of the Spirit of God.

And when we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, he will

definitely come through for us. Amen.

So it starts in the first verse of the 1st chapter of Acts.

It says the former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that

Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He

was taken up, after He, through the Holy Spirit, had given

commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, To whom he

also presented himself alive after his suffering, by many

infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days, and

Speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of

God. So Luke is the author.

He wrote the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist Luke, and he also is

writing the the book of the Acts.

At this particular time, he was not an apostle, he was an

evangelist. He was a medical doctor, he was

a surgeon, and he traveled with the Apostle Paul and his

ministry to help him with some of his infirmities and

illnesses. Luke was a disciple of the

apostle Paul. So we believe that Paul LED Luke

to the Lord Jesus. Luke got all the data and the

information, interviewed apostles and people who are

eyewitnesses of the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, and he

compiled those things in the gospel of Luke.

And then he's now compiling all the experiences he had traveling

with Paul throughout all the regions.

Whenever the book of the Acts is put together, they believe that

he finished his sometime before 8060.

Because there's no information in here of the crisis that

happened in in Rome when the church was sacked and all that

kind of stuff, and the persecution began to be poured

out upon the church. Luke is a student of history,

and everything he wrote was rooted and founded in evidence,

not theory. Luke, when he wrote these

things, he took his time to be very, very detailed in what it

was he was speaking about the subject matter in the book of

Acts, the Holy Spirit is mentioned 56 times and prayer is

mentioned 39 times, more than any other book of the Bible.

Prayer and the person, the Holy Spirit are discussed.

And so this is really the foundation of what makes things

work in this earth in regard to the things of God, prayer, and

the power of God, the Holy Spirit.

Theophilus, this person that Luke's referencing here was some

type of perhaps Roman dignitary. It appears in the Gospel of Luke

that he had an interest in Christianity.

And so Luke actually sent the letters to this fellow

Theophilus. That's about all we know of him,

of everything that Jesus began both to do and teach.

So everything that Christ did, and we studied that in a book of

Matthew from the beginning of his birth to the eventual

crucifixion and ascension, resurrection, are all detailed

in the Gospels. And so everything we read in

Acts is grounded and founded in the historic aspect of Christ

being truly a human being, fully God in human form, human flesh

who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the

dead for our sins. And so he's giving again the

details and everything now that is culminating in the outpouring

of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost is rooted in this evidence that

until the day he was taken up after he through the Holy Spirit

of giving commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen.

Remember the last thing we studied in the book of Matthew,

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

chapter 28. He said go into all the world

and preach the gospel, right. Some of you are starting to fall

asleep. Preach the Gospel unto every

living creature that entitizing them in the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit. And lo, I'm with you always,

even and to the end of the age, right?

And so that was a commandment not only to the apostles, but to

us as the church, as Christians, as believers to spread the

gospel. And so it says that whom he also

presented himself alive after his sufferings.

And we read in First Corinthians 15 that Christ died for our

sins. According to the scriptures, He

was buried. He rose again on the third day,

according to the scriptures, and ascendeth into heaven.

He was seen by over 500 witnesses after He rose again

from the dead, literally seen by many, many witnesses.

So He presented himself alive after his crucifixion by many

infallible proofs. He was seen by them during the

40 days. He would come in and out of

their lives during this time before He ascended to tell them

more and more things about what it was he wanted them to

accomplish. And he was always speaking about

the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

I was reading something this morning about fasting.

And fasting sometimes is a good thing to do, especially for

media right now, How much more media fee do we need about

what's happening in the world? It's very, very overwhelming and

at times very, very depressing. And we need to pray for peace.

We need to pray for these world rollers to come to their senses

and be able to sit down and talk about the issue before more and

more people are slaughtered needlessly.

It's heartbreaking to see what what's happening to these

people. 1.4 million people are out of that country of Ukraine

now trying to find a place to work and to live.

And where do they find food? We're going to be involved with

some other Calgary's across the world financially and helping

and if we all help a little bit, that's going to be significant

in regard to refuge and relief. We have missionaries on the

ground in Ukraine who are actually helping people get out

of the country. There's a Calgary Chapel in the

farthest western region in Ukraine, which is surrounded by

NATO countries that Russia isn't going to mess with over there.

That's about as safe as you can be in Ukraine, that particular

region. And they are already helping in

the church, providing things for the people who are moving out of

out of the Ukraine. But this need of understanding

where we are in time in regard to the work of the Holy Spirit

and what it is he wants to do in the days that we're living.

And so I, I look at the time we're reading about in the book

of the Acts prior to the persecution and the difficulty

of living under a Roman rule as a Christian.

It's a difficult time in parts of the world to live as a

Christian under various types of dictatorships in the world.

And then this is other places other than what we're dealing

with right now with Russia. We have issues in Iran and we

have issues in China. We have issues in North Africa,

we have issues in Venezuela, we have issues in Colombia.

There's rulers that don't have a lot of good things planned for

the people of those countries. So when you look at Acts, Acts,

this isn't a past tense book. It's a living book right now in

regard to what it is we're dealing with in our own world

today. In verse 4 it says in being

assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart

from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.

Now remember in John where Jesus was talking to His followers

telling them He would send them the comforter, the helper.

OK, this is real time now for them.

They're told specifically to wait until the Holy Spirit is

going to be poured out upon them.

Now, they had experiences with the Holy Spirit, as did the Old

Testament believers, the Old Testament Saints.

But the Holy Spirit before Pentecost came upon people and

then he would depart from people.

We know David in Psalm 51 when he prayed his prayer repentance

after his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, he prayed

in that one section and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Now for a New Testament Christian, that would be a weird

prayer because we the Holy Spirit doesn't leave us as

Christians. He's in US and he'll never leave

us or forsake us. But we can quench the Holy

Spirit and we can grieve the Holy Spirit by living in our own

power and our own strength. The Holy Spirit wants to fill us

every day afresh that we have strength and power and wisdom,

ability to to live for the glory of God and the blessings of

other people. But in this instance, they have

not received the Holy Spirit in the indwelling yet permanent

indwelling. And this didn't happen till the

day of Pentecost. The apostles received the Holy

Spirit at different times. Jesus breathed on them and said

receive the Holy Spirit for ministry and the miraculous

things that they did. They didn't experience this

complete experience that you and I experienced when we got saved

and we were born again. When we were born again, the

Holy Spirit came to dwell in us at the moment we were born

again. It tells us in First Corinthians

12/13, For we are all baptized by 1 Spirit into the body of

Christ at our conversion, at our belief.

It tells us in Romans 8-9, if any man have not the Spirit of

Christ, he's none of his. So some movements in

Christianity will say to people, have you received the Holy

Spirit? And they asked this in Acts.

We'll get into that down the road.

Since you believe, well, you can't be a Christian if you

don't have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in the

believer. The Holy Spirit does not in

dwell the unbeliever. And the only way you can have

the Holy Spirit is to be born again.

I don't know your experience when you were born again, but

it's pretty significant for most of us because there's a way of

life and a new sense of being an experience after you're born

again that you didn't have before you were born again.

You just know that you know that you know.

And it tells us that his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, bears witness

with our spirit that we are the sons and daughters of God.

So when you come into a church like this, and maybe you've

never been here before, if this is your first time, we welcome

you. You can feel connected

immediately because you're with other people who have the same

Spirit. You do the Holy Spirit.

And so he's commanding them to not depart from Jerusalem, but

to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have

heard from me. And he said, for John truly

baptized with water. And he's referring to John the

Baptist baptism, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit

not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come

together in verse 6, they asked him saying, Lord, will you at

this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?

And this is a great question for them to ask because God will one

day restore the Kingdom in Israel.

This will actually happen the second coming of Christ when the

millennial Kingdom begins. But this is not the particular

point in time that this is going to occur.

But they're familiar with the, you know, Ezekiel 36 and these

prophecies that are going to one day be fulfilled.

They're asking him the specific question.

They're thinking there's going to be a literal Kingdom right

now. We're going to have freedom.

God's going to roll and reign, and we're not going to have to

deal with Roman government or Russian government or Ukrainian

government or American government or whatever

government you want to say. The good news is one day the

Lord himself will be the ruler and he will rule with an iron

hand in Jerusalem. There won't be anybody else

telling the Lord what to do at that time.

That's when there will be real peace, That's when the nations

will be under his role and reign and they won't have these rogue

governments behaving the way they are now.

But anyway, he says it's not for you to know the times or seasons

which the Father has put in his own authority.

People love to sort of plan and in her mind study.

This is when I think Jesus is going to come and they have it

all calculated. They can use computers now and

algorithms and figure out dates and based upon different feasts

in the Old Testament or whatever.

I've never met anybody that got it right yet.

You know, Jesus isn't anyone that knows the big the return of

Christ to this world to set up the Kingdom, and that's the

Father. We're so glad you joined us

today on this edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Pastor Clark is teaching through the Book of Acts, which is the

only book that chronicles the history of the early church

immediately after Jesus's ascension.

It gives us a front row seat to how the Gospel began to move

outward, starting in Jerusalem and reaching into the heart of

the Roman Empire in just three decades.

A small group of frightened ordinary believers became a

bold, spirit empowered movement that transformed the known

world. Acts is not just a history

lesson. It's a reminder of what God can

do when His people are surrendered, obedient and filled

with the Holy Spirit. Their perseverance still

inspires us today. May we follow their example and

live faithfully for Christ in our own time.

We hope today's message encouraged you.

Living Waters of Grace is a ministry of Calvary Chapel,

Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA

area, we'd love to have you join us in person.

Our Sunday service begins at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.

Unit 6B. Be sure to visit

calvarychapelonline.com to confirm times and learn more.

If you are in the Greensburg area, you can listen to Grace FM

on the new 91.7 frequency. Please pray about supporting

this outreach. Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO

Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601. Stay connected through Facebook,

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Join our e-mail list, submit prayer requests, and give online

all at calvarychapelonline.com. Thank you for tuning in and

spending this time in God's Word.

Be sure to join us again for Living Waters of Grace.