Presence. Promise. Power. | Ps. Keith Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you for joining us.

To learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting, follow us on social media using the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.

I do want to take a moment to welcome and honor those who are joining us online on our podcast, church.

Can you help me welcome our online community?

Those who are joining us at our parent lounge.

Maybe listen to the podcast later.

We're so glad that you are here with us.

And regardless of how you find yourself here with us today, if this is your first time here, welcome.

We're so glad you're here.

Maybe you're coming back.

Maybe there's all variations in which that have led you to be here with us today.

Regardless, we hope that you recognize that this is a safe place for you to be curious, for you to grow, for you to connect, and ultimately uh have an experience and an encounter with God that I truly believe can change our lives.

Today we're kicking off a brand new series over the next five weeks, inclusive of this week.

And um the series is quite simple.

It's entitled The Spirit Within.

And it's going to be a five-week series where we examine and unpack the person of the Holy Spirit.

You know, when I think about Christianity and just the varying forms of the different denominations and the different expressions and the varying ways in which we all do our best to follow Jesus, I recognize that there are doctrinal differences, there are theological differences, and there's room for all of that.

And so within our Christian faith, we all pretty much have a strong understanding or foundation of God.

But typically broken into these two areas.

I know God the Father.

It's so easy because of my natural understanding of what fatherhood is.

I can relate to Father, even though he's a father beyond our comprehension, but yet he still makes himself knowable.

I get the father, I get the son.

And for most of us, we we get the sun, even if we're trying to fully understand the mission that God had commissioned him to have.

But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, if we're honest with ourselves, that's the space where it gets a little ambiguous.

In fact, entire denominations are created, birthed, and split as a result of how they view the Holy Spirit.

Across the globe, right now, there are certain churches that quietly acknowledge the Holy Spirit while not engaging him at all.

Then you have other environments where they're filled with power and filled with movement, filled with God's presence.

But but sometimes you wonder if it's a performance and if it's an emotionalism or if it's even rooted in truth.

And I'm one that truly believes that these are two sides of the same coin if we allow ourselves to have a posture of open hands.

I truly believe that when it comes to godliness, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, that there is doctrinal foundation that we can we can build our lives on, but there's also an experiential thing that God gives us access to that can bring about transformation.

And so over the years we've we've tackled the subject and topic of the Holy Spirit.

Francis Chan has a phenomenal book called The Forgotten God, which is specifically about the Holy Spirit and how we as modern-day believers don't often engage him as often as we should, again, because of some of the confusion and maybe even the way that we've seen the Holy Spirit demonstrate it in ways that are scary or even harmful.

And so we begin to kind of distance ourselves from it.

But over the past several years, when we've talked about this topic from varying angles, our goal was to always draw us closer to God.

But this year we wanted to do something different.

This year we really wanted to understand where our church is as it relates to engaging and understanding the Holy Spirit.

And so we sent out a survey to our community of simply asking, hey, we're going to be doing a series on the Holy Spirit, and we would love to hear your feedback.

What are some of your questions?

What are some of the things you're you're wrestling with?

And here's some of the things that we got back in response.

We got back, how do I know the voice of the Holy Spirit versus my emotions?

What does it mean to be filled or baptized in the Holy Spirit?

How do I encounter the Holy Spirit without engaging in hype?

How does the Holy Spirit help me in my day-to-day life in prayer, repentance, overcoming struggles, and how I carry my cross?

The questions all kind of found themselves in these categories of I want to have this access to the power and presence of God, but I also want to know the practicality of it in my day-to-day life.

And so we heard you.

So we wanted to shape this series around the idea of informing the mind, but also igniting the heart.

We want you to be theologically and spiritually engaged in knowing exactly the foundation of what our beliefs are, but also giving us opportunity and space to engage it in a way that can bring about transformation, no performance, just God's presence.

Another thing we wanted to make available for us in this series is making our notes available in our church app.

So if you haven't downloaded our church app, I want to encourage you to go ahead and do it.

If this is indeed your church home, or if you want to stay connected to what God is doing in our community, the barcodes up there on the screen.

And I want to give you just a brief summary of what we're talking about within our church app.

And if you don't have it, you can go to wherever you download apps, you can look for the word church center, download that, and then within church center, it'll say, Let us help you find your church.

You type in Celebration Church Orlando, it'll bring you to our church, and then you, in essence, sign up or log in.

Um, and then from there, you'll have access to our groups, you have access to everything that God's doing in our community.

We send out messages there.

It's it's a really great resource and tool for our community.

Um, but specifically within this series, we're making our message notes uh available.

So if you go to where our messages are, you'll see the sermon title for each of the weeks, and in there you'll see the the title of the message, you'll see the scriptures we're going to be reading from, and even the points already laid out, and then a space for you to add your own notes.

And it'll all save there.

You can export it, send it out to your family and friends.

And the reason we wanted to do this is again, our our goal and our desire is to have a space where us as a community we can engage.

If you want to take notes handheld, that's perfectly fine.

But we also wanted to make it available for you to utilize the app.

So if you do have uh your digital device and that's how you engage content, um, we would love to invite you to download the app, get connected to it, so that way you can take notes, you can actually see um where we're going in this series.

And so you'll be able to have live time updates and knowing like he's been preaching for 28 minutes and he's only on point one.

Like you'll know that two more points are coming, but it lowers all of our anxiety and we're all on the same page.

Can I get a good amen to that?

So let's jump into God's word uh today.

We're gonna be reading from the Gospel of John chapter 14, looking at verses 16 and 17, and then we're gonna jump over um to John's Gospel chapter 20, looking at verses 21 and 22.

John 14 · chapter mention

And the goal today um is really to lay the foundation of where we're gonna go um in the subsequent weeks to follow, um, channeled around the categories of conversations that we've had within our community.

Jesus is speaking to his disciples in preparation for him going to the cross, and in John's writing in chapter 14, verses 16 and 17, he begins to prepare them for him leaving, in essence, going to the cross, being resurrected, and ascending into heaven.

Naturally, with them being in fellowship with Jesus for the past three and a half years.

This is a very weighty moment, and there's a lot of sadness.

But Jesus begins to speak words of encouragement to them, and this is what he says starting at verse number 16.

He says, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.

He is the spirit of truth.

The world is unable to receive him because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he remains in you and will be in you.

Skipping over to John chapter 20, verses 21 and 22, the text says, And Jesus said to them, This is after he's been resurrected now, peace be with you.

John 20:21

As the Father has sent me, I am also sending you.

After saying this, he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Or if you came up in my tradition, receive the Holy Ghost.

I got any Holy Ghost people in the house with me today.

Come on, some people know about the Holy Ghost.

Holy Ghost, receive the Holy Ghost.

Today I want to kick off our series with something that I think will set the tone for everywhere we go.

And if you're writing these notes down on a separate device, if not, it's gonna be in our app.

But I've entitled today's message presence, promise, and power.

Let's pray and let's see what it is that God wants to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you.

We thank you for this opportunity for us to come together as a community um to dwell in your presence, to engage your word and be connected to your community.

Father, I ask that all of us that we decrease, that we minimize uh distractions, that we recognize that um that these are moments where we get a chance to hear from you.

So, Holy Spirit, you're welcome here.

We we invite you to um just to challenge us, to inspire us, to encourage us, to sharpen us, and ultimately allowing us to produce fruit as evidence of our relationship with Christ.

Activate gifts and allow us to fulfill our God-given assignments.

So, Lord, we ask that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear your truth, and open hearts to be transformed by the incorruptible seed of the word of God in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

And amen.

You know, I've I've lived in uh Florida now for I guess almost two decades now.

It seems wild.

I was talking with my parents yesterday and just kind of like getting a sense of time and everything, and living in Florida for for almost like two decades now in Jacksonville and here and just kind of the different experiences that we've had.

And and one of the things that I think is is always like in front of us, because we have family members who aren't from and live in Florida, is whenever hurricane season comes.

Because naturally the national media and just the way in which we talk about things, it's it's always like it's the end of the world every time it's hurricane season.

And I and I get it, we see the we see the scenes of it, we see the images of it.

And so naturally, when you have a family member that lives in Florida, the reaction is, hey, are you guys gonna be okay?

And so I'm constantly trying to remind my family, like, hey, we we lived in Jacksonville and it always missed us, and we live in Central Florida where it typically dies down typically before it hits us, but nonetheless, it's always in front of us.

And so I would often feel when I didn't have the anxiety that I felt like the world tells me supposed to have, I would feel like, Lord, am I have I've gotten too comfortable?

Am I not prepared?

I I don't want to be caught off guard and and just kind of take it so lightly that that something really does come and and I and I completely miss it and I put my family in harm.

It's a tension that I wrestled with for years, but honestly, it's something that I still think about because storms do come and things do happen, and you want to be prepared.

So I remember a couple years ago when we had a storm that came through, um, we lost power probably for about two hours, I think it was.

Roughly, I think it was an hour and a half to two hours.

Um, and so I remember then, like, okay, like, yeah, like it really can impact us.

So going forward, I want to be prepared.

And so in our neighborhood, it just seemed to be the standard that that everybody had these generators to make sure that they still had power, make sure that everything could still function in our house.

And so I'm like, man, like that's when there's levels of manhood.

So for me, it's like, okay, like, yeah, you know, you take care of your family, great, great.

But next level was like having a great grill, and let's say I got that on lock.

And then the next level is is to then have um to have a generator.

And so I'm like, okay, like I began to do some research and and everything that it took to kind of set up a generator.

And I'll be honest, I'm like, okay, like I'm not ready for that level of a commitment, but I am going to put some things in place so that way with when and if the storms come, we will be more prepared.

So I bought a couple of like portable um generators just enough that if something were to happen, we could still make sure that we had lights in certain areas, we could still make sure that we had we had air circulating in certain areas, we can make sure that we didn't lose all of our food.

And if we could be honest, I still wanted to make sure that I could play Madden because I don't want to talk to my family in the dark.

So I needed to have something that I could do to make sure that I could still be engaged in the event that a storm comes.

Well, a storm did indeed come and the power got knocked out.

And it was only for like an hour and a half or so when that happened.

And so, of course, like we come on the other side of it and everything is cool, everybody walks outside to make sure everybody's property is good.

Um, and then as I'm walking back in my garage, I noticed off in the corner that my my generator that I had purchased, that I prepared for, that I did all my research on, had been sitting just perfectly in the box in which I got it in when I bought it a year previous.

So it occurred to me that I had the power to make sure that I didn't end up in the dark.

I had the ability to make sure that I didn't have to experience any unnecessary discomfort.

But because I was so detached from it, when the storm did come, I found myself in a dark, even though I had access to something that can keep me illuminated.

Here's what I'm talking to with us.

As followers of Christ, sometimes we we come to church and we engage God with our mind.

We watch, we watch podcasts, we we listen to all of these theologians on TikTok that are unpacking God's word, and and intellectually we think we have a strong understanding of God.

But unfortunately, I have noticed a tendency that the more educated we are in the faith, the more angry Christians are.

I've noticed that the more we're able to break down Hebrew and Greek, that somehow it's not making us more likable people in the world.

That somehow there's a discrepancy or a disconnect between how we view the storms in the world versus how people who are plugged into the proper source should be viewing such things.

And it occurs to me that we as Christians, we have access to this power source that gives us an infusion of hope, that gives us an infusion of perspective, that gives us an infusion of love, that gives us an infusion of making sure that even where there's darkness all around us, we can still keep some measure of hope.

I'm not talking about being disillusioned, but I'm talking about recognizing that there's another in the fire, and somehow there's an entire segment of our faith that is disconnected from the power.

But I want you to understand that Jesus makes the power of heaven available to us through the person of the Holy Spirit.

He makes the power of freedom and healing available to us through the person of the Holy Spirit.

So the question is, are we engaging him and have we taken him out of our proverbial box?

Because I want you to consider for a moment, for Jesus with his disciples, these men would have spent their entire ages from zero to around 13 immersing themselves in what we refer to as the Hebrew scriptures, primarily the Old Testament.

They they would have been, they would have been told to memorize the law.

They would have had to pull from the Psalms and have the ability to add commentary and and nuances to the things that they were reading.

So Jesus knew that these men had this baseline of Hebraic understanding of the way in which God functions and moves, and then Jesus comes on the scene and recruits them to be his disciples.

So he would have been revealing to them that everything you read in the Old Testament is fulfilled in me.

These men would have had this profound insight of recognizing that when that when Moses was across the Red Sea and the Bible speaks about, and God blew a breath out of his nostril and parted the Red Sea, they would have begun to recognize that that's the presence of God and that's Jesus.

They would have looked at the burning bush and recognized that that was Jesus.

They would have had these moments where they connected the dots and saw that that Yahweh, that Jehovah, Shalom, that all of these things, they all connected inside of Christ Jesus.

So you would imagine with everything that they know, they were equipped and ready to be released to go into their mission field.

Because after all, they know these things now.

They've seen it, they watched Jesus walk on water.

He even commissioned them to go and heal people.

They did things that they shouldn't have been able to do.

And yet, in spite of all that they saw, in spite of all that they knew, that when Jesus was resurrected standing before his disciples, he said, regardless of what you know, you can't go anywhere until you've been empowered by my spirit.

Your knowledge is not good enough.

Your understanding isn't good enough, your strategy isn't good enough.

You will need to be empowered by my spirit.

So what I need you to do is to go back to Jerusalem.

Going back to Jerusalem, then going back to the very place that killed Jesus.

That means sometimes, in order for us to activate God's power in our life, it requires us to face our fears.

Who am I talking to right now?

Because many of us think that we are going to get empowered by running away from the very thing that God has called us to be empowered through.

Sometimes you got to face your fears in order for you to be activated by God.

That's another message for another time.

Let me stay on task.

They had to go back to the very space.

They had to go back to the scene of the crime and they were sequestered there.

And while they were there, Jesus shows up and the Holy Spirit is poured out, and then they're activated with boldness.

While they're in the midst of the battlefield, the Holy Spirit shows up and then activates them and animates their faith and leads them out.

While they're in the place where their trauma took place, God showed up.

I'm here to help somebody understand that maybe what healing looks like is not running away from it, but allowing the Spirit of God to work in the very space in which you were wounded in the first place.

I'm all for boundaries, I'm all for distance, but sometimes the power of God works through the very space in which we were injured in the first place.

So we see this space where Jesus says, before you can take a step forward, your knowledge isn't good enough.

You're going to need to be activated by the Holy Spirit.

I believe that's for all of us.

Because I truly believe that many of us are walking into mission fields and we haven't tapped in with the power.

We're walking into spaces and we haven't engaged God's presence.

And we're wondering why our own strength, our own knowledge, our own strategy isn't good enough.

So I want to break down some practical things that can help us to engage God's presence in a way that I believe we can take the Holy Spirit out of the box and allow his power to begin to flow through us.

But let me give us some theology first so we can understand exactly what we're talking about.

The first thing I want you guys to know, and if you have our app, you will know what my first point is already because it's there, and that is simply this the Holy Spirit is the presence of God.

I I realize that.

Let's be honest.

These are things that I've been walking with Christ now for almost three decades.

And there are times when I'm trying to wrap my mind around something that was never meant to be fully understood logically.

God is unimaginable, but he makes himself knowable.

And the way that he makes himself knowable is through his word, and then he points to things that our logic can grab a hold of, but even that is a small comparison to the enormity of God.

Paul even says that we look through a glass darkly, like what we see about God is very, very much not the enormity of who God is.

Here's why I say that.

Because sometimes it's hard for us to wrap our minds around okay, God is one, but he's also three, but the three is also one.

My math doesn't math that way.

It just doesn't.

It'll never make sense to me to say that that God is three distinct persons, but those persons make up one God.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it.

And so we use these illustrations and examples to hopefully give us a better sense of it, but it's beyond us.

But but this is where we get hung up.

But I want to try to bring just a little bit of clarity that ultimately at its core, when we understand God the Father and we understand God the Son, and then we begin to talk about the Holy Spirit, and we're trying to figure out where he fits into this divine pie chart that we have, at its purest sense, the Holy Spirit is the presence of God.

Whenever we walk into an environment and we feel the presence of God, that's the presence of the Holy Spirit.

That when we walk into spaces and when we're reading the word and and and a revelation begins to become clear to us, that's the Holy Spirit working through the scriptures.

When we're having a conversation with someone and we we feel peace and joy and redemption taking place, that's the that's the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We had an incredible men's group this past week.

And while we were in our men's group, somebody was there.

While we were in our men's group, there was no music, there was no fog machines, there was no light, it was just men there confessing and sharing their hearts, and the presence of God was there.

What I want you to understand is that the presence of God is not your favorite song.

The presence of God is not just getting the chills, because then we minimize God to how I'm feeling.

I gotta believe that God is bigger than just me getting the chills.

I gotta feel that it's more than God speaking to me because my favorite song that I was playing on my way to church, they sung it in song.

I love the confirmation, but God is much bigger than that.

But sometimes we reduce God's presence down to how I'm feeling through my filter.

I was having a conversation with a young man many years ago, and he was very zealous and on fire for the Lord.

And I remember talking with him, I'm like, man, like what church are you plugged into?

And he's like, Oh, I'm not plugged into any church.

I was like, Okay, I'm like, man, like tell me why not?

Because everywhere I go, the presence of God isn't there.

I'm like, like, you've come to that conclusion?

Like, what's the metric to determine that?

Like, I can tell when I when I walk in, I could just feel if God's presence is there.

And and and then I leave.

And it was a moment of of true discipleship and love.

I was like, man, so so everyone else in the room is missing God except for you?

So God is only expressed through your feelings.

Have you ever had a bad feeling?

And it became an opportunity to show him that God has got to be bigger than our feelings.

God is not a vibe.

Let me say that again.

God is not a vibe.

Man, I just felt the vibes.

I just felt this energy.

I felt this, I just, it just felt right.

God was God is so much more than that.

Yes, it will express itself in a way that we feel.

Yes, it will express itself in that.

But if we limit God to just that, watch this.

We could be leaving environments that God wants to teach us faithfulness in, and we're jumping around looking for the next high, recognizing that we're chasing after something that God was never meant to fulfill, and we're wondering why we're not planting and not producing fruit.

But God is saying that maturity is recognizing that my spirit is an expression of my presence.

And in scripture, when it talks about the presence of God, there's a couple of things that God gives us for we are to wrap our minds around.

One of the things that it says when it talks about the presence of God is it says the face of God.

Now, again, from our context, that seems super weird because we don't talk like that.

I mean, maybe we do, like when I wake up and I see my wife's face, like I'm it's great to see your face.

She's beautiful.

She looks amazing when I see her face.

I'm saying that because I'm getting points.

Um, but it's also true.

So, yes, face is a representation of looks and facial features, but but more specifically, when the scripture is talking about the face of God, it's talking about his ability to be attuned to us.

I want us to think about when the scripture talks about um Adam and Eve and their lineage that came.

Remember Cain and Abel?

Whereafter Cain was so upset after everything that that happened to him, and and and then the Bible says that God comes to him and says, Hey, hey, something's off with your face.

God was attuned to what was going on.

So when it speaks about the presence of God, we're talking about the face of God being attuned to his people.

This is why when we do our priestly blessing at the end of our service, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he make his face to shine upon you and give you everlasting peace.

Ultimately, what we're talking about is we want God to be attuned to us.

We're inviting God to look upon us and not look past us.

But but another way in which the presence of God is communicated is through the word weight, which is W-E-I-G-H-T.

Weight, something that has weight to it.

And that word translates typically to the word glory, heaviness.

So now we begin to get this image of God's face, him being attuned to every single one of us, and there's a weightiness to his presence.

His glory begins to move in ways in which it's very tangible.

The Bible speaks about when the glory of the God of God filled the temple, that the priests weren't able to perform their typical functions.

That means that when the glory or the presence of God shows up, it takes precedence over everything else.

That's what it means to be spirit-led, is when the glory or the presence of God shows up.

We see that this presence is not something that's just in thin air, but it's actually communicating the nearness of God.

And in God's presence, and this is how we're able to indicate if God is in it, there's there's joy even in the midst of chaos, there's peace, even in the moments where there's instability, there's there's freedom, there's healing, there's there's chains that are broken, that in the presence of God, the glory of God always ushers in this breakthrough environment.

So when we put these things together, we recognize that the presence of God is God being attuned to his people and filling wherever we are with his glory, the fruit of his presence.

So when scripture begins to talk about the presence of God in that way, and then begins to help us to understand that that very same presence is accessible to us, this is where the power begins to get activated.

Because the arc of all biblical narratives is God's divine nearness to his creation.

In the Old Testament, we see the presence of God walking in the garden with Adam and Eve.

We see the presence of God with the children of Israel while they were in the wilderness.

We see the presence of God with them when they're being attacked by their enemies.

You see, the presence of God doesn't mitigate the attack of the enemy, but it does preserve us under those attacks.

We see the presence of God showing up, and then when Jesus comes on the scene, he says that I'm going to send you another counselor.

That literally translates to another just like me.

So when Jesus is saying that I'm going to send you one just like me, that means that what you've seen me do, I'm going to make available to you.

It's not going to be landlocked with just where Jesus is in a room, but I'm going to make my spirit available to all people.

I'm going to send you another counselor just like me, another advocate just like me.

I'm going to send you a healer who is just like me.

And then Jesus shows up and he says to his disciples, Receive the Holy Spirit.

And he blows on them.

No, let's let's be real for a minute.

I don't care how much Bible you read.

If you walk up to me and breathe in my face, it's weird.

Can we just admit that?

Sometimes we look over things in scripture and we just kind of gloss by it.

But Jesus, with his disciples, who are who are dealing with anxiety and stress and wondering what life is going to look like when Jesus goes into heaven.

And while they're talking, he's like, shh, receive the Holy Spirit.

I'm like, look, Jesus, I love you, man.

But listen, you're gonna have to give me a little bit more than that.

So on the surface, that can look a little bit weird, or it at at most, it can just be something that we can't culturally identify with.

But what we don't recognize is that when Jesus breathes on his disciples, it's prophetic fulfillment.

Because in the Old Testament, the way that they would talk about the Spirit of God, it would be used through the lens of breath and wind.

So when it speaks about the Spirit of God hovering over the chaos of the world, that's the ruach, the breath of God.

When it speaks about Adam being an inanimate object until the breath of God breathed on the inside of him and he became a living being.

When the Bible talks about the book of Acts and it speaks about how Paul's how Paul's vessel was shipwrecked and then he was sent in a different direction, it's literally the breath of God that blew him in a different direction over and over again.

We see two things happening when it comes to breath and wind.

Breath infilling us, and then the wind propelling us.

So when God breathes on me, it is his spirit being imparted into me that has given me life.

And then when the wind of God is behind me, it is blowing me into my mission field.

Some places that God is sending us is not the enemy, but sometimes it's the wind of God sending us on our kingdom assignment.

And now we are able to walk as the embodiment of the presence of God.

Jesus says, receive the Holy Spirit.

And now this presence of God that was once only exhibited through the clouds in the sky or the pillar of fire, that that presence of God that was once a burning bush before Moses, that presence of God that parted the Red Sea, that very same presence of God, Scripture says, now dwells on the inside of every person that places their faith in Jesus.

He is near us.

And so now I become the embassy of heaven everywhere that I go.

When I was living in DC, they had this street called Embassy Row.

And on this street, you would just see literally like probably like a good 50 different countries represented on both sides of the street with their flags represented.

And I remember as I began to examine the idea of what an embassy is, that though they are in the United States, that land is consecrated and is designated and it's under the leadership of a different king.

So whenever you saw that embassy, you had to adhere by their rules.

If it was one of those embassies where they they have women that have to keep their head covered, no matter what your personal beliefs were, when you went to that embassy, you had to honor the rules of that governing land because that's what it meant to step into the embassy.

You're stepping on sovereign land.

Listen to me, church.

That when we become followers of Christ, we become the embassy of heaven.

And we are now being governed by the rule of a different king.

We are in the world, but we're not of the world.

This is why we don't respond to everything that we see in culture unless our king gives us the directive to do it.

This means that when I'm at home, I'm the embassy of heaven, and I can set the tone by making sure that I'm governing my life according to the presence of the king.

That when people look at us, they will say, forgiveness looks very foreign, I know, but I'm governed by a different king, and my kingdom tells me to forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you.

I'm told that I need to pray for those who spitefully use me.

So this is why I'm praying for my enemies.

But if I look at the culture, then I will begin to believe that if you're not with me, you're against me, and it's us versus them.

But when you're in the kingdom and you fly the blood of Jesus as your flag, you recognize that everyone is an opportunity that has been made in the image of God, that I have a responsibility to pray for those who spitefully use me.

I pray for those who are against me.

I discern and try my best to make sure that I'm an ambassador for heaven.

This is why when we begin to integrate our politics, our country, and our faith all together, it messes up our kingdom assignment.

Because it's so easy for me to weaponize our differences.

But when I'm a kingdom embassary, it allows me to recognize that in spite of it all, I'm governed by the king, and Jesus tells me to do something a little bit differently.

Here's a second thing I want us to write down.

The Holy Spirit is given, not earned.

He's given, not earned.

I grew up in a faith tradition where I would see people do some powerful things through the Spirit of God.

I'm talking about people being healed.

I'm talking about people being set free from demonic strongholds.

I'm I've seen some powerful things, and it began to shape my theology in such a way that I thought that as you progress in your faith, you have Holy Spirit Junior, then you get Holy Spirit Senior, and then you graduate from the school of Holy Spirit.

I thought that God was giving us a different designation, and the more that I read, the more that I pray, the more that I worship, that maybe I will have access to a higher dimension of the Holy Spirit.

And that creates a works-based faith.

But the truth of the matter is the Holy Spirit is given, not earned.

We see this as a fulfillment found in Ezekiel chapter 36, chapter verse 37, where it says, I will put my spirit within you and you will walk in my ways.

Ezekiel 36 · chapter mention

That's a promise, it's given.

Joel 2 28 says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and sons and daughters will prophesy.

That's given, not earned.

Jesus stands in the center of that promise, and he says to his disciples, Receive this free gift.

Receive it.

You don't have to work for it, you just have to position yourself to receive it.

Just receive this free gift that I'm making available for you.

It's a promise from the Father that I'm making available for you.

Paul then begins to build on this idea and by saying, Hey, have you been sealed with the Holy Spirit the moment that you place your faith in Christ?

This is not something that you have to work for.

This is not something that you have to perform for.

That when you place your faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes alive on the inside of you, and now you're being indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

But there's a distinction between being indwelled by the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

The indwelling is for you, the infilling is for others.

The indwelling is when I allow the Holy Spirit to dwell in me and I engage that very thing, it produces the fruit of the Spirit.

Because He's dwelling on the inside of me, you start to see kindness.

And because he's dwelling on the inside of me, you start to see joy and love and peace.

That's for me.

But the gifts of the Spirit that comes with the filling of the Spirit.

And that's a whole different dimension that we're going to get into in the next couple of weeks.

But I want us to recognize a distinction that when we place our faith in Christ, He takes up residence on the inside of us and He dwells on the inside of us.

It's all part of the package.

I remember back in 2020 when the world was shut down but slowly beginning to open up again.

Um, Megan and I, we went on uh our trip and we went to an all-inclusive resort.

And the thing that was crazy about it is that because no one was traveling, and it was actually kind of reckless that we were traveling, but it was so cheap we couldn't not do it.

I felt like the Lord was leading.

The wind of God was blowing me to go to Cancun.

I don't fight against the wind.

The Lord said cancun.

I'm like, do you feel that, Megan?

Spirit of God is speaking.

He said cancun.

So we hopped on the flight, we went to Cancun.

It was crazy discounted.

And when we got there, we didn't realize like we got like what they call the Imperial Suite.

Like, it's the best suite that they have on the property.

Like people try to book it like years in advance, and we just happened to look and it was like 90% off we got there.

So I'm literally in the in the in the imperial suite, paying less than other folks that have been trying to get in there.

But I digress.

That's just God's saying that favor ain't fair.

But again, I'm not here to talk about that.

I'm not here to talk about that.

But what I will say is that when we got there, that was my first time ever being at an all-inclusive resort.

The vacation that I took before that, where I took my family to the Bahamas, like we were at a nice resort, but they were constantly asking me to swipe my credit card, still paying it off.

Um so in my mind, when you're on vacation, yes, you get there, but you're swiping your card the entire time.

But now we're at this all-inclusive resort, never been there.

And you know how it is, like you don't want to act like you've never been somewhere, but if you've never been somewhere, you don't know how to act.

That was me.

So we're sitting there and I'm ordering food and I'm looking at stuff, I'm like, Megan, they don't even have prices on the menu.

So you get the salad, I'll get the burger, we'll split it.

So the first like two days, we're like being real cautious, and I'm saying to them, like, hey, where's the where do I sign the check at?

Oh no, you don't worry about it.

I'm like, Megan, they won't even tell us what it is.

Like, we're just gonna get home, we're gonna see like$10,000 out of the bank statement.

It's not gonna go through, then they're gonna hunt us down because I don't got$10,000 just sitting in the bank statement.

So I'm really like stressing about how this is all gonna that take place.

And then I remember when I was talking to this one guy, I was like, man, like I said, where's the building?

Oh no, like it's all included.

And I was like, well, like I get it.

Like we're here, but like we we want to get some food.

Like, what is that?

He said, No, everything's included, like it's already been paid for.

So you get a chance to engage.

I'm like, so you mean to tell me I can go in and take these fitness classes and I don't gotta pay?

He's like, no, it's been paid for.

You mean to tell me that I can eat whatever I want?

Like, I see a tomahawk steak on here.

You're telling me I can get a tomahawk steak right now, and and and I can, yes, it's already paid for.

I can get two tomahawk steaks, is what you're telling me.

It's and yes, it's already been paid for.

Okay, say less.

You couldn't tell me nothing because now that I understood that it had already been paid for, that everything was already included, and I didn't have to work for it, I just had to order it off the menu.

There are so many of us that we are walking this faith on our own, not recognizing that there are so many things included with being a child of God, healing is available on the menu, joy is on the menu, peace is on the menu, reconciliation is on the menu, but you just gotta know that it's all included.

I have to position myself to receive it.

I may have to be obedient in order to put myself there, but it's all available to us.

So, what if we began to look at the things of God in Scripture and saying, that is for me, that breakthrough is for me, that healing is for me, that joy is for me, that miracle is for me, and I'm gonna position myself and petition until I see it because Jesus already paid for it.

This is what I mean when I say that it's paid for already, so it's already given, it's not earned.

And here's my my third and final point.

I want to wrap up because I do want us to take a few moments just to kind of worship together.

When we engage his presence, we expect his power.

When you engage his presence, you should expect his power.

I could go on and on for hours talking about the power of God.

The book of Acts is a beautiful demonstration of the power of God on display, and there was this tension of people engaging his presence and experiencing his power.

We see stories of breakthroughs and healings take place.

And I remember that as we began to pray about God who we were and who we were becoming as a church family, we began to process through what are the values that we want to say, like this is what we're known for.

There's a lot of amazing churches in our community all across the globe, and and each one has its own unique thing, and and God sends people that need and that want to participate in whatever the uniqueness is for that particular church.

So, Lord, like, what is it about us?

Who are we in this city?

What is our kingdom assignment?

Help me to articulate that in a way so that as people engage it, they know hey, when I go to celebration church, this is what they're all about.

That's why different churches exist.

It's not, we're not ops with anybody, we just all have our different way in which we're trying to fulfill the great commission.

And I remember God said, I want you to have these four pillars.

One of, and the first one is we celebrate the goodness of God.

That there's gonna be a lot of chaos, there's gonna be a lot of pain, and we don't disassociate from that.

But we also want to be a community that has a theological understanding that even in spite of all the pain, that God is still good.

So we're a culture that's gonna celebrate the goodness of God.

We also knew that we needed to have a responsibility in a way in which we saw people, so we knew that we wanted to demonstrate the love of God.

We want to be a community that doesn't talk about the love of God as a theory.

Because there's a lot of people and a lot of community that will say the love of God, but you don't see it in their actions whatsoever.

So we wanted to be a community that says, hey, when we say we believe and demonstrate in love of God, there's action attached to it.

It's seen in the way that we spend our missional dollars, it's seen in the way in which we engage community and support people.

But we also knew there were these other things that we wanted to make sure was a prominent part of who we are as a church, our core identity, and it was we believe in the power of God and we engage the presence of God.

We want to be a church that understands the importance of believing God for big things.

We don't want to be a church that that disconnects the God of the Bible from the God of our reality, and we begin to put a timeline on when miracles take place and we don't even engage the presence of God anymore.

I haven't read a single verse yet that tells me there's an expiration date on God's promises.

So we believe in the power of God.

We believe that what the Bible talks about, yes, we put it through a healthy and proper biblical, theologically accurate, scholastic, hermeneutic, but we also understand that the Spirit of God made these sacred texts available for us, not for us to study what happened in the past, but for us to have an expectation of what God's gonna do in the present.

So we believe in the power of God, but we also understand it's important for us to engage the presence of God.

We we don't want to be a community of faith that that relegates God to if I feel like it, worship.

If I feel like this is my favorite song, then I'll worship.

If I feel like this is my favorite preacher, then I'll go to church.

If if I feel like if I feel like this is what I want to do, then I'll do it.

We needed to have a a foundation that says we do things because of the goodness of God, not because of where I'm at in my present situation.

I believe that this is beautifully demonstrated in the book of Acts, where the Bible tells a story about how Paul and Silas are in jail.

They had every reason to be silent, they had every reason to be frustrated and upset considering God as the one who ordered their steps, and now their steps have been ordered, and now they find themselves literally in prison.

But the Bible says they began to sing hymns, they began to worship God, and then the ground began to shake, and then every prisoner that was there was set free as a result of them engaging the presence of God, and then they saw the power of God.

I'm not trying to give you a formula that if you raise your hand, that God's gonna give you a raise at work.

But what I am saying is that God has commissioned us that regardless of where you find yourself, that we are called to engage the presence of God.

And when we engage the presence of God, we have access to his power.

This is why when we come to church, we're not performing a concert.

The worship team is not here trying to lead you to have good feelings and the vibes, but they're leading you into the presence of God because the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of his people.

So when I lift my hands up, I'm inviting the Spirit of God to move in my situation.

When I lift up my voice, I'm inviting God to move on behalf of me, even when I'm praising in the midst of pain.

That means sometimes with tears in my eyes, I had a hand lifted up.

That means even with a broken heart, I'm still declaring that God is good and that he's able to heal and that he's able to redeem.

My feelings can't be lid for what God is going to do in my life.

So I engage his presence and expect his power.

There have been times I've worshiped my way out of brokenness, I've worshiped my way out of being discontent.

I worship my way into a healthy marriage.

I worship my way into the freedom that I experience today.

It's not because I felt like it, but it's because God's word tells me that his presence is available and that when I choose to worship, I'm stepping into his presence, and there is joy, there is healing, there is freedom, there is breakthrough.

There's so many things that happen.

This is why we engage God's presence with an expectation that we're going to experience his power.

So I want us to put that into practice.

Worship is not a temperament, it's a posture.

We lift our hands, we lift our voices.

Not because it's the trendy thing to do, but scripture says we lift up holy hands in the presence of God.

It says that we lift up voices and we say, make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

And let's be honest, some of our worship sounds like noise, but God receives it as great.

But what I'm asking and inviting us to do is that we're not called to be spectators of this journey.

We're called to participate.

We engage and we expect God's power.

Let's stand on our feet.

And whatever your current comfort zone is with engaging the presence of God, take a step beyond it.

Maybe some of us we don't feel comfortable risking our hands, but I'm confident Jesus didn't feel comfortable on that cross.

But he did it.

So I feel that the appropriate response to that is simply saying, Lord, the way that you stretched out your hands, I can at least lift up mine.

When you yelled, it is finished for me, I can declare hallelujah to you.

It's our opportunity to engage the presence of God and watch the power be activated in our life.

Because wherever the presence of God is, there is freedom, there is joy, there is breakthrough.

It's not a transaction, it's a posture.

So with every hand lifted up, let me lead us into a moment of worship.

Lord, we thank you.

And even as we lift our hands, God, it may be beyond our comfort, but it's an invitation and it's a sign of surrender.

It's an invitation for you to land and to move in every area of our life.

Holy Spirit, be the breath that animates our life and fills us with purpose.

Holy Spirit, be the wind that propels us into calling and assignment.

But Father, we recognize we need an outpouring of your spirit, not outpouring of emotions, not just feeling vibes, but God, people who are obediently posturing ourselves to engage your presence with an expectation that we're going to experience your power.

Father, I declare in the name of Jesus that as we pray and worship, that you're going to inhabit our praise and that chains are going to begin to break off in our minds, in our hearts, in our marriages, in our finances.

We have to put it into practice ourselves.

We got to walk with a posture of humility.

So, Father, I just pray in the name of Jesus for whatever thing that is holding us back, that you break it off of us.

Whatever fear that is there, break it off of us.

Because I believe that freedom is in this room.

The presence of God is moving amongst all of us.

He wants to land and inhabit your praise, but we want to lift our hands up.

We want to engage your presence with an expectation that we're going to experience your power.

So, Holy Spirit, pour your spirit out.

Have your way in this place and allow us to be renewed in the name of Jesus.

Let's worship one more time, family.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

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