The Book of Acts Part 4 I Pastor Joshua Gay

[SPEAKER_00]: High Praise Podcasts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, this is Pastor Josh.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll leave Pastor here at High Praise and I want to thank you for downloading today's podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: We know that this message is going to encourage and bless you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to open up your heart and receive with the Lord as for you today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your Bible Good Acts chapter four.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many you signed it for the word tonight?

[SPEAKER_00]: How many you nervous because of what time it is?

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, nobody responded except my grandmother, who laughed uncomfortably from the front row.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I don't take that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we're going to continue this series in the book of Acts that we've been in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I'm assuming is just kind of walk through and see what is the book of Acts really saying to us?

[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously this past Sunday was Pentecost Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we really kind of use Acts 2 as a base scripture kind of outside of this series.

[SPEAKER_00]: But still talking about Pentecost.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how many thankful for Pentecost they

[SPEAKER_00]: How do we thankful that God sent His Spirit?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, He's baptized in His Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a result of that, there's reviving, there is refreshing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like in these moments tonight that happen during worship, there is a reviving and a refreshing that is happening in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: We say there is a revival that is happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we need to stop treating revival as some event that we are trying to reach and it's something that we just continually

[SPEAKER_00]: live in.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a spirit of revival that rests on us and rests on this place where the Lord is reviving and refreshing us.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to understand that revival reviving the spirit of God, Pentecost, Pentecostal expression has to go beyond a crowd.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to go beyond a worship moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to go beyond emotions.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to go beyond just a sermon or a conference or a manifestation or a spiritual intensity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Access teaching us that reviving that what this is all about is something much bigger.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because revival, pints across the spirit of God doesn't create a moment, it creates a people.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't create a moment that will be your man, did you feel that?

[SPEAKER_00]: But it creates something in us, and in the pentacost, the Holy Spirit doesn't just change how they worship, the Holy Spirit changes the very way that they live.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit doesn't just give them a supernatural tongue.

[SPEAKER_00]: He changes the way that they think about things.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit of God makes them look different from the culture that they're in in Rome.

[SPEAKER_00]: The early church is so diametrically different from the culture of Rome.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what makes them stand out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just that they went, we're gonna create our own sub-culture because we don't like Rome.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was because the spirit of God was doing something in their life that was pushing against the spirit of the age that was existing in Roman culture and God says in the middle of this, I'm going to raise up my own people to stand opposed to the culture of the age.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just about creating a moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was about birthing a people that could show forth who Jesus was in the earth because

[SPEAKER_00]: So Jesus has to birth a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit has to birth a church to show who Jesus is to the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Acts 4 shows us who were called to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love the fire of Acts 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: We love the miracles of Acts 3.

[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of weeks ago we talked about that the gate called beautiful and the man being healed there and what God does in the upper room was always intended to leave there and impact people at the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: People outside, people that weren't in the upper room, what God did in the upper room was to impact people who weren't even there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's still the same today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for that overwhelming response.

[SPEAKER_00]: You all, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was about me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the greatest evidence of revival, of refreshing, of a pinta-costal spirit, is a transformed people.

[SPEAKER_00]: because anybody can shout during worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the question is, what kind of person are you becoming?

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody can have a moment on an altar, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, is your life beginning to reflect Jesus and acts for showing us the church we're called to be, not a perfect church, but a spirit field church, no church is perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if it was perfect, it stopped me in perfect, the moment you showed up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me explain it to him later.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a perfect church, because we are filled with people who are becoming into the image and likeness of God, but we're not there yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's filled with in-perfect people, but we are a spirit-filled church that is becoming more and more like Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are a church where Jesus isn't merely admired.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of place you go, and the idea of Jesus is admired, but He's not worshiped.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said this a while back, you will become like what you worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can tell what people worship by looking at their lives and seeing what they're becoming like.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, I could really take off here and I'd get in trouble, but I'm going to be careful.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of people who are becoming more mean in our culture today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because they worship people who are mean.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of people who are getting nasty, and you know why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because they worship people who are nasty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they just tell it like it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, they're mean, they're nasty.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have no self-control.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have none of the fruit of the spirit, and you worship them, and you're becoming like them, rather than becoming the only person that you're called to be conformed to the image of Jesus and Jesus alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: You aren't called to be conformed to my image.

[SPEAKER_00]: You aren't called to be conformed to his image.

[SPEAKER_00]: You aren't called to be conformed to Pastor Casey's image.

[SPEAKER_00]: You aren't called to be conformed to wheels image.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or the other wheels image.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or I'm sure there's another wheel in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're image, either.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what you are called to be conformed to is the image of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I can tell you what people worship by what they're becoming.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not a church that simply admires Jesus as a nice teacher.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are a church who says, Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not, and we are becoming like Him in like His image.

[SPEAKER_00]: A church, we are a church, and a spirit-filled church, is a church where Jesus shapes the culture of the people.

[SPEAKER_00]: A church where generosity is normal.

[SPEAKER_00]: A church where unity is supernatural.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a church where God's power is tangible to the love of God's people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just read this, X4, y'all, whimmy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was just getting started, verse 32.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the multitude of those who believed were of what?

[SPEAKER_00]: One heart and boy, that is a powerful statement, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The people who believed were of one heart and of one soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: Neither did anyone say that either things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with what great power the Apostles gave witness to the resurrection of Lord and great grace was upon them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nor was there anyone among them who lacked for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the Apostles feet and they distributed to each as anyone had need.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Joseph, who was also named Barnabes by the Apostles, which is translated as an encouragement, a Levi of the country of Cyprus, having land sold it and brought the money and laid it at the Apostles feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Stop there.

[SPEAKER_00]: One heart, one soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: That language that Luke uses here is enormous.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a superficial agreement that they had, but this was a spirit created and knit unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church, once again, in this early days, and this has prevailed throughout the entirety of the 2000 plus year history of the church,

[SPEAKER_00]: from different, how many you know, there's people in this room with different backgrounds, very different backgrounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's people in this room that grew up rich, and there's people in this room that grew up so poor the roaches left.

[SPEAKER_00]: Roland, were you at Roland?

[SPEAKER_00]: Roland told me, they don't praise God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Roland told Pastor Casey, and I hate grew up.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, you know your poor when the roaches leave.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Might tell him the truth, Roland?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's embarrassed now, praise God, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's people that grew up, the popular kid, and there's people who grew up, the last kid picked at the, it dogs ball, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's people in this room right now that are single, and there's people in this room that are married.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are people in the stream that are white, there are people in the stream that are African-American, there's people in the stream that are Hispanic, there's all sorts of different backgrounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the early church, it's no different.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's these people with different backgrounds, with different personalities, with different ages, with different experiences, yet the spirit says he forms them into one people.

[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the world, we still do this, we still segregate into pockets and people groups, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the church at times has been the guiltyest of this, but this is not the model.

[SPEAKER_00]: of the church in Acts, the model and the framework that we're given is not your different to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't understand me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to know that is that we are one heart and we are one people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unity is really the greatest miracle of pinacost.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't believe that, get online and scroll through people's comment sections.

[SPEAKER_00]: We will argue about

[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta remember a few years ago, the dress.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, is it gold and white?

[SPEAKER_00]: But was the other one, I remember the other one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I saw gold and white, because that's the right answer.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could see it two different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And people would bicker and arg, is this, and it's like, what are we doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's not even talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not gonna dip our toe into the political arena.

[SPEAKER_00]: See, I can burn out, that's why we're not dipping our toe in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can feel that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll make it snow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't touch my sacred cow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we got to stop.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unity is one of the greatest miracles of Pentecost.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is why, because at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not erase individuality.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't erase individuality.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit united people around something bigger than their individuality.

[SPEAKER_00]: He unites them around Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: The world builds everything around politics, around race, around class, preference, culture, nationalism,

[SPEAKER_00]: personality, ideology, but the church, we don't build around any of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't build around race, we don't build around how much money you make.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't build around what you're at on the political spectrum and what your opinion is on taxes.

[SPEAKER_00]: We shouldn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said we shouldn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: We build around a man and not a pastor and not a preacher and not a podcaster and not your favorite internet personality and not an actor We build around the person who is the one who is God who became flesh whose name is Jesus and he is the great unifier And he takes all of our individuality and makes it pale and comparison to his great wonder which means this if you worship Jesus your my brother

[SPEAKER_00]: If you worship Jesus, your My sister, this is the miracle of the church, is the people like Braim, Pastor Braim who was born in Puerto Rico, and people like me who was born in Panama City, Florida, and people like Pastor Casey who was born in, I don't know where

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure we've got some people from the north and here, where's my north people at?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a few of y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all were scared, like, can I raise my hand?

[SPEAKER_00]: You can, it's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: We still love you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody like JQ, who is very obviously different skin color than I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I know it's a shocker.

[SPEAKER_00]: that whenever I see JQ, I don't see the African American guy who attends our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see my brother, because we are united around the cause of Christ, which is bigger than anything that separates us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The world separates, the spirit, you nights.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we talk a lot about unity in the church, but we don't really mean unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: We mean unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think like me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to like what I like.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to, the music, I like you better like that music praise God because it's anointed music.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This generation coming up better, see things the way that I see them.

[SPEAKER_00]: See, none of the youth are in here talking to back me up.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the Spirit unites us to something bigger than the things that separate us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a person named Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's going to develop this more deeply later in Ephesians, when the Jew in the Gentile becoming one man in Christ and the dividing wall being broken down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, we keep trying to build the wall back.

[SPEAKER_00]: We keep trying to build the dividing wall back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul said that Christ came to tear the wall down.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to bring us into unity with one another, that there is no Jew in or Greek, there is no bond or free.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is no man or female that we are all a part of God's family, that everything the world did to separate Jesus came to tear down and bring us back into a place of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have time to preach this at all, but even with Pentecost, we see, if you see Scriptures rightly and you read the narrative flow of Scripture rightly, you would begin to see that what happens at Pentecost is the healing of what happened at Babel.

[SPEAKER_00]: that Babel brought division and separation in a multitude of tongues.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it pints a cost of God births his spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he gives them a tongue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he brings them together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there is a unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pints a cost is healing what Babel brought.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because before people came to try to be God and then they come and pints a cost to seek God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom creates a family stronger than natural divisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I'm going to write out a time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It creates a family stronger than natural divisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: We use these terminology.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've heard this terminology.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blood is thicker than water.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many you heard that before?

[SPEAKER_00]: We're like, yeah, that's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if I told you that the way you thought about that your entire life is wrong?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm about to tell you that the way you thought about that statement, your entire life is wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because what we have heard, and when we've heard blood sticker than water, what we hear is that means that family tie is the one tie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we're blood, then that's just, you know, my family's abusive, but blood sticker than water.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I got to stick with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what blood is thicker than water means.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not even actually the full original statement.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's two full original statements that where we have a derived our English blood is thicker than water.

[SPEAKER_00]: One is an ancient one from the Middle East.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it actually said the blood of the battlefield is thicker than the milk of the mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then later that would be developed in Europe to the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have actually said this thing entirely backwards

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: What it's actually saying is covenantal blood is more real than the womb you might have shared.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, somebody.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we are part of a new covenant that has been ratified with the blood of Christ and the blood of the covenant is thicker than anything that's in the natural.

[SPEAKER_00]: The blood that unites us through Jesus is thicker than any natural thing that might try to separate us and bring division.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to view this thing rightly.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we really believe blood is thicker than water, then we've got to get to where we believe this.

[SPEAKER_00]: His blood is better than anything else and the blood that unites us is bigger than anything that separates us, you with me, unity is not merely institutional, unity is spiritual participation in Christ Himself, the spirit baptizes believers into one body, there is one body, we have one Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the Holy Spirit is not just a private experience, it is a corporate identity.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why division grieves the spirits of deeply, because it's undoing exactly what he came to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why division strikes at the heart of God so deeply.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why God abhor's gossip,

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why there's such a problem with people who talk about other people behind their back and why that is such a terrible thing because it strikes at the very heart of what God came to do to unite us, to bring us together, bitterness greaves the spirit, competition greaves the spirit, pride greaves the spirit, because revival and division can't coexist for very long.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to pick one or the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pintacost and division can't live together for very long, and in the future we'll see this where division is tried to arise in the church, they dealt with it quickly.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to deal with it quickly, because if you don't, it'll destroy things.

[SPEAKER_00]: One heart and one soul we hear, see your echoes that covenant language.

[SPEAKER_00]: Luke is intentionally showing the church, becoming the renewed people of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because, well, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have made salvation so individualistic.

[SPEAKER_00]: God saved me, no God saved us.

[SPEAKER_00]: God didn't just save me, he saved us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's not merely saving you from something, he's saving you into something.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not merely saving you out of sin, personally, he's bringing you out of death, and he is calling you into the body.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are baptized into the church, into the body.

[SPEAKER_00]: which means this, you don't get to do this by yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, you don't get to do this by yourself, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: People are, I can be a part of, I can be saved and not be a part of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, that's debatable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would probably say, no, we got real quiet in here now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are called to be in the church, part of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I am the church, no, you're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, one of the dumbest things we say is, well, I am the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church has many members of which you are a part of, but you don't get to be the church anymore than my finger gets to be my body.

[SPEAKER_00]: My finger is not my body.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is part of my body, but it is not my body by itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if it disconnects, it dies.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have had a problem in the West, where we have reduced salvation to a private spirituality, and your salvation is not a private spirituality.

[SPEAKER_00]: Acts shows us that salvation creates a new community, that it creates a new people, that the church is not a crowd-gathering event, it's participating in the life of Christ together.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, with me, I'm going to, I may come back next week and talk about generosity, but I'll just say this real quick.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see here that resurrection power produced radical generosity, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I love them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said this, I think I've said this last week or two weeks or three weeks ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love this people like, I just think we need to go back to how it was in the church in the book of Acts, praise God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need all these lights and screens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they didn't take offerings, what no pasture with buckets,

[SPEAKER_00]: They sold everything they had, and they brought it and laid it at the Apostles' feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm not proposing we go back to the Book of Acts, and I don't have time to get into this, and maybe I will at some point, but the Book of Acts in the New Testament does not have one economic vision that it cast as correct, other than this, generosity.

[SPEAKER_00]: other than we live generously and what we see here and what I want you to see is this was not some forced communism in Acts 4.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is a transformed ownership.

[SPEAKER_00]: The early church still had homes, they still had things.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue was that possessions no longer possessed them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because whenever you really become part of the church, it changes your relationship with natural things, with material things, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if Jesus conquered death and money loses its throne in your life, then materialism isn't the way that we function.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church becomes this radically different kind of community.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons it does this, once again, I touched on this a little bit, Roman society is built around status, it's built on hierarchy, it's built on self-promotion.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then the church arises and Rome doing something radically different, radically different, because they're going, we are not part of that, any longer.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not part of that culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're in it, we're right in the heart of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: but we're not participating in it, it's greed.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not participating in the way it functions.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are forging our own way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me, God is generous, the cross is generous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Salvation is generous, grace is generous, the Holy Spirit is generous, so we should be generous.

[SPEAKER_00]: We should live as gidders, givers.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we may not gidders, givers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me, yeah, let me, let me go to the last one, because I want to hurry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I might talk about generosity some more later.

[SPEAKER_00]: It goes on to say in Acts 433, with great power, the Apostles gave witness, and great grace was upon them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Luke intentionally joins these together, power and grace, because the modern church often separates these.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want the power or we want the grace, but the church and the book of Acts, at both, it had people who moved in power and people who loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: They saw cities one for Jesus and they preached the truth boldly and they took care of the orphan in the widow Come on somebody They preached the truth and they cared for the outsider because you don't have to do one or the other You can do both we can have services where we prophesy and we can minister to the addict All right

[SPEAKER_00]: We can have a move of the Spirit of God and we can serve people to food who are hungry.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to pick one or the other, I'm a power person, I'm a grace person, I'm just a church person and the church had both and when you have both it produces fruit.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know I'll be talking about it a lot but on Tuesday nights we have CR and I was here last night because I shared with our celebrate recovery group last night and we had a lady and I cleared the surpassed case because I don't know the rules of CR but I cleared it with him that this is okay to share so I'm not violating anybody's anonymity or anything in this statement but we had a lady last night who has become to see her for a while

[SPEAKER_00]: And as she got up and talked to everybody, she said, I started smoking crack cocaine, whenever I was 14 years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, I am 53.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for the first time, I'm holding one of these, and it was a one year clean and sober chip.

[SPEAKER_00]: Since she was 14 and she's 53 and she's holding a chip that she's one year cleanse.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was about to die and I cried out and I said, God, I'm giving this to you and I want to walk in a different way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, a real spirit filled people don't look at the person who may have been struggling with crack for almost 40 years and go, there's no place for you here because we're people of the power of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think the power of God is for?

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think the purpose of the power of God is to make you feel good?

[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of the power of God is to see hearts and lies transformed.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know what that also requires us living with grace with people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Us walking with people, us doing what we're actually commanded to do and carrying each other's burdens.

[SPEAKER_00]: us walking with people, us being there, because hear me, with great power, we also must have great grace, because power without grace is harsh, and grace without power becomes permissive and weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Power without love will be to become performance, but grace without truth that will always become compromise.

[SPEAKER_00]: You with me, the early church

[SPEAKER_00]: They preach boldly, but they also love deeply.

[SPEAKER_00]: They witness publicly, but they also cared sacrifitially.

[SPEAKER_00]: They realized it wasn't just about them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is all of this is flowing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, you have to understand, all of this is flowing in the shadow of an empty tomb.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their hope is always flowing from resurrection.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their grace, their power, is flowing from resurrection.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that Jesus is alive compels them to show this grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that Jesus is alive compels them to move in this power.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great grace, it actually goes on to say this, that great grace was upon them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't just say that great grace was upon the apostles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just say it was on the leaders, it was upon them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: message on this, a lot of you in the heading in your Bible, the book of Acts is probably called the Acts of the Apostles.

[SPEAKER_00]: I personally prefer to call the Acts of the Early Church because it's not just what God did in and through the Apostles.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what He did in and through them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grace covered the entire community, power covered the entire community, and the church should feel different when the power and the grace of God is present.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that one of the most judging places you can go is the church has got to stop.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, that needs to stop.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need to love people where they are, but love them also so much that we believe there's a power that they don't have to stay there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to meet you where you are in grace, in mercy, but there is a power that can meet you where you are to bring you to where he wants you to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to love you every step of the way, very do this as a family, because that's what the church is.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we say church is nothing, if not a family, we mean it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means we walk with each other, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That means there's people in this room.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know how messed up your past is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know where you are now, which means this, when somebody else shows up, it's messed up, pass it on.

[SPEAKER_00]: The same mercy, the same grace, the same love that was shown to you, show it to somebody else.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same ministry that was released in youth through somebody, be that person.

[SPEAKER_00]: to help them become who God's called to become all Steve or whoever's coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Acts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is this incredible thing?

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus is forming his body.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's forming us, and who he's called as to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Acts is about miracles.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's about power, but it's also about us being formed to the image and likeness of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also us making him the center above everything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a book of unity.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a book of obedience.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a book of miracles, a book of power.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a book where the church is forming into what it is going

[SPEAKER_00]: Melidia to come, but it starts in unity, it starts in formation, it's not just an experience, it's forming us into something, it's into your feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you subscribe so you never miss a message here for a high praise.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be back soon with another incredible message.

[SPEAKER_00]: God bless you and have a great week.