My Biggest Regret | Jeff Leake

All right.

Wow.

I just have to say I have never been introduced anywhere with a football highlight reel insult video on top of it.

I mean, come on.

But he lived up to his word.

Here we go.

Here's the Jack Sawyer.

Maybe I should just like layer it up here and preach with it.

But uh yeah, we're excited.

I mean, I tell you, our our town has fallen in love with these two players.

Will Howard has endeared himself and Jack Sawyer already.

I know the season hasn't started, but uh, you got some good stuff going on.

Go buck eyes, and yeah, and uh thank you to to Pastor Greg for allowing me to be here today.

Um, let me introduce myself a little more.

So I pastor Allison Park Church, been there for 34 years, um, married to my wife Melody for 38.

We just a few weeks ago celebrated our 38th year anniversary.

Yeah.

We have um five children, all of them are married, and this is how our Christmas card looks now.

Um, these are all of our grandkids, minus two.

Two were born this year, so we now have 10 grandkids, and we are living the life.

How many grandparents in the house today?

Anyone?

I'll just tell you this is the one thing in life that's better than they tell you.

Like it's just more joy.

And as the old joke goes, if I had known it had been this good, I'd have done this first.

Not that you can do that, but you know what I'm saying.

All right.

Okay, so we're gonna dive right into this idea of uh the Jack Sawyer intensity.

And I want to talk to you a little bit today about something that the Bible says we should all be passionate about.

And so let's do passion comparison for a moment.

If you are a Buckeye fan and you take it up a notch, you might like look a little bit like this guy right here, right?

Like most of us are passionate, but then there's the people who paint their face.

Like that's just a whole nother level of passion.

Most people have a passion that looks like this.

When you're winning the national championship, give us the next picture if you would.

People are just there enjoying the moment.

And what a great, great moment this was for the history of Ohio State.

But it's not just football that where there's passion.

I I I've lived long enough.

I remember the 1960s and 70s actually, for something called Beatlemania.

I don't know, I don't know if you were around for that, but Beatlemania looks something like this.

People crying and weeping, getting close to the four Beatles.

Um, you know, this next picture.

This look at this little girl.

This all almost looks like she's worshiping.

Like it's just like, wow, what what level intensity?

Okay, this is another example of zeal.

Let me give you a third example.

Michael Phelps.

Michael Phelps is the Olympic gold medalist, right?

He's won 28 medals, 23 gold medals.

No one's even close to him.

Um, here is his measurement.

Six foot four inches tall, six foot seven wingspan, size 18 feet.

See, he was born with flippers that he could have, he could be a good swimmer.

Okay, his zeal, his zeal.

Listen, between 1998 and 2003, um, Michael Phelps went 2,200 straight days of training without missing once, except for when he had to have a root canal and when the weather prevented him to get to the training facility.

Like that's dedication.

Like that's zeal, that's passion aimed in a particular direction.

So, what are you zealous about?

What are you passionate about?

But maybe nothing on the Michael Phelps level.

Very few of us hit that level of tilt in some area where we feel a level of passion, but we're all zealous and passionate about some things.

Hopefully, you're passionate about your relationship with God.

I mean, I'd watched your worship team.

That's a level of zeal and passion.

I mean, when Blaze was singing, No Weapon formed us shall prosper, I heard some passion in the room.

Everybody's saying, Amen.

Let's believe for it, right?

Okay, so passion, the Bible actually teaches us that there is something that we're supposed to be passionate about that that many believers never ever get to.

And I want to take you now to 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and the first verse of this particular chapter.

1 Corinthians 14 · chapter mention

Okay, Paul is writing to the church that he planted in Greece in the city of Corinth, and he says this to them follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the spirit.

Okay, the phrase eagerly desire means to be zealous about, to be passionate about, to be hungry for.

And so he says, You're supposed to be hungry for gifts of the spirit.

But let's let's not go there yet.

First phrase was follow the way of love.

Let me give you biblical context.

The chapter before this one is known as the love chapter.

And even if you're not a Bible reader, you might know the love chapter.

Love is patient, love is kind, right?

Keeps no record of wrongs.

We oftentimes will hear this read during wedding ceremonies, right?

And then it says at the end, the final verse of chapter 13, these three things remain faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love, right?

And then the next verse, follow the way of love, and then the the the tie-in here, but eagerly desire, zealously desire, be passionate about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Now, here's my question.

I don't know too many Christians who wake up every day with Mike Phelps, Michael Phelps' determination to say, Today, God, I just want to see the Holy Spirit move through my life.

I just want to see a gift born in my life.

God, I want the Holy Spirit to be at work within my person.

I don't know how many people wake up zealously desiring that.

And maybe some of the reason is because some of you are already thinking this, you're thinking, I don't even know what that is.

I don't know how I could zealously desire it because I'm not exactly sure what that sentence means.

Eagerly desire the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And this is another thing that the apostle Paul mentioned.

So the chapter before the chapter on love, chapter 12, same context now.

Um, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, 1 says this.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

I want, um listen, he says, now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be ignorant.

Paul says, two problems that we have with spiritual gifts.

Number one is apathy, people don't want it enough.

And the second one is ignorance, they don't even know what it is.

If they knew what it is, maybe that would be one thing.

And so we've got to sort of start here, right?

Now, ignorance and apathy, let me just let me just tell you, you've heard the old joke, right?

You know what the difference between ignorance and apathy is?

I don't know, I don't care.

Turn to your neighbor and say, you'll get that in a minute.

Think about, yeah, get it?

Ignorance, I don't know.

Okay, forget that.

Let's move on now.

Okay, so so what exactly is this that we're talking about?

The these gifts of the Holy Spirit.

All right, let's let's just start with this idea.

In the moment that you give your life to Jesus, so you come to faith in Christ, you say, God, I need you in my life.

I know I'm empty inside, I'm longing for something, I want to reconnect with you.

And so we began to reach out in faith to the person of Jesus Christ who came in flesh, right?

The Son of God, and he demonstrated that he was who he said he was by the miracles that he did, and then he was crucified and he hung on the cross and he shed his blood as my substitute in death.

And when I put my faith in Jesus, his death on the cross, and his shed blood is able to wash away my sin from the past.

And so when I say, Jesus, come into my life, please forgive my sin, his shed blood is enough to cleanse my past and give me a fresh start.

And then he said the phrase, it is finished.

And they took him down from the cross and they laid him dead in the tomb.

And on the third day he didn't stay dead, he rose from the grave and he's alive today, and he's at work in the world.

And the Bible says, Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Give it up for that reality of Jesus' resurrection.

Okay, listen, the moment that you give your life to Christ, not only is your sin forgiven, you get a clean state slate before God, not only are you reconnected to God, not only are you given the promise of eternal life, you're gonna go to heaven, but something changes in here.

The moment you give your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, becomes alive in you.

We call it being born again or born spiritually, where you go from spiritually empty inside to spark the life of God sparks inside you, and there's life inside.

Your spirit now is alive with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and you walk around every day with him in your life.

Now, I think I'm getting older, and I think a lot about legacy.

I think when I get to the end of my life, I may have some regrets.

Right?

You probably have a regrets list.

Like if we sat and talked and said, What's your biggest regret?

And you might say, I wish I hadn't done that, right?

I wish I hadn't hung with that crowd, I wish I hadn't made that decision, or maybe I wish I had asked her out when I had the chance, or like there could be a whole bunch of things that might be on your regrets list.

But one thing I think we all may regret, that we don't even realize we're gonna regret it because we don't understand this reality.

I think I might get to heaven, learn more about the capacity of the Holy Spirit, and my regret will be I wish I had known this back then, because if I had known that the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead was living in me, I might have done more to partner with him to see my world become a different place.

Like if I had known, if I had only known that the same spirit who hovered over the waters when the world was created was alive within me and I was the temple of the Holy Spirit, I might have leaned into that relationship in such a way that might have changed the dynamic of not only my own soul, but of my family situation.

Because you see, we walk around every day with the Holy Spirit present within our life.

And I'll just say, a lot of believers, listen, a lot of people live as if their main goal for the week is just to survive the stress.

And God didn't set you on this earth to be a survivor, He He set you on this earth to be more than a conqueror.

Come on, somebody.

Oh, that was a good amen part.

Some of you missed that one.

I think I need to say it.

Look, you you are here to become a survivor.

You are here to become more than a conqueror.

Come on, somebody.

Amen, amen.

There we go.

How does this happen?

It's not that I become some super Christian or that I all of a sudden prove through my spiritual disciplines that I'm I'm competent in some error.

It's it's that I learn into lean into a person and a relationship with a person that will make me capable of doing things I can't do on my own.

You you and I need a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

So we'll put this now as our main idea.

One of the biggest regrets of my life may be the failure to learn how to actively partner with the Holy Spirit.

Now, hopefully, I have you leaning in right now, and you're saying, I need to know more about the Holy Spirit.

I want the Holy Spirit to be more active in my life.

And there is no way in one brief message I'm gonna be able to cover the distance that I need to cover.

But I feel personally a deep passion over this topic because the Holy Spirit's been the difference maker in my life.

And so I've actually so I didn't come here to sell books, I came here to serve you and my friend, Pastor Craig.

But I have written two books on the Holy Spirit.

One's called Gateway to a Supernatural Life, and the other one is about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

You are God's miracle delivery system, and they're both available if you're curious and you want to lean in more, they're available to you.

But we're gonna now dive into three practical ways the Holy Spirit can help you this week.

All right?

We're gonna talk about how he works in our life together.

And the very first one, before we get into how the Holy Spirit can use us to minister to somebody else, let's talk about how the Holy Spirit works to minister to us.

And we're gonna talk about this in the context of my first point, and that is peace.

Peace.

First thing we need is peace.

Here's my observation being a pastor for a long time.

A lot of people, when they show up to church on a weekend, have this in their mind.

They're like, it has been a difficult season.

I'm walking through a lot of stress, I'm facing a ton of trials right now.

Boy, I hope when I get to church today, there's something in the environment, something in the worship, something in the message that touches my heart because I really could use some peace.

And it's not just church goers.

I think there are people out there today searching for this in many, many different ways.

They lack peace inside, and they're chasing something out there to try to give them some kind of calm because of all of the trauma that they're dealing with.

Peace.

Peace is something that we all need and well, we all need to lean into.

And the Holy Spirit plays a role in this.

Um, I'm gonna take you now to a verse, it's very famous verse about this context or quality of peace.

Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7 is what we're gonna read together now.

Philippians 4:6

Um, and here's what it says.

If you're a Bible reader, you this might be familiar to you.

If not, we'll really unpack it to make sense, okay?

Here's what Paul Paul's the writer again.

Again, he's a missionary church planner.

He wrote to a church in Corinth, now in Philippi, okay, both in the country of Greece.

And he says, This do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And I love this left, this next verse.

This is the promise part, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Okay, let's keep that on the screen for a moment, and let's start with the first phrase.

Paul starts by saying, Do not be anxious about anything.

And at face value, I find this statement to be a bit rude.

Now, why do I say that?

Okay, if you're trapped in worry, here's how it works: worry starts this cycle.

What's gonna happen?

I don't know, what's gonna take place?

It could get worse.

Well, maybe if I tried this, and we start to think in a particular thought cycle, we analyze and we strategize, and it's like almost when you get caught into worry.

Worry's like a snowball that rolls down the hill.

It gets faster and bigger.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, until finally you lose your peace and you're just you know, it's just moving, moving, moving, moving.

And then all of a sudden, Paul shows up and he's like, All right, here's my solution for you.

Stop, stop worrying.

Like, well, that's real helpful.

Like, if I could stop worrying, I'd have done that already.

Like, give me something more.

What are you saying?

Just stop worrying, don't be anxious, but like it's a simple process, like all of a sudden stop worrying.

Okay, well, what was Paul teaching here?

Okay, let me explain.

This this might make sense to you.

When Paul says, Don't be anxious about anything, I actually think that what he was saying was this you gotta push pause on this cycle.

Because if you let it spin, it's gonna spin out on you.

You're not gonna sleep, your anxiety rate's gonna go up, you're gonna continue to think of additional things that might go wrong, and your and your insides are gonna become all filled with turbulence.

And and this process doesn't help anybody ever.

Did you know that?

Have you ever heard this testimony?

Someone say they they show up in your life and they're like, boy, everything was out of control, couldn't pay the bills, my kids were out of control, I was really worried about stuff at work.

And then I really started worrying.

And as soon as I started worrying, everything changed.

Like, anybody hear that testimony before?

Like, no, worry, worry doesn't, Jesus said who by worrying can add just even a single hour to your life.

I forget who said this, but they say worry is like sitting in a rocking chair.

It gives you something, you don't you're not getting anywhere, but it gives you something to do.

Right?

You're back and forth, worry, worry, worry.

Okay, so Paul says, here's what you gotta do.

You're trapped in fear and anxiety.

Stop.

Okay, we'll we'll use a different term.

Press the pause button.

The cycle's going, press pause.

And then make a decision to reverse the cycle.

So rather than what am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do?

Here's what you do.

By prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

Prayer says, God, I trust you with this.

You can handle this, you're good.

You've brought me through so much before.

I put this in your hands.

God, I worship you.

No weapon formed against me will prosper.

I confess my faith, right?

It is it's the opposite.

So prayer is kind of the opposite of worry.

Worry says, What am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do?

Prayer says, God, you can do it, God, you can do it, God, you can do it.

And when you reverse the cycle purposefully, by the way, this is really hard, and sometimes it has to be done with every breath.

Like if you're really trapped in this cycle, you might have to say, pause, no, God, I trust you, and then all of a sudden, God, no, I trust you.

And if you start to reverse the cycle, here's the promise.

And the peace of God, which notice now transcends your understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Let me just tell you, how is peace delivered into your life?

It doesn't come through your thoughts.

Okay, it's gonna be imparted to your spirit.

You see, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is peace.

And when the Holy Spirit gets active in your soul, he is peace and he will impart peace.

And when he imparts peace, it's something that he deposits in me that I don't deserve or earn or work up by my understanding.

In fact, very specifically, if peace is gonna show up in your life today, it won't come because you understand it all.

And this is the way we want to pray.

We're like, God, I need peace from you.

If you'll just help me understand it, then when I understand it, then I'll have peace.

This is a fallacy.

Listen, if God gave you more information about why this is happening and what's gonna happen next, that information would only give you more things to worry about.

You would not stop worrying with more information, you would actually wonder about the you know next things that would come.

And so, God, to bless you, does not start with your understanding.

He imparts peace to your spirit.

And when your spirit receives it, you say, Ah, God, you're in control, you're good, I can trust you.

I'm gonna lean into that.

Now, this is not illogical, it's not faith, it's unreasonable, it's not we shut our brains off and it no it doesn't matter, like we pretend that there's no problems in the world.

It's that peace is a quality that doesn't depend on you understanding it.

And then eventually, when you walk in peace, God starts revealing to you certain truths, stay with me here now, that become the promises of God you stand upon even while the details are working themselves out.

Yeah, let me let me say that again.

So listen, it's not that your brain doesn't work anymore, it's that peace comes as an impartation to your soul, injected directly, that then brings you a revelation of the things you need to think about according to the promises of God, so that as your mind and spirit work together, you walk forward in obedience with peace ruling your heart, guarding your heart as you step into the will of God.

How many of you still with me today?

Get this?

Yeah, okay.

The Holy Spirit imparts it to you.

So why do I need the Holy Spirit in my life?

Because I need peace and I need joy and I need patience.

Come on now, and all the other things that He's able, and He's able to impart into my spirit things I don't have on my own that help sustain me through the journeys of my life.

I think one of the things when we get to heaven we might turn around and regret is that we didn't understand who the Holy Spirit was and how we were supposed to work with him.

Because if we did, oh, we'd start to live different.

Let me let me give you a second aspect of how the Holy Spirit works through us.

The first I said is peace, second one is power.

So peace has to do with what the Holy Spirit imparts to me.

Power has to do with what he imparts to me and through me to somebody else.

So in the same way he injects peace into my soul, I then can also receive a power not from me that I can carry to somebody else.

And as I pray, the Holy Spirit is released through me to touch somebody else.

Now I know some of you might be new believers, some of you are new to Christianity, maybe you're not a Bible reader yet, but let me just let me just explain real simply that because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you and he can do anything, that means he who can do anything wants to partner with you to do something for somebody right now who is at home.

And here's what they're saying: God, if you're real, you know how hard it is right for me today.

I'd need a breakthrough in some area.

God, if you're real, would you send somebody to me who will speak into my life or pray for me?

You know how many thousands of people in the Columbus region go to sleep at night praying a prayer like that, desperate for a breakthrough.

And God hears the prayer, and then you wake up, and the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you, and you walk by them and you bump into them.

You you might have been the answer to their prayer had you been ready for that moment.

Think about it.

God wants to use you and me to distribute his answers to prayer as we are just available to listen and respond to what God is.

Boy, I got heavy in the room here for a moment.

I better give you a story, okay?

So you don't feel condemned.

All right.

So so listen, when I was when I was 15 years old, I gave my life to Christ.

I grew up in a pastor's home, but I wasn't really serving God.

At a youth camp, I gave my life to Christ.

And then at my high school, uh there was sort of a revival of sorts.

Several of us were student leaders and people started coming to Christ.

We had a Bible study at my house on Tuesday nights.

And as I was in that environment, I started feeling called to ministry.

And um, and so I was 17, I was enrolled in Bible college just a few weeks later as headed to Springfield, Missouri to attend school.

And it was a Sunday night service at my home church.

Now, Sunday night services back in the day, for some of you may remember this, uh, they were like, they weren't like Sunday morning.

They were like, we're gonna linger here, we're gonna worship here, we're gonna pray.

It was kind of that environment.

Like, okay, so before service, my dad comes up to me and he says, Hey, tonight, at the end of the service, we're gonna call prayer teams forward, kind of like we'll do later today.

And people who need prayer will receive ministry, and I want you to be on the prayer team.

I was 17, I'd never done this before, and I was like, I can't do that.

And he said, You are called into ministry.

And I said, Yeah, and he said, Well, when are you gonna start?

I was like, I guess I can do that.

So I didn't hear anything he said the rest of the night, honestly.

I was just nervous, nervous, nervous.

End of the service came.

Please stand, he said.

Our prayer teams are at the front.

I walked forward and I stood there.

If anyone wants to receive ministry, you come, they'll pray for you.

So I'm standing there at the front with all these seasoned prayer leaders.

Okay, here I am, 17-year-old Jeff.

Can you see me?

People start coming down.

I wanted to go like this.

Like go to their line, you know, kind of a thing.

But people came to me and I prayed for them.

I didn't feel anything spectacular.

A couple weeks later, I was sitting on the couch in my house and my my dad came in and he opened a letter and he said, You gotta hear this.

And he read, and he said, This is from a guy you prayed for a couple weeks ago.

Remember on that Sunday night?

He said, Yeah, he said, he said, I came to church that night.

I've had chronic back pain for many years.

I haven't been able to bend over and touch my toes, hard, hard to sleep.

And he said, You you had the call for prayer, and I was like, I've been prayed for so many times, I'm not going up there again.

Then I decided I'm gonna try.

So he went, I went forward, he said, and I stood in front of your son.

And when he put his hands on me, I felt heat come all the way up and down my spine.

And I I believed that God was healing me.

So I went back to my seat and I went up, I touched my toes, I didn't have any pain.

I went to bed that night and didn't have any pain.

He said, It's been multiple weeks now that I've had no pain.

All I can conclude is that that night when your son prayed for me, I got healed.

Yeah.

And you know what my response was to that when I heard the letter?

I said this, no way.

Like, because I was such a man of faith.

I was shocked.

How can it be that God would use me?

You know why?

Because the healing gift isn't in me, it's it's the it's in the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the possessor of the healing.

The Holy Spirit just chose to use me.

And he and he and he flowed through me at that moment, and this guy got healed.

And let me give you scripture now.

Here's what it says in in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

Again, this is the context we started with.

Here's what it says now to each one the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good.

Okay, that word manifestation, don't read new agey thing into that.

That's just simply when the Holy Spirit bursts from someone's life into the world.

To the one, there's given through the spirit a message of wisdom, to the other the message of knowledge by the same spirit, to another, faith by the same spirit.

Verse 8 then says, to another gifts of healing, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, distinguishing of spirits.

There's nine of these in the list, and to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and still to another the interpretation of tongues.

Verse 11 says this these are the work of who?

The one and same spirit.

And he, because he possesses them, distributes them to each one as he determines.

Because you have the Holy Spirit, we say like this, because the Holy Spirit has you, he can distribute through you whatever he needs to distribute to you.

If you just are available for God to use you, what might happen if all of a sudden you became awakened to the fact that the Holy Spirit wanted to be your partner, and you got up, and you got up on Monday morning, not just I'm gonna survive the week, but saying, Today I'm gonna reverse the cycle of worry and I'm gonna walk in peace.

And today, as I have peace, I'm gonna listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and I'm gonna be ready as I look out to minister, like you're at the divine FedEx truck that has been ascent into your workplace, and you're carrying the miracles that God has prepared, and you now get to be the one to bring the package to the door and to say, Hey, as I was thinking about you, this is what I sensed.

Okay, let me give you another story example.

Um, I have a friend named Paul.

He was a pastor of a church that had a really aggressive outreach to homeless folks who were living on the street.

And uh they would go on Friday night, they would provide meals and clothing.

And before they would go, they would get in a circle and they would pray and they would say, Holy Spirit, teach us what is it that you want us to see?

You want to point somebody out to us.

And one of the gifts mentioned here in that list was something called word of knowledge.

Okay, this is a fact that God reveals to us supernaturally that we wouldn't know otherwise.

And I know that's something that might say that's really out there.

Okay, here's kind of how it works.

As Paul was praying, he felt that inner peace and prompting of the Holy Spirit in here, and it birthed a thought in his head.

That's often how it works.

You get this thought that you know it's not from you, and all of a sudden, this phrase came into his mind, and he heard this phrase, scars and horses.

And he was like, I don't know what that means.

And he was praying somewhere and he felt that prompting inside, scars and horses.

So he said to his team, I think we're gonna meet somebody on the streets tonight that has a scar and has something to do with horses.

So keep your eyes open.

And as they're distributing the food, there's a guy in line, he had a big scar on his face.

So Paul went up to him and he said, This is gonna sound weird.

I don't want to be intrusive or insulting, but as we were praying earlier, we we felt like we were gonna talk to somebody who needs ministry who has a scar.

And when I saw you again, I I thought maybe that might be you.

And he said, Get away from me.

I don't want anything to do with your God, I don't want anything to do with you.

He said, We all have scars.

I mean, we've been through a lot in life.

We're on the streets for a reason.

If you ask anybody here, do you have a scar?

They're gonna tell you yes.

So I don't know how this is some random miracle that you see me with the scar and think that I'm your guy.

And then Paul said, Well, there was a second thing.

I got the second word, and the second word was horses, does your life have anything to do with horses?

And then he put his head down and he said, Well, yeah.

And he said, Well, what?

If you don't mind me asking, you said what?

He said, Well, my ex-fiance um trained horses, and she was killed in a tragic car accident a few years ago in a Ford Mustang.

And when she was killed, tragically, that's when I started drinking and using drugs, and that's how I ended up here.

And Paul said, Well, I believe that God gave me a word of knowledge about you because he sees you and he wants you to know you're not forgotten, and he cares about what you've gone through.

You may have given up on yourself, but God hasn't given up on you.

And and I've just been sent by God to remind you of that fact.

And the young man said, Get away from me.

I don't want your God, I don't want anything to do with you.

And he walked away.

And he wasn't there for several weeks and even several months, and then finally, one Friday night, he walked up, but he looked different.

He was in a suit, he looked, he you know, he cut his hair, and he walked up and he found Paul and he said, Man, what happened to you?

And he said, Well, after we had that conversation, I went away and I couldn't shake what you said.

God sees me, He knows what I've gone through, He cares about me.

And I decided if God cares about me to that degree, I need to care about myself again.

So I went into rehab.

I've come out on the other side sober and clean.

I have a job, and I came tonight because I want to find out where your church is.

Isn't that beautiful?

Yeah.

Yeah, isn't that awesome?

Give it up for the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit knows what's going on in your life, guys.

And there's a whole world of brokenness out there, and He wants to use us as the delivery mechanism if we'll just make ourselves available.

You're like, well, I'm not, I don't know enough about I haven't been a Christian long enough.

I'm way too young, I'm way too old.

No, no, listen.

The gift isn't you, the gift is the Holy Spirit in you.

You just have to respond in simple faith and try.

And if if you do, here's the third, here's the third point.

First, we said he gives us peace.

Second, he gives us power.

And the third is he gives us partnership.

We we get to learn to partner every day with the Holy Spirit.

Life can become an adventure.

Well, you wake up, what are we gonna do today?

Holy Spirit, what do you want me to say?

Who do you want me to see?

What is it that you want me to do?

I don't want to just put my head down and do life without you.

If you're available to me and lead me, Holy Spirit, have your way in me because I want you to work in and through my life.

Um, let let's let's do this.

We're not closing yet, but can we do this right where you're seated?

Can you just close your eyes and turn your face toward heaven and put your hands out in front of you for a moment?

And let's go back to the point of point one.

I need peace.

Maybe you're here today and you need peace.

So, right now we just push pause in the cycle of worry.

Yeah, we're gonna reverse the cycle now.

Let's say this out loud.

Just use these phrases as a confession.

Say, God, I trust you with what's going on in my life.

And I believe that you hold the answers and that you hold my life in your hands.

So I believe you're gonna bring me through this.

And today I receive your peace and your presence in my life.

I used to say it again.

I trust you.

I trust you because you are good and you're gonna bring me through.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

That's very good.

Look up, give somebody a high five.

One last verse I'll read.

It says, Jesus, when he's finishing his his ministry on earth, he he, if you read the book of John, there's one thing he talked about more than anything else with his disciples before he left, and that is you need to know the Holy Spirit.

I'm not gonna be here anymore.

You need to hold know the Holy Spirit.

Now we're gonna look at verse, it says, here's what Jesus said, and I'll ask the Father, and he'll give you another advocate, a helper, somebody just like I am, who will be with you forever.

Right?

You can see it on the screen.

Can you read it with me?

And I will ask the Father, say it with me, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.

I pray that as we conclude this service today, you'll go through this week with your face like this.

Holy Spirit, have your way in my life.

I trust you, I need your peace.

Use me, I'm available to you.

Have your way in my life today.

All right, let's let's do one more thing.

I'm gonna have you again close your eyes and we're gonna pray.

And just tilt your face toward heaven.

If you're hearing me talk and you're like, Paul, I need that in my life.

I need peace.

I need the person of the Holy Spirit making me alive inside.

You know what?

The first step to that is you got to first of all receive Jesus as your Savior.

I talked about it earlier.

You've got to reach out in faith and say, Jesus, come into my life.

I want you to forgive my sin.

Today I want to turn from my old ways and I want to present my life to you.

And I believe just like you rose from the grave, you can give me a new day, a fresh start.

I trust you now.

Okay, so the moment you pray to receive Jesus, to say, I'm giving my life to you, I'm surrendering to you.

Not only is sin forgiven, not only you promised eternal life, but listen, the Holy Spirit sparks you to life on the inside at that expression of faith.

So, right where you are, I'm gonna count to three today.

If you want to give your life to Christ or come back to God on the number three, I want you to throw your hand in the air and just keep it up for a moment, okay?

On the number three.

One, two, three.

Just shoot your hand up.

Say that's me.

That's beautiful.

Hands all over the room, keep them up, stretch, stretch out toward God right now, and let me lead you in this prayer.

Let's pray together.

Thank you, Jesus, that you made a way for me when you died on the cross and paid the price for all my sin.

I now turn from my old life and I surrender myself to you.

Forgive me, cleanse me from my past, make me right with God.

And from this moment forward, I choose to live as a follower of Christ.

Fill me now with your presence and your peace in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Would you just give it up for those that prayed that today?

Beautiful.