On FIRE! The Holy Spirit in Each Person & the Gifts That Come with the Spirit w/ Pastor Ross Stackhouse

Welcome to Heaven Earth Church.

My name is Ross Stackhouse.

I'm the founding pastor of Heaven Earth Church.

From the beginning, our heart was to be a church for people who

don't fit neatly into church.

Our heart is to meet people where they are, to learn their stories,

to honor their stories.

Because in every human story is God's story.

In this podcast, you'll hear more about the people who now call

Heaven Earth Church home.

Their stories, in many cases of misfits who are discovering or

rediscovering faith.

If you want to know more about us, you can go to heavenorthchurch.org

Otherwise, we invite you now into the story.

Hello good people.

Brad Miller here, the producer of the Heaven Earth Church podcast.

One of the main benefits of being a part of the Heaven Earth

Church community is our Sunday morning conversations taught by founding

pastor Ross Stackhound.

You can watch and participate in the Sunday morning conversation

this Sunday morning, 9:30am Eastern time at YouTube.com heavenerthchurch.

The audio version of the Sunday morning conversation is available

here on the podcast, which you can find at Apple Podcasts, Spotify

and on the website, which is heavenearthchurch.org now with the

message on fire the Holy Spirit in each person from June 29,

2025 is heaven Earth Church Pastor Ross Stackhouse.

Lord, help us to be aware of your presence here with us.

Help us to be aware of your Holy Spirit.

Guide our path going forward, even today.

Help us to hear something that we could not hear on our own, to

see something and to ultimately do something to live out

our faith.

In Jesus name, Amen.

So I have a question to start for you today.

It's similar to a question we've asked recently, but a little

bit different.

I don't want you to give me an answer based on what you think the

answer should be.

I would like for an answer based on how it has been and how

it is for you.

How it has been and how it is.

Do you tend to operate with the assumption that faith is more

about compliance or more about companionship?

So again, don't answer in terms of what you you're like, I

know what it should be.

How has it been for you in the past?

Have you had that like kind of the you've operated with this kind

of motivation that it's more compliance or companionship make

sense.

Charles feels like his life's kind of been on a spectrum from like

really compliance, formulaic and now moving more towards relationship

companionship.

Has faith.

Have you been motivated more with a mindset of Compliance.

So there, there are rules or regulations, you know, with.

With it.

I need to be compliant with those.

Or have you operated more with the mindset of companionship relationship

in your faith?

Growing up, there was a lot of compliance in your mindset.

But companionship mindset got you through hard times.

Okay.

With Christy, there's been both.

She has the feeling that approaching with the companionship

mindset brings more freedom.

Okay.

So again, the tug of war between sometimes I find myself or

I felt myself following the rules or being compliant with the

rules to earn something from God.

But then sometimes I felt myself in the flow of relationship.

But there's a tug of war.

There's.

What else?

Online people.

Hi.

Hey.

You tell us, you're here.

What's your answer?

What else?

Compliant.

Oh, Natalie in the back.

Maggie Smith is more guided by a mindset of companionship when Joanna's

mindset was more Paul's.

We've got a second for that one.

Maybe in earlier years, thinking more compliance, trying

to follow the rules and maybe not being able to follow the rules

so well.

Is that what you said, Joe?

So you were precious angel, but being more.

But when you stepped into a companionship motivation, you found

yourself almost more naturally doing better with the rules that

you were trying to follow in the first place.

Right.

So we have another vote for Mike.

Starting more with a compliance mindset and then growing

into more of a companionship and letting that inform your actions.

Jason.

Sure.

So for Jason, in earlier years when he was married, he was self

employed.

At the first of the month, he'd write two checks, one to the

church, one to this sort of organization serving folks dealing

with homelessness.

One action felt more like compliance.

That's interesting.

How many of you felt that with giving to the church in your career,

like I must give to be a compliant Christian.

Angela and I once had a fight.

Do we tithe off our gross income or the net income?

That is a compliance minded question for sure.

Natalie.

Hi, Ellie.

We miss you.

Ellie's coming back.

Everyone's so like, sorry, Paul.

When you have companionship with the Lord, it's easy to be compliant.

It's kind of what Joanna said.

Exactly.

No, you're exactly right.

If you guys just keep going, you'll take care of the sermon for

today so we can.

All right, I guess I'll do something a little bit today.

I want to show you something that.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

He said, I wore the perfect shirt.

We are the church.

These are Jesus's.

I've shared some of these with you before.

There are four gospels that are the accounts of Jesus's life

in the Protestant version of the Bible.

There are 66 books of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament.

New Testament is like the Jesus movement and thereafter.

But Jesus said, I came to fulfill the first section, too.

Those four gospels, they mean good news, are Matthew, Mark, Luke,

and.

Sorry, I'm in a trivia mindset.

We were on our way home from Milwaukee yesterday, and I was like

the trivia game show host for Michael and Shane versus Joanna and

Angela.

And in the end, I made them both lose, get down to zero.

They wagered all their points, and they lost.

Because my question was there are letters and numbers etched above

the door right outside this building.

What are the letters and the numbers?

And they both struck out.

MECO 4, which stands for Methodist Episcopal Church, 1904.

Because this building was built in 1904.

This stained glass is from 1904.

This has nothing to do with the sermon.

All right.

John has a section at the end called the farewell discourse.

Jesus's farewell words to his closest friends and followers.

He's preparing them for his departure and for them to take the

movement forward.

Have we been talking about, I think, how he gives each of us a

role and a gift?

I think we've been talking about that.

He's preparing them to carry the movement forward.

And here are some words that he says to him in chapter 14.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Compliance.

You better follow the rules, Dave.

If you love me, you'll be compliant.

Oh, I will ask the Father and he will send another companion who

will be with you forever.

This.

Sorry.

Now you.

This is the spirit of truth whom the world can't receive because

it neither sees him nor recognizes him.

You know him because he lives with you.

And he will be with.

He will be with.

That word that gets translated, companion is an example,

a great example of a word that's in the original language that's

impossible to translate.

All these different translations have given it their

best shot.

The common English Bible and a couple other translations.

Translate it to companion translation for me today.

Jesus says, I'm leaving, but I'm kind of not leaving.

I'm getting out of the way.

Think about Jesus here.

How many leaders do we have in our world who'd be like, I need to

move out of the way so somebody else can take center stage?

How many leaders, like, do we have that in our.

In our time?

I need to get out of the way so I can lift up somebody else.

Jesus does that.

Oh, go ahead, Emily.

Ah.

Emily says we have a lot of them, we just don't see them because

they stepped aside.

Great point, Lucy.

He does.

Lucy.

No, that's exactly right.

It all depends how we read these words oftentimes will be determined

by the mindset and presuppositions we carry into the

reading.

We, we could easily miss that.

It starts out with if you love me, I want to give you an example

of the difference.

Okay, if we live always in a.

Compliance, for the record, is not a bad thing.

There are a lot of scenarios in our world where following the

rules is a good and life giving thing.

My roommate is the director of compliance for a company.

I wasn't going to say it.

Christy.

Christy said, and our house, my kids were once asked, and by once

I mean in the last like eight days, what's daddy's superpower?

One of my children said, he's easy to bribe.

I'm not the Director of compliance, but in her case she resources

insurance companies, member companies, so they know what new

statutes have come out in the insurance world so that they stay

in compliance with those statutes and regulations.

Every single one of us in this room wants that.

It's good for them.

It's good for us.

Compliance can very much be good and life giving for us.

But the question is, what is motivating us to be compliant?

Is it so that we earn something?

We earn in our heads some better approval rating from God or

better approval rating from our friends or people around us?

What's moving us to quote, unquote, follow the rules?

Now today we're going to leave aside how we got the rules that we're

following, we'll leave that aside for today.

Compliance can be a good and life giving thing.

But if we live in a world where everything is about compliance

because the rules are like an ultimatum.

Follow these rules or else we're going to constantly live in

an environment of fear and doubt and judgment and human beings

don't tend to judge themselves.

In a world of fear and insecurity and doubt, who do we judge

Each other.

I don't feel good about me.

The way I'm going to deal with that is to judge you.

We're funny people.

We're funny, funny group.

We are.

Let me give you an example.

Our kid, the director of compliance for the Stack House household,

would like our children to be in bed and asleep by 8:30.

The older two, don't judge us for our rules.

Okay?

If you're like that's too late or that's too early, don't judge

us we just talked about judgment.

Okay, well, when the not director of compliance is putting

the children to bed, how often do they get to bed at 8:30, do you

think?

Even last night?

Daddy, can I please just put these glow stars up on the wall before

I go to sleep?

You can do two.

I didn't say I'm a great, you know, great parent all the time,

but let's say I was a dad who was all about an atmosphere of compliance.

Here's the thing.

Jesus criticized his contemporaries, his other religious

leaders, because they had a compliance mindset to the hilt.

There's a fancy word for it called legalism.

Have you ever heard that word?

It's when religious leaders make the rule itself the point.

It's a subtle thing.

We're almost.

You're creating the rule, you're writing the rule to see.

Like it's almost a game.

Let's see if they can follow it or not.

Let's watch.

If they don't, we're gonna be prowling around like lions to go

get them.

And so religious leaders in Jesus's time were watching, like

in the, in the plants, like hiding, like it.

Was Jesus gonna do something he shouldn't on the Sabbath?

They ate on the Sabbath, go get him.

The rule itself was the point.

They didn't ask, like, did he do something life giving.

For example, one time Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, which

by the letter of the law, you are not to do.

The Old Testament scriptures, first five books, there are regulations

of things you don't do on the day of rest.

One of them is not.

You don't do any acts of healing.

Compliance officers in that day, the Pharisees, not all of them.

Some of them were watching.

And Jesus said, now let me ask you guys a question.

If you had one of your, like, animals fall into a well on the Sabbath,

would you draw him out?

He knew the answer to that because he'd watched him do it.

And so his question was, I just healed a human.

What do you got to say?

An example in my life would be with my son at 8:30 if I made the

rule of the point.

And I was standing outside of his door at 8:30.

What's he doing in there?

Let's see if he can follow that rule or not.

If not, I'm gonna go get him because we're about rules here.

And then I hear him up there, which he always is doing.

I hear the sounds of tinkering past 8:30.

Legos, Nerf guns.

We call him Hector the Collector because he just keeps Everything

in his room and he's going through his treasures.

And what if I broke in at 8:30 and was like, I caught you, man.

What did I tell you, boy?

8:30 is the rule.

Who do you think you are, breaking my rules?

I run this house.

Angela's like, this sounds great, Ross.

Can we start doing this?

You know, the whole, like, while you live under my roof, what

is it?

You obey my rules.

And now, now all of a sudden, I make the rule of the point while

crowding out the person.

And so I get what I want.

My son is afraid every night.

He doesn't have the fear of God, but he has the fear of dad in

him.

And so he starts getting in bed every night at 8:30.

Now I do that with every rule in his life.

I make the rule the point while crowding out the person.

And so I get what I want.

He follows the rules and he's afraid the whole time.

What have I achieved?

I've achieved creating a scared boy.

A scared, compliant boy.

What has religion done now?

What if I make the boy the point?

I still try to keep the rule as the director of compliance would

like me to, and I sit down with him and I make him understand,

like, here's why we want you in bed by 8:30.

Sleep is good for your body.

It's good for your mind.

It's gonna help you.

When you're on the verge of having that outburst tomorrow, you're

gonna have a better job of controlling your anger.

And when I center the person and explain why the rule is good

for him, will he go to bed at 8:30?

Probably not.

Honestly, he probably won't still.

And that's when, like, hey, authority still matters.

I'll find a way to like, hey, now we're going to have some consequences

if you don't comply.

Remember what I said.

Compliance is not the worst thing in the world.

It's like the mindset with which you approach it.

Right?

That is true with us, with God.

What Jesus says is this whole thing, the Holy Spirit coming to

us, is that we would live a life of continuous companionship

and friendship with God.

God's greatest desire is not that we would be compliant with him,

it would be that we'd be companions with God.

In this case is our friend, the Holy Spirit, smarter than us,

wiser than us, have authority over us?

You betcha.

But that's what God does.

God empties himself of power and authority and becomes a peasant

alongside us to earn our trust and invite us to compliance to some

great commands that are good for us, good for our neighbors.

Jesus comes to show us.

Here's what it looks like to live by these rules.

I'll follow him.

First, Jesus says, I'll show you how to love God with all your

heart, mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

I'll show you why it's so good to do that.

And then when I leave, I will ask my Father to send his very presence

to dwell inside you.

So that this beautiful life giving relationship breathes into

your compliance.

So that you want to love the Lord your God with all your heart,

mind, soul and strength.

So that you see your neighbor as I do.

That you see yourself as I do.

God's goal, my friends, is not to create scared, compliant Christians.

God's goal is to create inspired, loving companions of Jesus.

He invites us to this.

That's why he says these words.

And his last words to his disciples, he says to them, basically,

I'm inviting you to a lifetime of friendship.

He says in John 15, I'm going to skip to John 16 in a minute.

He says, I don't call you servants, I call you friends.

All of you know my business, as if we're on the same level.

And people who are my friends, what do they do?

They keep my commandments.

And he says, what's my number one command?

What's Jesus's number?

This isn't a regulation, it's a statute.

Love others and as I have loved you, throws a little curveball

in there.

And there is no greater love than this to lay your life down for

your friends.

And what did I tell you?

He says, give me just a minute and I'll show you what it looks like

to do it.

Give me just a second and I'll show you.

And so he says, then again in John 16, I assure you that it's better

for you that I go away.

Look at this weirdo leader Jesus is, I need to step aside so

this companion will come to you and dwell inside you.

I've done my role as God in the flesh.

I'm going to step inside so God in the Spirit can live in you.

And of course, hey, if you feel confused by what I'm saying

right now, you're like, none of this makes sense.

These disciples, I promise you, as they're saying this, as Jesus

was saying this, they were looking at him going, I just wish

you could talk normal.

What is he saying?

I don't know what he's saying.

But later on they got it.

They just kept walking it out and they grew in These things.

So what do you want to live a life of companionship or a life of

compliance?

Actually, I think the answer is yes.

I actually want to love the Lord with all my heart, mind, soul

and strength.

Because through companionship, I keep learning how he loved me first.

I want to be compliant with that law because he loved me first.

I want to love my neighbor.

I really do.

It keeps growing in me.

I keep having these surprising moments where I see people differently.

It isn't from me.

It's from the companion inside me.

That's all I have to say today.

What else do you have to say?

So your starting place with the rules you set for your kids is

not the rules themselves, it's them.

You center them.

You want them to have a happy life.

You want them to flourish.

That's what the rules are for.

And you see God's rules in that same light with you, that it's

for your good and for his glory.

What else?

What's this making you think, feel, want to do?

Jill.

Jill told a story for those online about when she was a resident

and there was a person in palliative care who wanted to be

baptized.

And a bunch of people on the medical staff conspired to break

the rules so he could be baptized.

Is that a fair?

I don't want to make you out to be a law breaker, but yes, man,

Jesus will lead us into some holy trouble.

I hope I'm about it.

What else?

What's this making you think, feel, want to do?

Everything is an opportunity for companionship.

When I get up in the morning, I'm not trying to go to my prayer

time to be compliant.

I'm learning to want to spend time with my friend Jesus.

He made me his friend.

When I read the scriptures, I'm looking for the heart of my friend

in them.

I'm listening to the companion inside me help me understand when

the Bible in all of its weirdness makes me confused.

But isn't it weird how if the Bible makes you confused and it makes

you ask a question to God, it has worked because it's drawn you

into a relationship.

What else?

What's this making you think, feel, want to do?

Ralph said it gives him sadness and anger about how faith

is often introduced with with the rules first and not not as an

invitation to relationship.

Yeah, the faith has been hijacked.

It is hijacked.

And I can do it too.

I can exploit this beautiful thing for my my personal wants, but

I can also be guided back to this beauty if I will.

Listen.

What else?

What's this making you think, feel, want to do?

If you don't know what it is, we can talk about another time.

But there was something in the 90s that became popular, became prominent

in the church called purity culture, around sex and sexuality.

And Angela said it was a great example of making the rule the point

that you may have achieved the end that you wanted, but in the process

you created people who were afraid and who were ashamed.

If you want to hear more about that, listen to There's a podcast,

the dancer who with whom I danced in Johnson County, Dancing

with the Stars.

It's her story this week Approach We've been in a series called

On Fire the Holy Spirit in each Person.

Begin your day with the mindset that this is all about friendship

with God.

Everything is your prayers, scripture coming here today.

I hope to God you didn't come here just to check a compliance box.

Hey, if you did, you showed up.

God is graceful.

You made it cool.

You can even reframe it now you came here.

We come here to pursue friendship with each other and to

celebrate and pursue friendship with Jesus.

Right?

Think that way.

This week, let the fire of the Holy Spirit dwell in you, the presence

of God dwell in you as this holy friend who is always with you,

always guiding you, always helping you, helping you to become

more like Jesus and helping you to become more like you, the

person God created to be.

Let's pray.

Lord, I just ask for your help.

Help us to do that.

Help us to see your love for us, how you have pursued us as your

friends, how you have forgiven us, how you have dealt with the forces

of evil and darkness and sin on our behalf.

Because you love us as your children and you treat us as your

friends, not your enemies.

Even when we've made ourselves your enemies in our minds.

Help us to walk with you in all things ordinary things, simple

things.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Thank you for participating in the conversation happening at Heaven

Earth Church.

Your next opportunity to do so live is this Sunday morning, 9:30am

Eastern Time either at the main campus at 309 East Main in Whiteland,

Indiana, or online at YouTube Live.

That'[email protected] Heaven Earth Church.

The audio podcast is always available at Apple Podcast and on

Spotify.

You can help others find out about the Heaven Earth Church podcast

by going to Apple Podcasts and or Spotify and leaving a five star

rating and your review instructions on how to do just that

and links are in the show notes.

You can always find out more by going to the church website heavenearthchurch.org

we.

Want to thank you for spending time with us today.

My name is Ross Stackhouse, the pastor to Heaven Earth Church,

and you may think out there that your story is over, but in fact,

your faith story may just be beginning.

If you want more information about our church or you're interested

in the next step, you can go to heavenearthchurch.org Otherwise,

we look forward to being with you next time at the Heaven Earth

Church podcast.

SA.