Surrounded by the Spirit

I want you to turn in your Bible to two places, uh, John chapter 14 and John chapter 16.

John 14 · chapter mention John 16 · chapter mention

And I want to share a message this weekend called surrounded by the Spirit.

Surrounded by the Holy Spirit.

I want to talk to you about living a life immersed, engaged, and totally consumed by the person and the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I just turned 50 years old.

I know that is hard to believe, right?

I know I don't look 50.

Thank you for saying that, by the way.

It just means a lot to me.

I felt the love coming back from you right there, and I appreciate it.

But I just turned 50 and I realized that at turning 50 years old, I have one of two choices.

I can coast in, I know Jesus, I'm in love with the Holy Spirit, and I can coast in for the second half of my life.

Or I can make a decision right now at 50 years old to be more in love with Jesus and more in love with the Holy Spirit than I've ever been in my life.

And I've made a decision to be more in love with Jesus and to be more in love with the Holy Spirit than in any other time in my life.

That's the decision I just made.

And to be more in love with my wife than I've ever been in my life.

And I'm telling you, listen, all the men in the room, please listen to me.

There's a lot of 50-year-old men in this room who are 50 plus.

We all have the same decision to make.

Are you going to be more in love with Jesus than ever before?

Are you going to be more in love with the Holy Spirit than ever before?

And you're going to be more in love with the wife of your youth than ever before.

I have made a decision to do that.

And I have two big goals for this weekend's message.

One is there's a lot of you in this room and a lot of you at all the campuses that have never said yes, you have never welcomed the Holy Spirit into your life.

And this weekend is going to be your chance.

This weekend is going to be a defining moment for you.

In just a few minutes, you're going to get an opportunity to welcome the person, the power, and the presence of the Holy Spirit into your life.

But I have a bigger goal too.

I have a goal that for many of you who are bored with your faith, and you are bored with life and you're bored with your faith, I believe this weekend you're here because the Lord wants to stir up the gifts, fan into flame the gifts that the Spirit has given you.

You're going to walk out of here today caught on fire.

You're going to walk out of here this weekend full of the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

That's a pretty big goal for 25 minutes together, but I believe the Lord can do that if we will lean in together with each other.

Look at Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

I want to show this to you before we go to John 14.

On the very first page of your Bible, go from where your grandmother signed it to the table of contents, to Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

We all know verse 1.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

I want to show you verse 2.

In verse 2, it says, Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Now, the reason I said a moment ago that some of you are bored with your faith, some of you walked in here and your life feels formless and empty and dark.

And I have really good news for you.

The Holy Spirit knows exactly what to do with places in our lives that are formless and empty and dark.

In the very beginning of the scriptures, the entire creation was formless and empty and dark, and the Holy Spirit came.

The Holy Spirit has been with us from the beginning of time.

The Holy Spirit is ever present right now, and the Holy Spirit will be with us for all of eternity.

The Holy Spirit is right here with us.

And I want to show you in John chapter 14 and John chapter 16 what Jesus himself said about the Holy Spirit.

John 14 · chapter mention John 16 · chapter mention

Jesus is having the last long conversation with his disciples.

In John 14, 15, and 16, a lot of people call it the last great conversation, the great discourse.

The great is it's almost it's almost like John brings us into first-person contact with Jesus as he's having this long, purposeful discussion with his disciples.

Really, the last significant conversation that he would have with them before he goes to the cross.

And I want you to look at a recurring theme.

Jesus emphasized the person and the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in his last long lingering conversation with his disciples.

And here's the first thing that he wanted to make sure his disciples knew about the Holy Spirit.

In John chapter 14, are you there yet?

John 14 · chapter mention

Here's the first thing he said is that the Holy Spirit is near to us.

The Holy Spirit is near to us.

And I want to show you this in John 14, in verse 15, in verse 16, it says, I will ask the Father.

And before we get to before we dive into this too far, I want you to notice Father, Son, Holy Spirit in these passages of Scripture.

And Pastor Josh just a moment ago said, We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus would emphasize Father Himself, Father, Son, Holy Spirit in these passages.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, someone else to come alongside you to help you and be with you forever.

Now, would you underline that in your Bible?

There's a lot of lonely people sitting in a big crowd this weekend.

In fact, across America right now, psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors are saying, for the first time in America, we have become the loneliest nation on the planet.

We are becoming a people that are intensely isolated from one another.

And you can actually come into a big room like this, surrounded by people and be totally lonely.

And I have great news for you the Holy Spirit is with you forever.

And look at what Jesus says, verse 17, and the Spirit of truth, he says, the world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him.

You will know him, you will recognize him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

And I want you to pay attention to this last passage of scripture.

Jesus is about to use the most intensely personal word to describe the Holy Spirit.

I want you to catch what Jesus is about to say.

Jesus does not mince words here.

Jesus is so purposeful in his language.

Verse 18 says, I will not leave you as orphans.

I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you.

Listen, a lot of people have made you promises and they've abandoned you.

There are a lot of people that you've been abandoned in marriage.

You've had friends betray you, you've had business partners take advantage of you.

You've had brothers and sisters turn against you, you've had parents that won't speak to you.

Our lives are full of broken relationships.

And I understand firsthand what it means to be abandoned, but Jesus says, listen to me very carefully.

When the Holy Spirit comes to you, I will not leave you alone.

I will not abandon you.

You can trust that I'm going to be near you.

I will not leave you as orphans.

And when I was seven years old, I was raised in North Louisiana, and my mom and my dad uh in October of 1974 took my brother and my sister and myself to the Louisiana State Fair.

And it was the first time they'd ever really had the money to take us to this.

And so my dad got, I remember it was a Saturday night, and the place was packed.

And my dad got got us out of the car.

This was before we wore seatbelts, so we were all in the back of the car laying down.

You remember that?

Remember those days, the good old days when you drank out of water hoses and went to bed in lead-lined beds and with paint everywhere full of lead.

You remember that?

Rode in the backseat of the truck.

Remember that, okay?

That's what I'm talking about.

So my dad gets us out of the 1970s, in 1974 to Louisiana State Fair, and I remember him at seven years old looking at us and says, do not go too far from me.

There's a lot of people here.

It's easy.

He gives me the speech, you know, don't go too far.

And it's before they had the leashes that you put on small kids, which is the greatest invention.

Have you seen that?

It's a bit disturbing, quite honestly, all right?

Three rolls on leashes, but I could understand it now, right?

So I'm at the Louisiana State Fair, and sure enough, we get down the midway, and there are thousands of people and lights everywhere.

And have you ever had those moments when you were a kid that you cannot forget, they get seared into your memory?

This was one of those nights because about halfway down the midway, I had gotten away from my mom and my dad, and I looked up and realized I can't find them.

And I felt such terror and such fear come over me.

And I mean, I can remember it like it was yesterday.

I'm 50 years old.

This is 43 years ago.

I can I can see it, I can smell it, I can, I can remember that night where I'm lost, and I stood there panicked.

Where's mom?

Where's dad?

And I remember the speech he had just given me 20 minutes ago.

Don't wander away.

And suddenly I realized I am lost.

And my dad, now we were born in Louisiana, so you understand the story in just a moment.

My dad, growing up, had somehow, in some kind of uh mishap, lost a tiny part of his front tooth.

Now he had his front teeth, okay?

I just want to promise that.

I want to clarify this.

My dad had his front teeth, but he had a little tiny chip that was just missing off the just the right front.

And because of that, he had the most distinctive whistle.

He could whistle out of his front teeth.

Can anybody do that?

I just want to hear most.

Come on, you can do this in church here.

That's it.

That's it right there.

Thank you.

That was awesome.

Dad, Dad, like I can catch this, right?

That was awesome.

We whistled in church.

I love this, all right?

My dad, true story, my dad had trained bird dogs and three kids with that whistle.

And I stood there for about 30 seconds, terrified.

Terrified.

And suddenly I heard that whistle, that shrill whistle, and I stopped and I turned, and my dad was about 15 feet away.

He had never taken his eyes off me.

I had never been alone.

And in my moment of greatest fear and greatest panic, something got put down deep into my soul as a seven-year-old.

And I'm telling you, for the last 43 years, I have been absolutely convinced because I was raised in a home that talked about the Holy Ghost, not just the Holy Spirit.

We talked about the Holy Ghost at my house.

I mean, before I learned the English language, I heard speaking in tongues.

I know what the Holy Spirit is.

Tongues was my first language.

I know the Holy Spirit.

And at seven years old, the Lord seared into my imagination.

He seared it into my heart.

Brady, I've never taken my eyes off you.

You've never been alone.

Listen, listen, Gateway, listen to me.

You're not alone.

You're not alone.

You're not an orphan.

You've not been abandoned.

God's eyes have always been on you.

And you may feel lost tonight.

You may feel alone tonight.

You may feel unattached.

You may feel like nobody sees you, but I have great news for you.

The Holy Spirit is near to you.

He is near to you.

All right, skip down.

John 14.

Stay in John 14.

Go to verse 25.

Here's the second thing Jesus said to his disciples.

He says, The Holy Spirit is our teacher.

The Holy Spirit is our teacher.

Let me show this to you, okay?

Verse 25.

All this I have spoken while still with you.

He said, I'm right here with you, but I'm still speaking to you.

All this I'm speaking right here with you.

But the advocate, the second time he's used that word, the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send to my name, listen to this, will teach you.

Now, this is a Greek word that I want you to catch.

The Greek word is Didasco.

Now put it up on the line.

I think I have it up there for you.

You can write it down.

I want you to do some study on this word.

For those of you that really want to study the scriptures, write this word down, Didasco.

I will teach you.

And this word, if you have any school teachers in the room, anybody, any, can we just say thank God for school teachers?

Amen.

Amen.

Thank the Lord for your faithful, the way you teach our kids.

But any homeschool moms and dads here, come on, raise your hands too, right?

All right, we love that.

All right?

And so here's what teaching is.

Teaching is not giving new information every day.

Oftentimes, teaching is simply reminding students of what you have already taught them.

This is the word, Didasco.

Didasco, right now, uh all the Major League Baseball teams are breaking for spring training.

In fact, I think the season starts this week, right?

All the Ranger fans in the room say, Amen, right?

Heaven on Earth, Rangers back playing.

All right.

You know what they've been doing for the last 30 days?

The Rangers.

These are grown men who have played baseball since four years old.

Grown men, professional baseball players have spent the last 30 days practicing a sport that they've played all their life.

I was just in Scottsdale.

And these grown men for the last 30 days have been running drills, playing games, practicing running, hitting, throwing, catching, running, hitting, throwing, catching, running, hitting, throwing, catching.

Every day.

I said to one of the guys, I met, I met one of the players, and I said, Can't y'all just stretch out a little bit and get going?

Come on.

Y'all been playing this game since you were a kid.

And you've got to spend 30 days in spring training running and hitting, throwing and catching, running and hitting, throwing and catching.

Can't you just play?

Because here's the deal.

The Holy Spirit, listen, the Holy Spirit comes to us every day.

Every day.

Dadasco.

Brady?

Love, forgive, serve and obey.

Brady, today, listen, Brady.

Love and serve.

Forgive and obey.

Brady, today, listen, 50 years old, Brady, love, serve, forgive, obey.

Every day, the Holy Spirit is there to remind me of what it means to follow Jesus.

I want to say this to you.

For those of you that are a little bit skeptical of the Holy Spirit, you cannot follow Jesus without the Holy Spirit.

Do not even try to follow Jesus without the person and the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot follow the teachings of Jesus without the Holy Spirit there with us every day, saying, love, forgive, serve, obey.

Love, forgive, serve, obey.

Reminding us.

Listen to what he says.

Go back into it.

He says, I'm going to send you, I will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give to you, and I don't give it to you as the world gives.

He says, Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Do not be afraid.

You know why we are overcome by fear many times?

It's because we forget what Jesus has already said to us.

The reason fear cripples us.

The reason fear derails our lives is because we often forget what the Holy Spirit has said to us, what Jesus has said to us.

Jesus said, You're in the palm of my hand.

No power of hell, no scheme of man can take you from the palm of my hand.

I am with you always unto the very end of the age.

Go and make disciples.

I am here.

This is what the Holy Spirit does for me.

The Holy Spirit comes to me every day and says, Brady, don't be afraid.

Brady, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid, Brady.

You're in the palm of his hand.

No power of hell.

No scheme of man can take you from the palm of my hand.

That's the Holy Spirit's work.

Brady, love, forgive, obey, and serve.

Love, forgive, obey and serve.

Every day, Didasco, the great teacher in my life.

But then Jesus says something else.

Now it's about to get interesting.

Go to John 16.

He'll show you what else he said about the Holy Spirit.

John chapter 16, he says, the Holy Spirit is our guide.

John 16 · chapter mention

It's a different than teacher.

It's a much different word.

I'm gonna show this to you, okay?

John chapter 16, verse 12, I have much more to say to you.

John 16:12

More than you can now bear.

Every pastor understands this.

I have a lot more to say to you, just more than you can take tonight, all right?

I have much more to say to you.

More than you can now bear, but listen, verse 13.

But when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you.

He will not leave you alone, he will teach you, and he will guide you.

It's not it's not the same word.

Oftentimes people read John 16 and think it's the same word in John 14.

It's not.

That word was Didasco.

This word is hodegeo.

Write the word down, hodegeo.

It'll come up on the screen there, hodegeo.

It's a Greek word, it's much different.

He will guide you into all truth, he says.

Now, here's what the word hodegeo.

Hodegeo, if you've ever been on a hiking trip, if you've ever come to my state of Colorado, let me suggest something to you.

Take, we have we have thousands of miles of trails in the most beautiful place on the planet.

There's there's hardly any place in the world that's more beautiful than Colorado because you can get lost there and you can die there.

It's dangerous.

And let me just say this to you: it's best to take someone who's already been on the trail before.

And if you want to take a great trip, a great backpacking trip where you spend the night in the mountain, you need to take someone who is familiar with the trail.

You need to take someone who's been on the trail before, who knows where to stop, who knows where to warn you, who can take you on the adventure of your life because they've been there before.

This is the word Hodegeo.

The Holy Spirit wants to take you by the hand.

If you're bored this weekend, I have good news for you.

The Holy Spirit has come to take you by the hand.

And if you are willing to go on a trail that he's already been on, if you're willing, he will guide you on the adventure of your life.

Ten years ago, when I left Gateway Church to go to New Life Church in Colorado, it was a hodgeo moment for my wife and I.

We had no idea what we were saying yes to, had no idea what we were going to do.

We had no idea what was in front of us.

All we knew is that the guide was with us.

The Holy Spirit had taken us by the hand.

The Holy Spirit had captured our heart for Colorado.

The Holy Spirit was leading us into the paths of righteousness for his name's sake, a place that I had never been and that I would not go on my own, but he had been there before.

Hodegael.

There are some of you that are ready for a hoodegael moment in your life.

Let me tell you the most dangerous prayer to pray, and I've and you should never pray this prayer.

Father in heaven, I am bored.

Don't ever pray it.

I'm telling you.

Because the Holy Spirit knows how to rid you of boredom.

We have we have indoor, we right near our church, we have this indoor water park that was just built.

And the reason it's an indoor water park is you can't swim on the outside in Colorado.

You die, okay?

You freeze to death.

There's like there's like three days you can swim in your swimming pool there, okay?

But we just built this massive indoor water park.

It's 85 degrees inside this building all the time.

Literally, one day it was two degrees.

I walk across the parking lot, thinking I was in Alaska.

I got in, opened the door, steam comes out, it's 85 degrees.

The place is packed with pale Coloradans who haven't seen the sun all winter.

I'm just telling you.

It is the whitest place on earth right now, okay?

This is these are people who have not seen the sun in six months, but they're inside in this indoor water park.

It's amazing.

And it just opened and it's packed full of people.

Pastor Daniel Grothy, who's one of our part of our team at New Life, he's with me.

His nine-year-old daughter, Lillian, uh, they were there the first few weeks it was open.

And and so here's what happened.

You walk up about six flights of stairs to get to the top of this thing.

And and so there's a little, okay, here's a little, a little shoot.

So you stand on this place like this, and you put your arms like this, and they tell you that your feet are basically the whole floor is gonna fall out, and you're just gonna go straight down a hole, okay?

And there's these tubes that go all around the room, these giant yellow tubes, and then and you're spinning, and you're there's water inside of it, it's scary, and your feet fall out, and you're you're running like 20 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, and then you spill out at the end of the tube, you come out of the tube right into this nice warm swimming pool.

Now they tell you all this while you get up there, but there's something terrifying about going to the top and saying, okay, wait there because the floor is about to disappear.

Now thinking you're nine years old.

Daniel's telling me the story, and I'm telling it much better than he told me, okay?

But he he said he she's terrified.

He's they're terrified.

They get to the top, and she's nervous, she's scared.

And Daniel says, Look, the floor is gonna fall out, it's gonna be super scary, it's gonna be super crazy, and then you're gonna get to the end.

That's where you're gonna come out.

See, that's where you're going to end up.

That's where you're going to come out.

You're gonna end up in the pool, in between the floor falling out.

And the pool is craziness, though.

It's gonna be fun.

Trust me.

But Daniel tells a story of taking his nine-year-old to the top, getting there to the top.

Arms to the side.

She's terrified.

The floor falls out.

You can hear her screams.

Disappears into the tube.

Around and around this big yellow tube, and she spills out into the pool unharmed.

She does it like 12 or 13 times that day.

She wore herself out.

Right?

Just wore herself out.

Listen, hodegeo moments feel like this.

When Jesus said to his disciples, I'm going to guide you.

I'm going to take you by the hand.

I'm going to lead you to the top of a set of stairs that you would never go on your own.

You would never do that on your own.

But if you're willing to go with me and go to the top, it's going to end up fine.

From the time though that I get you to the top, and the time you spill out, it's going to be crazy.

Exciting.

I can't tell you everything that's going to happen in that tube because you probably wouldn't go to the top of the stairs if I told you everything.

What I can guarantee you though is I am not going to fail you in the end.

It's going to be worth the risk that you're going to take.

Poe to Gayo.

Let me tell you a story of a guy who, in my opinion, was a punk.

God bless him, but he was a punk.

Sir Francis Drake was a pirate, a scavenger, a slave trader.

Later in his life, though, after all the ways that he had messed up his life, he found God.

And he had realized that he had wasted most of his life.

And he was trying to make up for a wasted life when he wrote this prayer.

And Sir Francis Drake wrote this prayer late in his life after he realized that most of the good days of his life were gone.

But he had found forgiveness and grace in the Holy Spirit late in his life, and he didn't want to waste another day living for himself.

And one morning he wrote this prayer that I want to read to you.

And this prayer is on a poster, a plaque in my wall, in my off, on my wall in my office.

Every day I read this prayer over myself.

And when I turn 50 years old this year, I read this prayer every day to remind myself that I have some good days left ahead of me.

I don't want to waste a single one living in some bored, watered-down faith.

I want to live in hodegeo moments.

I want to be the person that the Lord can take by the hand and lead me to the top of the stairs.

And I want to trust the Lord that when the floor falls out underneath me, that I will be willing to go wherever he leads me.

I'll be willing to say whatever he asked me to say, do whatever he asked me to do, to go wherever he asked me to go.

I want to be that person.

And if you're here this weekend, and I don't suspect that very many of you are going to really mean this when you pray this, but there will be a handful of us in this room who will want to do this.

And I'm going to give you a prayer to put some fuel in your life today.

That's why I have come this weekend.

To fan into flame for a handful of us that are willing to be that person.

I want to read you the prayer of Sir Francis Drake later in his life.

He says, Disturb us, O Lord.

See, I didn't come here this weekend to entertain you.

The Holy Spirit has come to disturb us.

And we need to be disturbed.

We need our hearts stirred.

We need the Holy Spirit to stir in us.

And he says, Disturb us, O Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas, where storms will show your mastery.

If the floor falls out, I'm going to find God when the floor falls out.

That's what he was saying.

Where storms will show your mastery, we're being, we're losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

Disturb us, O Lord.

Disturb us, oh Lord.

This weekend, I wonder how many of us are willing to let the Holy Spirit disturb us.

I wonder how many of us are willing to let a hodegail moment happen.

Where God takes us by the hand and guides us into all truth.

Who leads us to a place that we would never go on our own.

I wonder how many of us this weekend are willing to say yes to the radical life of really following Jesus.

I wonder how many of us will say yes to an adventure, to being bold, to being courageous.

And I think I'm speaking to a few of you today.

I know that there's some of you ready to say yes to something more than what you're doing now.

I remember earlier this year I said, Lord, if I I don't want to settle.

I don't want to settle for something that's not right.

I don't want to settle for something.

I want to crash into heaven, used up, completely exhausted.

So excited.

I want to earn my sleep every night.

I want to earn my rest every night.

I want to be disturbed, oh Lord.

So I want you to stand with me all across every campus.

Would you just stand with me?

I don't know.

I don't know if you do this every weekend, but I'm going to ask you to do it this weekend.

For the last four months, I have prayed a prayer every morning that's only three words long.

This morning, early when I woke up, before my feet hit the floor, before I checked my phone, before I looked at any emails, before I answered any voicemails, before I turned on any kind of news, before anything else came into my heart.

I've been praying this prayer every morning for four months.

It has totally radically changed my life right now.

And I want to just give you the simplest free-word prayer you've ever been taught.

Come, Holy Spirit.

In a new way.

I know the Holy Spirit.

I know the Holy Spirit as well as I know anyone else on the earth.

I know who the Holy Spirit is.

But at 50 years old, I realize if I don't welcome him, I'm going to lose sight of him.

I'm not going to know him the way I want to know him.

So I've been asking the Lord every morning, come, Holy Spirit.

And I just lay in bed like this and I just put my hands in front of me and I pray this three or four times before I get up and I wait.

I linger.

I don't get in a hurry.

For a few minutes every morning, I just center myself with this prayer.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Would you just do that with me?

If you're hungry for the Holy Spirit with me this weekend, if you're one of the few who are willing to say to yes to a hodogail moment, Lord, you're you're near to me.

Holy Spirit, you're my teacher.

Holy Spirit, I give you permission to guide me right now.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit, at every congregation, every campus.

I'm going to pray this over you right now.

In the mighty name of Jesus, we welcome the person, the power, the presence of the Holy Spirit into our lives.

Awaken our heart, O Lord.

Disturb us, O Lord.

Disturb us.

Help us to dare more boldly to venture out onto the seas that you have mapped out for us.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit.

We pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.