The BluePrint - Listen to the Spirit

All right.

Everybody, my name is Greg Hampton.

I am one of the pastors here.

We are six weeks into a nine-week series that, yes, we are calling the Blueprint.

The Blueprint is just a basic plan for discipleship.

We started by asking why we need a plan, right?

Why do we need a plan?

Then we said that the first page of that plan is to rest.

Then we live at the table in community.

We abide in prayer.

And then we meditate on the Scriptures.

And that leads us really well into the day where we listen to the Spirit.

I do want to point out that all of these steps are building intentionally, right?

They're building intentionally.

They are in an order, and they are in this order on purpose.

We rest first so that we don't learn that church attendance is what saves us.

Yeah?

We think, oh, I've got to get to the church if I'm a bad Christian.

No, just rest.

Be at peace.

Let go of that and just be in the presence of God wherever you are.

But then we live at the table in church community so that we don't atrophy from inactivity,

only resting and never connecting.

We pray.

We abide in prayer so that we learn that we can abide in the presence of Jesus outside

of the walls of a church building.

We meditate on the Scriptures and continue to learn what the Lord has said because His

Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.

When we've taken these steps, these pages of the blueprint prepare us all the more to

listen to Spirit.

So they are ordered intentionally even day by day.

And that can actually be really helpful for some people when I say day by day, they can

be ordered day by day.

Because if you're finding it difficult to rest consistently, I'll tell people, all right,

well, just choose a day and start there.

I say Saturday is a great day if you can.

Saturday, I'm just going to choose to rest on Saturday.

Historically, back to the beginning of time, Friday night to Saturday has been the Sabbath

for the Jewish people.

So why not start there?

So if you're finding it difficult to rest, just choose some time.

Maybe not even the only.

Just start with some time to rest.

Sunday is a church day for millions of people around the world.

If you're feeling lonely or like you're lacking community, I know when and where you might

find it.

At a church on a Sunday morning, come on.

If you don't pray, set aside some time on a Monday and just go, you know what?

Every Monday I'm going to make an attempt at abiding in prayer.

If scripture hasn't been your thing, go, you know what?

But every Tuesday, see how it's building?

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, put a little reminder in your calendar that

pops up at a certain time that reminds you to really try to listen to the Holy Spirit

today.

When we start with something, we avoid doing nothing.

But I also want to say, after you learn a plan like this, you don't have to be legalistic

about it.

You don't have to always, okay, this is the thing I always do on Saturday and this thing

I always do on Sunday.

Oh, I can't do the thing I do on Tuesday on Monday because that's the thing I do on Tuesday.

That is not the point.

You can piece these ideas together in whatever way makes the most sense for you because each

of us is going to put more emphasis on some of these than others, and that is good.

It's completely okay.

You should be able to improvise this discipleship plan however works best for you because Jesus

isn't hoping that any of us get stuck following the rigid order of any one discipleship plan.

Remember, we're just using a plan to follow, to learn to follow Jesus.

We aren't following the plan.

We're trying to follow Jesus.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So it is my view, it is my opinion that a good plan should be something that can be

applied until you're able to improvise.

Does that make sense?

So that is why I think that listening falls where it does in this plan.

After we've been introduced to some ideas, there's still some more ideas to come, but

listening falls right here because listening to the Spirit is where spiritual improvisation

begins.

Who remembers Comedy Sports?

Anybody?

Comedy Sports?

Have you been to Comedy Sports, Regina?

Have you been to Comedy Sports?

Yeah, all right.

Did you all hear it's coming back?

It's coming back.

It's coming back, baby.

Yep.

In mid-November, it's coming back.

Twenty-two years ago when I was a much younger man, I was in Comedy Sports for what I call

a hot minute, maybe six months.

At the audition, I remember them saying that improv has far more to do with listening than

being funny.

Listening creates space for the funny to happen.

It's the same with the Spirit.

Listening creates space for something to happen.

I remember they had us do this listening exercise to see if we could listen, right?

Because if you can't listen, they don't want you up on stage in front of a bunch of people,

okay?

If you cannot listen, then you probably cannot do improv.

You could be a prop, but you can probably not do the improv.

So they had one person stay in the middle with someone on either side of them.

The person in the middle had to talk nonstop to one of the people about a subject that

they had been given.

Nonstop, okay?

Until the person behind them was talking to them about a different subject nonstop.

And then someone would say, switch.

And then the person in the middle has to turn and tell this person everything they had been

told while they were talking to someone else.

And they're telling them everything they had been told while now this person starts talking

to them about a new subject.

Sounds easy, right?

Moms, moms have an unfair advantage.

I actually thought to today that it would actually be fun to demonstrate this because

we actually have some past and present new comedy sports players with us today.

Brennan Hampton is going to be, he's a trainee.

Brennan, come on up.

And we have Andy and Kristin Koski if they want to come on up.

And we're going to be a village.

We're going to help raise the kids and watch Connor and Quinn, okay?

All right, so this is what we're going to do.

I'm going to have Andy in the middle, Kristin on one side, Brennan on the other, okay?

And you're going to start by talking to Kristin about one subject while you talk to him about

a subject, okay?

When I switch, I'll say switch and you'll start talking to him about, and they've done

this before, right?

But you, you're going to have a new subject.

I'll tell you what that subject is, okay?

And we're probably going to do three or four rounds, okay?

All right, so you're going to talk to her first, yeah?

Okay, so you're going to talk about Iowa, how great it is.

Talk about Iowa.

And you are going to talk to him about NASA.

Okay, ready, set, go.

So basically, NASA is this corporation kind of thing.

They send stuff into space with like rockets and stuff and they like take measurements

of like the stars and the nebulas and the rocks and the fancy rocks and like Mars was

not, is it this rover and Mars?

And the thing about it is, if you notice, the guy has like a fork to pinch for and one

thing if you look very closely.

Okay, switch, you're talking about Ikea.

Ikea is so great because we took all the stuff together though, and then we put it all together

and then we turned it back to real.

And then we turned it back to real, and then we turned it back to real.

And then we turned it all the way back.

Switch, you're going to talk about NOAA.

NOAA is this guy that I know.

He's like a kid.

His name is on this Earth and everybody loves that guy.

Everybody's talking about him all the time, constantly, and he brought him up with him.

Switch, an idea.

Any idea you have.

Just an idea, yep.

Sometimes in the pictures, it seems like they didn't get it right.

The two lions that both have names, but that's not really a worry about it.

You don't really think about biology.

And done.

Round of applause for our players.

Good job, guys.

Good job.

They make it look easy.

You guys can have a seat.

Five points to both teams.

Yes.

All right.

They really do make it look easy.

I'm sure afterwards you can talk to Andy and see if his brain is completely scrambled or not.

It looked like he was doing pretty good though.

Now, remember the two minutes for one question.

That voice that no matter how loud the room gets, that voice will always pierce through the noise.

That's what we hope for with the Spirit.

That you can be full on living life in the middle of a conversation and still understand what the Spirit is saying.

Because when we rest and live at the table, when we abide in prayer and meditate on the Scriptures,

we learn the timbre and tone of the voice of the Holy Spirit.

I would be curious if it was easier for Andy to listen to Kristen than it was to listen to Brennan,

because he was more familiar with her voice.

Now, with that, let's open our Bibles.

Let's open up the Scriptures.

I'm going to read from two different places today, from John 14 and Ephesians 1.

You can open to either, or if you're a superstar, you can try and do both.

If you do not have a Bible, we have Bibles out in the lobby.

You can just take one. They are free.

Or you can download a Bible from any digital app store.

We're going to be John 14, Ephesians 1.

We have a tradition of giving the Scriptures our full attention.

You can do that in any number of ways.

You can sit or you can stand with me as you are able, body or spirit, as we read.

Ready? Here we go.

John 14, starting in 16, it says this.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever,

the Spirit of truth.

The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

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

And then jump to verse 26.

But when the Father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit,

he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart.

The peace I give you is a gift that the world cannot give.

So don't be troubled or afraid.

And then Ephesians 1, verse 13 through 18.

Ephesians 1:13–18

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth,

the gospel of your salvation, when you believed you were marked in him with the seal,

the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit,

guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession.

To the praise of his glory for this reason ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus

and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you,

remembering you in my prayers.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father,

may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.

Let us pray.

God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation,

we thank you for the scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia.

We have them still today that we can read.

Pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, that it would stick,

that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would become stronger.

You would become more like your son Jesus.

Amen. Amen.

Thanks, y'all. You can have a seat.

Well, first things first.

It needs to be said, if you believe in Jesus,

if you have told Jesus, I believe in you, you are God,

then you need to know that you have the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, you know the Spirit, for he lives with you and will be in you.

Some of us have heard or been taught that you have to receive the Spirit separately at a different time.

And there are, I think, a couple places, at least two, in the scriptures that describe something like that.

We can all, all of us, every single one of us, experience more of the presence of the Spirit.

But all of the other examples in Scripture of the Holy Spirit working in our lives,

the presence of the Spirit is immediately present because of the belief in Jesus,

not because of a second event. The Spirit lives within us and in us because we believe in Jesus.

That is the promise that Jesus gave us.

Okay, but why is it important to understand and believe that you have the Spirit of God within you?

Because if you don't believe that the Spirit is there, you probably won't be listening for his voice.

If you do not believe that the Spirit is there, you will probably not be listening for his voice.

Thinking again about that voice that you'd recognize through a crowded room.

Okay, I need you, let's do an imagination exercise here.

Imagine that you're in a crowd and you're waiting and looking for that person.

Because you know that they are there.

Yeah.

Even if you're having a great conversation about NASA with someone else,

when you hear that person's voice, you're confident that it is that person because you know they are there.

Compare that to when you're in a crowd and you hear the voice of someone that you know,

you recognize their voice, but you don't believe that they're there.

This has happened to most, if not all of us.

Just yesterday Cindy was telling me that she thought she heard Leah Hodges voice somewhere.

And she was like, I thought I heard Leah Hodges voice.

Imagine you hear that voice, but you don't believe they're there because they live 2,000 miles away.

How could they be there?

So you ignore it. You heard it, but you move on.

It actually reminds me of a story in 1 Samuel 3.

The high priest, his name is Eli, and he's been given a charge,

someone that has been dedicated to the temple that's going to be raised in the temple.

He's going to grow up in the temple named Samuel.

And Samuel as a child, what happens is that one night he keeps hearing someone call to him, call his name.

And each time what he does is he gets up and he goes to Eli, to the high priest, and he says,

I'm here, I am. How can I help?

In the middle of the night.

And Eli keeps sending him back to bed. It wasn't me, go to bed.

Again, maybe some parents can relate to this feeling.

Third time he comes to Eli, to the high priest.

And finally Eli, either out of frustration, just not wanting to be woken up anymore, or out of actual insight,

he says, listen, next time if you hear the voice, just say, speak Lord, your servant is listening.

Because maybe it's just God trying to talk to you.

And so Samuel goes back, he goes to bed, he falls asleep, and he hears the voice again.

He has this opportunity to speak with God.

Here's the thing, Samuel did not know that God spoke in that way.

So he did not know to say, speak Lord, your servant is listening when he heard the voice.

Because he did not know it was possible.

So what did he do?

He assumed that it was someone else.

He assumed that it was Eli.

If we do not believe that the Spirit is here,

when we hear the Spirit, we will either ignore it,

or we will go to the wrong source asking for more information.

Who that'll preach?

Come on, come on, come on.

Amen.

If we do not believe that the Spirit is there, that is exactly what we will either ignore it,

or we'll go, well, I heard something, I better go to a source to get more information.

It happens every single day in our lives.

We need to begin from the position of listening, believing that the Spirit is present,

and that the Spirit is speaking.

Second, if we know that we have the Holy Spirit, then know this.

The Spirit wants to bring peace to your heart and to your mind.

Jesus said, I am leaving with you a gift, peace of mind and heart.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus says multiple times, even in a passage that we just read,

do not let your heart be troubled.

The sign and a signature of the Holy Spirit speaking is the presence of peace in our hearts and minds.

So let's be honest, can we be transparent with each other for just a second?

Show of hands, honesty.

Show of hands, transparency.

In the last seven days, has your heart been troubled?

Yeah, you can put your hands down.

My hands up, because in the last seven days, my heart has been troubled.

One night, Cindy told me, oh, you had bad dreams last night.

The next night, I remembered the bad dream that I had.

Sometimes I wake up worried about my credit card, worried about the health of my children,

worried about whether I'm being the husband that my wife deserves.

My heart is troubled sometimes.

But I believe this, and I remind myself of this truth in those moments.

The gift of the Spirit is peace of heart and mind.

And that because they are a gift of the Spirit, because the Spirit is present,

I do not need to go find peace somewhere else.

In the moment that I am troubled, my ear can be open to the Spirit telling me that His peace is already here.

So first, we believe that the Spirit is here.

Second, we accept, even if it feels naive, that if the Spirit is here,

that peace of mind and heart are also present and available.

And then I think that third thing here is listening to the Spirit is actually listening for wisdom.

There's something deeply calming about wisdom.

Have you ever been offered a solution to a difficult problem and immediately felt better?

Yeah? Like something's been bothering you, you can't come up with the solution.

And then somebody else, maybe it was a scripture, maybe it was just a friend,

provides a solution, provides an answer, and you immediately feel better.

The problem still exists.

You have not yet applied what you have been told or changed, anything.

Just having the answer has brought you peace.

There's something about the wisdom of God, the wisdom of the Spirit that Paul is praying that they will receive.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom.

So I think we're going to spend a little time doing that, listening for wisdom, for the Spirit, listening for answers.

But first, just real quick, I want to go all the way back to that listening game.

Okay? Just pull it back up in your minds.

Okay? I have a couple questions for you.

I'm testing to see if you were listening.

Does anybody remember all five prompts?

He talked about something.

Well, he talked about something.

That's two, then three, then four, then a fifth prompt.

Does anybody remember all five prompts?

Raise your hand if you remember any of the prompts.

Okay? What was one of the prompts?

Oh, dang girl.

All right. What do you got?

Iowa? NASA?

An idea?

Round of applause.

Round of applause.

Now, when we did this exercise, not right now, now that you've heard the words again,

but who noticed that they were all four-letter words?

Anybody?

And not now, but when it was happening, and now that you've heard the words and heard they're all four-letter words,

who noticed that they all ended in A or an A sound?

Two things.

Good news.

With the Holy Spirit, you do not need to hear the Spirit the first time the Spirit speaks,

or understand everything or all the layers of what the Spirit is saying the first time the Spirit speaks.

The depth of skill, of listening, of awareness that it would have required anybody in this room,

even a seasoned comedy sports veteran, to notice, remember all five words,

to notice they were all four letters and see that they all ended in the letter A or sounding A,

would have been phenomenal.

You do not need to catch everything the Spirit says every time the Spirit speaks,

because God can remind you later.

That is a major purpose of the Spirit.

Did you guys catch that in the passage that we read?

If you read everything that Jesus said, he literally says,

one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to remind you of what Jesus said later.

Second thing about this is that I believe that the Spirit speaks simply,

but even when the Spirit speaks simply, there are probably always layers to our understanding of what the Spirit has said.

Noah, NASA, Ikea, Iowa, an idea, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you find out, oh, oh dang, they were all four letters, oh, they were all this, oh, I wonder if there's another connection.

Anyone think of the other connection yet?

Anyone? Anyone?

There isn't one. I'm just riffing here.

Ah, ah, ah.

Right, right, right. I'm cracking myself over here.

Those are the best jokes, those are the best moments, yeah.

There's always more that maybe we can notice, but I do think that the Spirit begins simply.

And so like the last couple weeks, I want to actually give us a tool for listening to the Spirit and listening for wisdom.

Now, I'm not in charge of the Holy Spirit.

I cannot ask us all to close our eyes and promise the Spirit is going to say something to each of us right now.

I don't think that that's how it works, but I am 100% sure that the Spirit has already spoken to all of us about something at some point.

Maybe a decision that we're having to make right now, a decision that we've already made and we still wonder about it.

And I think that we have a tool that can help us think about what we heard.

It's a tool that I've actually taught about before. It's called 4D Wisdom, or you could call it a Wisdom Matrix.

So in order to do this, what you need to do is think about a decision that you need to make or a decision that you've already made.

And if you have something to draw with, that might actually help.

But I'll actually post, I'm going to have some pictures up on the screen and then I'm going to post these online later, okay?

I think that the Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom will give us insight in at least four ways.

Good, bad, right, wrong, mature, immature, and wise, foolish.

And so that first image that we can put up, Claire, is about good, bad.

Good, bad. It starts with that line down there, good, bad, okay?

This is the first base layer of listening to what the Spirit might be saying.

The easiest layer for us to hear is, is this good or is this bad?

Right? The point here when you're thinking that you might be like, Greg, my thing is way bigger than that, right?

But let's start simple.

The point of this layer is to oversimplify the thing that you are thinking about.

So that we can hear the most simple thing that the Spirit might be saying.

Think about it like babies in outlets.

We all know the right answer when it comes to babies in outlets.

Outlets are not bad, but babies in outlets are bad. Right?

Outlets aren't bad. Babies in outlets are bad.

And so what we want to do is we're thinking about our thing.

Let's put up that next one. You can plot. Let's plot something on here. Okay?

Yeah, I think that this is very good. This thing. You might go, you know what? This is pretty bad.

Now, we don't stop just because something gets plotted somewhere here, okay?

Because the next thing we want to think about is, is the Spirit saying this thing is right or wrong?

Good, bad, right, wrong.

We're starting to create a little bit of a graph here, okay?

We're going, okay, I can put this here. I can think about, think about a 10-year-old in outlets.

Not babies in outlets. Think about a 10-year-old in outlets.

We know that outlets aren't bad. Outlets also aren't wrong. Right?

A 10-year-old is old enough to plug something in.

We can probably, most of us. It depends on how protective you are of your children, I suppose.

But should that 10-year-old be responsible for having a space heater plugged in and left on all the time?

No, that's wrong.

And then that actually starts bringing the goodness of a space heater or the goodness of an outlet back towards that bad.

We want to be thinking, is this good and is this right?

So let's see that plotted on there, okay?

And so you're trying to go, okay, I want to be up here away from these lines a little bit.

With the way that I'm listening to the spirit, with this thing that the spirit might be saying.

Okay, let's do the next one.

And we reach the layer that adds some depth, okay?

So far we have been dealing in two-dimensional decisions.

It's pretty easy to answer those questions. Is it okay for babies in outlets?

Is it okay for a 10-year-old to have a heater on absolutely all the time?

But then we ask, is this mature or is this immature?

Because maturity and immaturity is actually part of being wise.

It is what gives depth to some of the decisions that we make.

I have an outlet.

I use it to charge my phone.

Good, okay, good.

Right.

Should I lay in bed with my phone plugged in doom scrolling for three hours?

Probably not. That's immature.

I mean, should I post everything that comes through my mind on my phone, wireless?

Is the phone bad? No, the phone isn't bad.

Is the phone wrong? No.

But how you use that phone speaks to your maturity. Yeah?

Start to think about the decision that you had.

Start to think. Let's see how we would plot this, Clara.

So we want to be plotting out into the depth of this decision.

The spirit brings depth to our decisions.

It's not just a question of is it good or bad, is it right or wrong,

but is this mature and maturity starts taking us out away from things that are just two-dimensional.

And then lastly, what we do is we ask is this wise or is this foolish?

And that's the thing that really connects all the sides, it connects all the dots.

And what we find out is that foolishness collapses everything from the outside.

But wisdom can expand our entire lives from within.

Think about the decision that you have.

Might be easy to go, is this good or bad?

You might go, yeah, this thing is definitely good. This new job is definitely good.

Is it right or wrong? Yeah, I mean, as long as I give two weeks notice, it's right. It'll be good.

You go, oh, immature, immature.

Actually, it is something that I've been wanting to do that I feel like God has been gifting me to do.

And so we're starting to get into depth.

And then the last layer of listening to the spirit is asking is it wise or is it foolish?

And the reality is that I cannot give you an example, a simple example,

that will tell you how to hear the spirit on this level.

We practice listening to the spirit by going good, bad, right, wrong, mature, immature.

But only the Holy Spirit can truly teach you whether it is wise or it is foolish.

Because we can look back through the course of time, we can ask the disciples,

hey, do you think it's good or bad to follow Jesus?

Oh, this is good. Is it right or wrong to follow Jesus?

Oh, it is. It's right to follow Jesus. He's the Messiah. Is it mature or immature?

Man, this is the depth of relationship and things that I'm learning about God, the way that is maturing me.

This is nothing has been better.

It's wise or foolish if you knew that a year from now you'll be martyred following Jesus.

We get to this level where some decisions are not going to be as cut and dried or easy as ABABAB.

But we get to a place with the spirit to understand what the spirit is saying about wisdom and foolishness

by practicing these other three layers first. Does that make sense?

I hope that this is something that can help us because we spend a lot of time having hearts that are troubled

because we're not talking to the spirit through these layers.

And I'll tell you right now, it is not the desire of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Son of the Glorious Father, for our hearts to be troubled.

It is his hope and his desire and his promise that we will have the Holy Spirit

and that the gift of the Holy Spirit will be peace of heart and mind. Amen?

Amen. All right, let's pray.

God, thank you for your wisdom. The book of James, the author, the brother of Jesus wrote,

If anyone lacks wisdom, all they have to do is ask. And God, who is generous, will give them wisdom.

I pray that you would develop our hearts to listen to your spirit,

that you would move us past just simply what is good, bad, right, wrong,

or even just what seems mature and expand our lives from within by the power of your Holy Spirit,

by your wisdom, by your spirit. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.