What are Spiritual Gifts?

Thanks so much for joining us today, and we're excited about you getting to hear this message from the series called Gifted.

I hope that God speaks to you.

Please let us know how we can help you take your next steps in your spiritual journey.

We want to help you any way we can.

We believe that everybody should be connected in a local church.

So let us know how we can help you wherever you live.

I'm praying that God would richly bless you as you hear the word of God taught to you today.

Well, praise God.

I mean, I'm so excited to be back.

I mean, I said this last week.

I'm twice as excited this week as I was last week.

So I'm so so happy.

My name is Russ.

If I hadn't met you and you weren't here last week, you you really don't know who I am, maybe.

So uh if you've been here over the last eight weeks, um great to have you guys with us today.

If it's your first time, we're excited to have you.

Uh more than anything, we want you to experience the presence of God and hopefully um introduce you to Jesus if you hadn't already um been introduced to Jesus.

And so we're gonna we're beginning a brand new series today called Gifted.

We're gonna be talking over the next several weeks about spiritual gifts.

And and um many of you know that during my sabbatical, Jill and I went um to Israel.

I shared a little uh a few pictures and things last week, but um part of our trip, um, we spent three days in uh around the southern part of Israel, um, and then we drove north uh along the Jordan River Valley, and we drove into a place called Jericho.

And so um we got out and uh uh Pastor Andy took us and we walked along what are known as the ruins of the winter palace of King Herod.

And so it's at the foothills of the of where the journey begins from Jericho to go up towards Jerusalem.

It's about an 18-mile walk up the Jericho Road, the Jericho Trail.

You maybe have heard the story of the Good Samaritan.

That was the setting place for that.

Um, there are psalms like Psalm 121 that are written about the God's people journeying to Jerusalem at different festivals.

And so after we visited and spent some time, and as Pastor Andy explained to us a little bit about the ruins there, all these winter palaces of the religious leaders and the political leaders and King Herod and what he built, um, we started hiking the Jericho Trail.

Now the goal was to hike about two miles in.

There's a monastery in there.

Uh there's multiple monasteries and multiple places you can visit, but there was a monastery I was hoping that we would get to about two miles in called St.

George's Monastery.

But it was dependent upon all of us making the hike and and being able to handle the strain of the heat and the strain of the incline as we went up.

Pastor Andy told us months before the trip, this was a hiking trip.

This wasn't a typical tourist trip.

This was a hiking trip.

He said, get out in the heat and walk.

Get your body adjusted to it.

And so I was hoping that we would make it two miles in, but we didn't.

We didn't.

There were 29 of us, and everybody was not quite capable of hiking all the way in the two miles to St.

George's monastery.

Now I wanted to keep going by myself, but he wouldn't let me.

He knew that everybody had to stay together.

You're out in the middle of the desert in the middle of the day, and we were accountable to one another.

We had to take care of each other.

As we got in about a mile, it it's it's amazing to walk along this path.

And when I had always heard stories about the Jericho Road, I pictured, you know, a two-lane road or a two-lane kind of uh dirt road.

I mean, it it literally it's just you see in some of the pictures, it's a very narrow path.

And it's and as you walk in, the farther you walk in, the more dangerous it is because you when you look down, it it goes down into uh what's called Wadi, the Wadi Kelt, and it's a long way down.

A lot of people can get hurt.

If you go look up to the right, it's straight up into the hills, into the mountains.

It feels like a mountain.

And so in the middle of the day, in the middle of the heat, we realized everybody can't make the hike.

And we were accountable to one another to make sure that everybody was protected and everybody was safe.

And so they wouldn't let me keep going because all of us had to stay together.

That's something we learned on the trip.

We had to stay together.

If everybody couldn't make it, none of us would make it.

If one part of the group was in need, the rest of the group was there to make sure that everybody was okay.

And it's a bit of a picture of how important the entire body of Christ is toward one another.

All of us in the church together, pulling together, working together, um, um, pursuing the purpose of God together, working toward fulfilling the great commission that Jesus gave us, the plans that God has for the church.

All of us are gifted.

All of us have a role, and all of us are part of this journey.

And we've got to make sure that everybody is on it.

We can't go it alone.

We're all meant to be together.

And it's so important for us to understand what our individual role is in the entire body.

Each one of you are gifted.

You are gifted in a very individual way that the Creator gave you gifts.

And for you to fill your purpose and your plan, and for the body of Christ to fulfill the purposes God has given for the body, for the church, we all have to be on this journey together.

And so we're talking in this series about our spiritual gifts.

And we live in a culture today where this is more important than ever.

We live in a culture where Christianity and those of us that follow Jesus are becoming more and more marginalized.

We are being pushed farther away to the edges of society.

40, 50 years ago, we would say that our culture and our nation and even in the West was built on Judeo-Christian values, and we see day by day how those values are being stripped and torn away from us.

Traditional biblical beliefs and practices are being questioned and doubted.

While at the same time, all this is happening.

We see headlines and news of people who were known as great men or women of God falling from grace, making headlines, not that bring God glory, but making headlines that bring shame to the body of Christ.

And so the church in America, when you look at it through the eyes of just normal humanity, it's in decline.

Now I know how the end of the story ends, and so I still have hope, and I still have faith, but but it saddens my heart.

Our church is one one of the one of the things that we want to see happen in the next three to five years is we want to plant a new church, and we've kind of zeroed in on the area of good hope, and there's three or four churches that have come together and said, hey, we're gonna plant a new church in the area of good hope.

We see the growth in that area.

Um, and we just found out recently that one church out there has just recently closed their doors.

And you're seeing that all over.

You're seeing that all over.

We're part of an association of churches that just work together.

And pre-COVID, there were 125 churches in this fellowship.

Post-COVID, it's down to 79.

And that's a bit discouraging if we don't know the reality that in the end that Jesus' name will be lifted up, it will be exalted, he will return, and all of his plans and purposes will be fulfilled.

But until then, the message that I want you to see is that we're all gifted individually to come together with the church not being an organization, but a living organism.

Carrying out the plans and the purposes of God.

And this isn't just for the global church.

This is for this community, this is for Walton County, this is for East Metro Atlanta, this is for Church at the Grove.

What does God have planned for us?

We shared a vision at the end of last year, the beginning of this year, that said the next three to five years, we want to see several things that are that are faith-oriented type of things happen.

We want to see a hundred people baptized in two years.

Why is it not reasonable to think that we can see one person on average baptized every week?

Now let me tell you that so far this year, we're on pace for that.

Praise God.

Amen.

That's exciting.

We've seen, you know, 30 people or so go through the baptismal waters already this year.

Um, in the next three to five years, we want to we want to see the number of people percentage-wise related to our Sunday attendants that are connected in community groups to go up.

We want to see that number go up to 85%.

Now, before COVID, we only had a we only had 50% of our Sunday attendants connected in community groups.

And then we said, hey, we want to see that number.

We're not satisfied with that.

Some people will tell you, hey, those rusts, those are good numbers in today's culture.

I said, well, to me, that's kind of sad.

But let me tell you something, in just one year, in one year, we've seen that number go up to 60% from 50%.

Because we've just been emphasizing it.

And if you're not in a group, you're missing out.

We want to see 200.

Pat, that's amen, Pat.

I knew Pat, I knew I'd get one amen from Pat.

In one year, uh in three to five years, we want to equip 200 leaders through a process where they can move into areas to serve.

200 leaders through a process where they're empowered and gifted to fulfill the purposes and plans that God has for them in the local church.

And then we we I shared, we're we believe we're supposed to plant one church in the next three to five years.

We're supposed to plant one campus in the next three to five years, and over the next in the next five years, we're gonna send a hundred people on a short-term mission trip to one of our partners.

And so those are those are those are things that I feel like are God-sized things.

It doesn't matter how many people we gather inside this building if we're not thinking about how many people we're sending out.

And so none of this is possible if we don't work together.

Everybody discovering their giftedness.

When I think of gifted, I think of the program that some of my friends were invited to back in the elementary school days.

And emphasis was my friends.

I was not invited.

I was I was not uh tapped on the shoulder for the gifted program, which is which is okay.

But but my brother Butch is here.

He's probably more gifted than me.

And then we had a brother that was really gifted.

I mean, he Eddie was Eddie was the was kind of the brilliant mind out of the out of the family.

And so, so, but that's not the kind of gifted we're talking about.

We're talking about a supernatural gifting that takes place when you put your faith in Jesus.

If you're a follower of Jesus, at the point that you put your faith in Jesus, God gives you a spiritual gift.

Now, I've got a little visual image here.

I want you to uh I hope that'll help a little bit.

Many of us, when we think about what it means to be a believer, we think about that point or that time that we put our faith in Jesus.

And many of us think that's it.

Hey, I can tell you my testimony.

Russ, I can tell you when I walked the aisle, or I can tell you when I fill out a card, I can tell you when I repeated a prayer.

And that is great.

I hope, I hope, I hope that, man, when you met Jesus, it was real, it was life-changing.

But let me tell you, that's not the end all.

That is simply the beginning.

That's the beginning.

There's a three, this is a three-legged stool.

This stool right here, by just one leg, just salvation by itself.

That's the beginning.

It's not gonna stand with one leg.

There's another part of the process, there's another step that we've got to take, and that's to invest our life in the word of God.

Last week I talked about the written word and the living word and how the truth of God has to be invested in our life.

And many of us would would, man, we would, we'd we'd go to we'd go to blows, we'd fight for the word of God, we'll fight for truth.

Let me tell you, there is such a thing as absolute truth.

And it begins with God and it begins with his word.

We live in a culture where everybody says, hey, just you do you.

Now that's not, that's not, that doesn't mean anything.

That's meaningless.

There is such a thing as truth.

There is such a thing as God's word, and we should study it.

But hey, buy just these two things together aren't going to allow the stool to stand.

There is still another component.

And you know what that is?

It's the power of the Spirit at work in our life.

So you can have salvation, you can even have the word, but we all need the gift of the Spirit of God.

We all need the power of the Holy Spirit for us to carry out the purposes and the plans that God has for us.

And so the big idea this morning is supernatural power is dispersed when spiritual gifts are deployed in and through us.

And so I want to just give you an overview of what's going to take place.

We're going to go into more detail about spiritual gifts over the next few weeks.

But my prayer is that this won't just be a Bible study about information, but it will be transformation for us that we'll walk out of here willing to be led by the Spirit to deploy our spiritual gifts and see the power of God at work.

And that the culture, that our relationships, our neighborhoods, our families, our friends would be transformed because gifts are being deployed and we're using them.

And so I said last week, I said, over the summer, people said, Well, Russ, what's the what how was your sabbatical?

I said, I, you know, it was it was great.

Let me tell you, just a you know, the two or three nuggets is number one is I feel like I just fell in love with the word of God all over again.

And just reading the word for the sake of reading the word.

A little bit.

I miss people.

But it was good for me to take a little time off and to and to just to be captured in awe by the word of God.

And then you throw in a trip to Israel just like gasoline on the fire.

But listen, if we just read and study and get more information, that will not lead to transformation.

Matter of fact, the problem I think with the church in America is we are addicted to information.

And we are allergic to accountability in doing, serving, using our spiritual gifts.

So, what are spiritual gifts?

They're not natural abilities.

They're not natural abilities.

Let me explain what what they're not first.

They're not natural abilities or talents that uh uh that you're that you're just kind of born with and and given to by just creation through through the power of God and creation.

What I mean, let me use an example of somebody who's just gifted in physically and how they can they can run or maybe how they can play a sport.

You see people that are just gifted naturally, they're born with natural gifts.

Some people are gifted athletically, and they don't even have to work hard at it.

And then they're working and they train and they get better.

I mean, you just see it.

You see, you see, you see, watch a team play and see players that they're just born with speed, born with the ability to jump.

That's not it.

You that's not the kind of gifts we're talking about.

We're not talking about acquired skills.

You you can be born and you can learn things.

You can go to school and be educated, or you can be trained in a job and acquire a skill.

You can apprentice and learn a trade.

You can become a musician through learning how to play.

And of course, I think some of those gifts are natural as well.

Um, but what we're talking about in spiritual gifts, we're talking about divine abilities.

Divine abilities that enable us to do what God's called us to do, to do ministry.

So here's what Paul says.

We're gonna be in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 a lot over these next few weeks.

But here's what he says, verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 12.

He says, All these are the work of one and the same Spirit.

Talking about the Holy Spirit.

And he, the Holy Spirit, distributes them to each one just as he determines.

So he determines.

God sovereignly determines who gets what gift.

You don't necessarily get to choose.

God will give you supernaturally a gift, or maybe, or maybe a gift and a couple other gifts that you're strong in.

And so these gifts are sovereignly given.

They're supernatural in orientation.

They'll bring glory to God, they'll help other people, they'll point people to Jesus, they'll minister the gospel to children, they'll point teenagers to Jesus.

They'll make sure that orphans are taken care of and that widows are loved on and taken care of and their needs are met.

And so we can't we can't muster up in our natural ability the things that God gifts us in spiritual gifts.

And this goes against everything that we're taught through our culture.

What you would hear about sometimes in your in your area of education, or what we see in the news, God supernaturally gifts us.

When we come to Jesus, we're given a gift.

Here's something I'm just gonna be vulnerable with.

Is I've always wanted to see God work in miraculous ways, and I have.

I have.

But I want to see it on a scale that is biblical, of a biblical epic scale.

I want to see the dead raised.

I want to see the sick healed.

I mean, I want to I want I mean and and and I and I and I've I know that happens.

I I believe it can happen.

I've I've heard stories.

I want to see it become more a part of our everyday life.

Sometimes do you just I mean, a lot of times you'll ask kids if they have questions in in Sunday school or in vacation Bible school or somewhere, and and and they'll ask these questions that they just and they're just honest.

And I just want to be honest sometimes.

God, why don't we see you work?

John 5 19, Jesus gave them this answer very truly.

He says, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself.

He can do only what he sees his father doing.

Because whatever the father does, the son also does.

So Jesus is saying, Listen, there is a connection between me and my heavenly father.

And I can't do anything except what the Father is doing, and what I see the Father doing.

And in John 14, 12, he says, Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me, listen to this, will do the works that I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

So here's my honest question.

If it says right there that he will do even greater things than Jesus, because he's going to the Father, what does that mean?

It means when the Spirit of God comes and lands inside of every person, and the church is born, and when every person surrenders themselves to the power of the Spirit, God is capable of doing even more than Jesus could do alone when he was on this planet.

These are big statements that Jesus makes.

How is this possible?

Let's take a little bit of a journey back, looking at Jesus' life and how he is the model for us understanding spiritual gifts.

Philippians 2, 6 through 8.

I read this passage last week, so I'm just going to read part of it.

It says, who?

And who's he talking about?

He's talking about Jesus.

Paul is reading out of, out of, he's writing, and he's giving us a psalm or a song or a poem that was read back in the early church.

And he says, who?

Talking about Jesus, being in the very nature God.

Jesus is in his very nature.

He is God.

God in the flesh, the incarnation.

He did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

So here's what he's saying.

Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God in the flesh, he was willing to set his godness aside so he could come to this earth.

I talked about it last week.

How Jesus is willing to cross boundaries.

And so Jesus says, I'm going to lay my godness aside.

I'm going to be born as a human being.

And he spends 30 years being raised in a Jewish home.

He goes to school just like every Jewish child.

He learned the Torah.

He began to immerse himself in Scripture.

His family took, they celebrated all the Jewish festivals.

And so he is God, but he has chosen to turn off the God faucet.

How do you explain this?

This is a mystery of the gospel.

But here's what I picture.

The God well is there.

The well is full.

But he has chosen to turn the God faucet off.

And so, for all we know, the first 30 years, we don't know that he taught, that he healed, that he performed miracles.

We know that he ended up at the temple and he's teaching and having conversations to the point that they're like, who is this 12-year-old kid?

And his parents have walked down the Jericho Road.

They get all the way to Jericho and they have to go 18 miles back to get their child.

Have any of you left your child anywhere?

Don't answer that.

I know I have.

Sometimes you just forget how many you have, and you know.

So I mean it's happened.

It's happened.

I think it's a it's a guy thing, too.

And so we don't, we don't, so, so the God faucet is turned off, the well is there, he he is God in the flesh.

And so, but there's something that happens at the age of 30 years old.

Jesus has an experience.

John the Baptist is preaching, and Jesus walks into their midst, and he and he he says, John, baptize me.

John's like, I can't, I you don't, you're G you're Jesus.

I know who you are.

He says, No, baptize me.

Baptize me.

All righteousness needs to be fulfilled.

Jesus didn't need to be baptized, but but it was part of God's plan.

He was a model for us.

So he is modeling for us something.

Baptism is important.

It is an outward symbol of what happens inwardly when Jesus comes and lives inside of us and we're saved.

But then what happens after he comes out of the water?

What happens?

What happens?

There is a word spoken over him.

This is my son in whom I am well pleased.

Why is he well pleased?

Because he obeyed his parents.

That's for all the kids.

You see, I want God to speak to me.

Well, obey your parents.

But what happens?

What comes upon him physically after he's baptized?

In the form of a send a dove.

The Holy Spirit.

God is doing something and He's wanting, He's, he's making sure that it's visible.

There is a transformation taking place.

Jesus is going public with his ministry, and the faucet gets turned on.

I mean, the well is still full.

I mean, we couldn't handle the faucet, probably turned on completely.

But what God is telling us is that I'm going to do something through my son that all of you are capable of doing if you, like him, have the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Do you see it?

And so Jesus teaches, he ministers, he heals.

Every spiritual gift, he would have been the one individual that had every manifestation of every spiritual gift flowing through him.

And it's and it's it shows us that the spirit is what makes the difference.

The spirit changes everything.

Without the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus would not have been able to bring the good news, would not have been able to heal, would not have been able to perform miracles.

It's the power of the spirit.

And God is visibly showing us, he's modeling to us, there is a difference when the Spirit comes.

Same spirit that Jesus is given and leads and empowers him is the same spirit that is made available to you and to me.

Let's just sit there for a second.

Make sure we don't miss this.

The same spirit that came upon Jesus, that empowered him, and for all that spiritual giftedness to work and flow through him is available to you and to me and to us.

And so Jesus is our Savior, but he's also our model.

So 1 Corinthians, back to 1 Corinthians 12.

For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free.

And we were all given one spirit to drink.

And here's what I believe Scripture teaches: when you come to faith in Jesus, you are baptized into the Spirit of God.

There is one baptism.

Now I know there's traditions that believe that there's a subsequent experience that you have, and I would say that those are fillings.

There's one baptism, many fillings.

But when you are saved, you are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Everything God has is made available to you.

And so the Spirit is given to all believers.

And so the key is this we all together are to deploy our gifts to see the power of God work through the church the way God wants and the way God plans.

Romans 12, Romans 12, 4, 5, and 6.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Look at your neighbor and say, I belong to you.

All right, look at the other neighbor, so it's not your spouse, and tell you.

I belong to you.

You do belong to your spouse, but you belong to the other believers.

And I know that's weird for some of you, whoever you looked at.

That's weird because you don't even know them.

Let me tell you what, everybody over here, you don't know everybody over here.

You know why?

Because I when I preach, you're sitting in the same place every week.

Y'all need to get to know the people over here because you belong to them.

Right here, you belong to them.

I don't know what's where are the people that should be right here.

We have different gifts, but we all belong, and this is what we're missing.

See, we live in an age where it's all about independence.

I can, it's like a toddler.

That you're trying to do something for them, and they've all of a sudden got this spirit of independence, and they, what do they say?

You're trying to help them do something, and they say, I can do it myself.

And and you know what?

That we some of us maintain that independence into adulthood.

I pull myself up by my bootstraps, I can do it.

I hey, I don't need, I don't need the church.

I I I I can do it alone.

Now the other extreme is dependence, unhealthy dependence.

Where we don't do anything and we allow other people to do everything.

That's not God's plan either.

It's it's it's tilted to one side.

It's every every leg on the stool is not in place.

But what God wants is not independence, not dependence, but it's interdependence.

It's the body of Christ.

It's when two or more people are in sync together.

It's when we come together and the power of God is made manifest, manifest through the preaching of the word, manifest through our worship collectively, but manifest as well through our service, through serving community, through teaching our kids, through loving our middle school and high school students, through going into the community and coaching and loving on kids, loving on families, serving in our community.

It's seeing the third leg of the stool is the power of the Holy Spirit, walking in the fullness of the Spirit, where we can see the power of God at work.

And we're going to talk about that over the over the next um several weeks.

How God could work and how the Spirit of God in conjunction with surrendered hearts could bring revival.

This last Sunday.

And last Sunday, Kim sends us a text and she says, if you want to say goodbye, you probably need to get over here pretty quick.

And so all week long, Kevin he hasn't stepped into eternity yet.

He's hanging on.

But it's coming.

But I was thinking all week, man, God, I wish I could see a miracle.

And then God reminded me of the day that Kevin called me about seven years ago to tell me that he'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

And he said, Russ, they've given me three months to a year.

Three months to a year.

And he said, Let me tell you something.

He said, Man, I'm good.

I'm good because I know where I'm going and I'm ready.

He said, But I wish, I wish God would give me just a little bit longer so I could watch my kids grow up a little bit more and I could put my house in order and make sure they're taken care of.

And so when he he moved back to Georgia, he said, I want to come back.

I want to be around my church family and around my biological family for the last days.

And he said, Hey, would you gather the elders and anoint me with oil and pray over me?

And we did.

And I was thinking about the power of God.

I said, You know what?

God gave him seven years.

He gave him, yeah, more than three months, more than a year.

He's got his house in order.

I watched him as he loved on his kids last Sunday and had a moment with each one of his kids.

And he's ready.

I'm telling you, God can work, and he does answer prayers, he does miracles.

You want to see more?

Then take your life and surrender it.

And say, God, I want more of you.

Give me faith.

God, take my life, take my hands, take my feet, take my heart.

And you partner with God and you partner with the local church.

You partner with God's plans and God's purposes, and you will see the Holy Spirit come into your life, come into the life of your kids, come into the life of your family, come into the life of neighbors.

I've seen it.

But I want to see more.

So here's what I'm going to ask you to do is number one, come back next week.

Come back, study with us.

If you can't be here physically, keep up with what we're doing online.

There's a shape assessment.

There is an online tool that we would love for you to take.

Now, I don't think you take an assessment and you just magically get a spiritual gift.

But it helps.

It's a tool for you.

The best way to learn what your spiritual gift is, is jump in and serve somewhere.

If you're walking down the street and a house is on fire, you don't gather a bunch of people together and say, hey man, are you gifted with the hose?

Or are you gifted with the bucket?

Or are you gifted with the blanket?

No, you just start running toward the fire, hopefully.

You just do, you do whatever it takes.

Sometimes, some of you just need to, you need to walk out to the board out here that where we've got serve needs, and you need to jump in and serve, knowing, hey, as I serve, God will reveal my spiritual gift and help move the church forward in fulfilling the mission.

Church at the Grove and the body of Christ as a whole.

Supernatural power is dispersed when spiritual gifts are deployed.

And for some of you, it might be today that you put your faith in Jesus.

You put the first leg of the stool in place.

And you say, Jesus, I repent and I believe.

I believe in what you did in your life, your death, and your bodily resurrection to provide for my salvation.

Some of you just need to take that first step today.

There's not a prayer to repeat, it's simply a heart that's turned in repentance and belief and faith.

Some of you need to put the second leg in place, and you need to fall in love with the word of God, and you need to surrender to truth.

You need to read your Bibles on your own.

But listen, it's not there.

Discover it, and make yourself accountable to other people and to the body of Christ.

Would you pray with me?

Let's pray together.

Father.

That right now they would say yes.

Yes.

I believe, I repent, I trust.

Lord, I pray for that believer or that that the follower of Jesus that walk in this morning discouraged, feeling like they didn't have a place, feeling drained.

God, would you fill them?

Would you fill them?

We've already been baptized in the Holy Spirit if we believe.

God, fill us with your spirit.

God, I pray for encouragement.

I pray for hope.

I pray for truth.

I pray for joy.

Lord, I pray right now in the power of the Spirit against the enemy that wants to speak lies in our ear.

That wants us to walk around wondering if we have a purpose.

Bringing up our past.

God, we bind the enemy, we bind the strong man.

He would not have power over us or our families or our kids.

God, help us to walk in the fullness of the Spirit.

And God, we pray, we pray that your spirit would fall, that we would walk out of here with faith, excited about the future, because we know, regardless of what happens in this world, regardless of what somebody says in the news, regardless of what's happening in our culture, that we have a Savior who will return one day and he will set things right, and we can have hope regardless of our circumstances.

God, give us faith.

And everybody said, Together, would you stand with me?