The Holy Spirit Gives You What You Need

So I want to read something that Jesus said in Mark chapter 13.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

This is something he said to his followers, and the context is interesting.

He's talking to them about a really difficult time that they're going to have to go through, that his followers are going to have to endure.

And within this difficult time, this kind of period of trial, he basically just says, Look, you're all probably going to get arrested at some point.

You're probably all going to have to stand before authorities and basically stand trial because you follow me.

And he's giving them advice about what to do when that happens.

It's Mark chapter 13.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

And so listen to what Jesus says.

Mark chapter 13, verses 9 through 11.

Mark 13:9–11

He says, You must be on your guard.

You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues.

On account of me, you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them, and the gospel must first be preached to all nations.

Whenever you're arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say.

Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

Now just process this for a second.

Jesus tells you, I mean, like, put yourself in the shoes or the sandals or whatever of the people following Jesus at this time.

And Jesus basically tells you, you're going to get arrested because you follow me.

It's going to get really tough.

But when that happens and the day comes that you've got to stand trial, I don't want you to worry about what to say.

Like, don't worry beforehand about what you're going to say and the defense that you're going to make for yourself.

Just know that the Holy Spirit is going to give you exactly what you need to say at that time.

I don't know about you, but if I were them, I would probably prefer that Jesus just tell me what to say.

I mean, Jesus was amazing with words.

The number of times that that the Pharisees, the authorities of his day tried to trap Jesus, and the number of times that he just said the exact perfect thing that got them all flustered and they they just had no rebuttal and they just had to let him go, like that happened all the time.

I would rather Jesus, who is the master of words and teaching and saying the exact right thing at the exact right time, I'd just rather Jesus tell me exactly what to say.

It'd be more practical to me if Jesus says, hey, when you get arrested, just say this.

But he doesn't do that.

He says, when you get arrested, don't worry.

The Holy Spirit's going to give you exactly what you need.

Now, in our culture today, very few of us have to worry about getting arrested because we follow Jesus unless a lot of things change.

But the same promise that Jesus makes to his disciples applies to us because we're his disciples too.

We're his followers.

Is that we don't have to worry a lot about what might happen.

We're really good at that as people.

We are really creative at worrying.

We can think of all kinds of scenarios that we should be worried about.

But Jesus would tell us look, don't worry too much about what might happen in your life, about what you might encounter.

Just know that whatever happens to you, whatever difficulties you face, that the Holy Spirit is going to give you what you need at that time.

Sometimes it can be hard for us to think about the Holy Spirit in practical terms.

God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And it's pretty easy for us to kind of visualize God the Father, at least in the sense that we know what a Father is.

And then you have Jesus the Son, and it's God as a human being on the earth.

And you know, we we know what people look like.

And there have been tons of movies and TV shows that portray Jesus, and so it's easy for us to get like a mental picture of Jesus, at least the Jesus who was walking on the earth.

Jesus existed before that and exists now, but but we can visualize Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that's a little harder to visualize.

It's harder to see the Holy Spirit as something practical, and in fact, a lot of churches don't talk about the Holy Spirit a whole lot because it doesn't seem that practical.

But Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit with as much practicality as anything else that he ever talked about.

It's actually really interesting because when Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit, he used pretty concrete terms.

I've always thought about it like the way that I I'll never forget the when the iPhone was first unveiled.

And Steve Jobs with Apple was showing off the iPhone, and he started telling people all the things it was going to be able to do.

He's like listing off features.

Like this is so practical, this is gonna change your life because it's gonna do this and this and this and this.

And when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, he actually talks about it in a similar way.

And so let's check out, for example, John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

John 14, 15 through 17.

Jesus says, If you love me, obey my commandments.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.

He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.

The world cannot receive him because it's not looking for him and it doesn't recognize him, but you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

John 14, 26, Jesus says, 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've told you.

John 16, 13 through 14, when the Holy Spirit comes, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.

He will not speak on his own, but he'll tell you what he's heard, he will tell you about the future, he will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.

So when Jesus talks with the Holy Spirit, he speaks in very, very practical terms.

He says the Holy Spirit's gonna come and it's gonna be within you, and the Holy Spirit's gonna guide you, and the Holy Spirit's gonna teach you, and the Holy Spirit's gonna remind you of all the things that I've said, and the Holy Spirit will give you the words that you need for the situations that you're in, and the Holy Spirit is actually gonna even show you the things that God is going to do in the future.

Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit like this practical tool that's gonna do all these amazing things in our lives to the point that Jesus is actually almost like excited to leave his disciples because unless he leaves, they won't get the Holy Spirit.

At least not in the way that he's promising.

And so it's important for us to remember that we have we have no idea what's gonna come our way.

We we don't know what's gonna happen a year from now, two years from now, unless, of course, the Holy Spirit shows us something.

But just like Jesus' disciples, we don't have to be people who worry about about all the what-ifs.

We don't have to be people who worry and spend all this time fretting about, well, what if I find myself in that situation?

Or what if this happens to me, or what if this happens to my job, or what if this happens in my marriage, or what if this happens to one of my kids?

What am I gonna do?

What would I ever do if that happened?

Because Jesus would look at us and say, look, don't worry beforehand about all that.

Just know that the Holy Spirit, which is the very presence of God within you, is going to give you what you need when you need it.

The Holy Spirit gives us what we need when we need it.

That is a promise that Jesus makes to us.

And it's a promise that that's fulfilled all in time.

Every time I think about this idea of God giving us what we need through the Holy Spirit when we need it, um, there's a few things that come to my mind.

Um, some of those are experiences that I've had where that's happened in my life.

But actually, oftentimes, when I think about this idea, I think about my wife's grandfather.

I love my wife's grandfather, and so he's he's my grandfather too.

I've known him for about 20 years now, and he actually comes to his hands almost every single Sunday morning with his wife, and so uh he's part of our family.

But Megan's grandfather has has been someone who's followed Jesus for the vast majority of his life, and he's just been one of those people who said yes to Jesus, and he's never stopped saying yes to Jesus.

And as a result of that, he's he's done some pretty amazing things.

He actually lived as a missionary in Bolivia in the late 1950s and the early 60s, and so uh for about 20 years, every single time I'll be at a family gathering, uh, we're having Thanksgiving dinner, you name it, I'll end up asking Megan's grandfather to tell me some of the stories from when he was a missionary in Bolivia uh years ago.

And he has amazing stories, and he's a great storyteller.

And a lot of his stories are about this exact thing that we're talking about, moments where he didn't know what to do, he was way out of his depth, but in that moment, the Holy Spirit gave him exactly what he needed at that time.

And so I thought it might be actually fun if if we just heard him tell some of those stories directly himself.

And so we're gonna we're gonna look at two stories from my grandfather-in-law, but he's he's my grandfather.

We're gonna look at two stories from him.

Uh uh, I call him Brother Tanner, and uh you can call him that too, but we're gonna look at two stories from Brother Tanner, and and these are stories of the Holy Spirit giving us exactly what we need when we need it.

Listen to these stories, and then we'll come back together.

Uh, this was about uh 65.

I was in Bolivia, and this was about 65.

So I had gone into the city for something, probably to make to purchase our three-month supply of uh groceries, because we bought groceries once every three months, and met a guy that had the Jesus film available.

And back then the Jesus film was real popular in that part of the country.

So I asked him if he would be able to come out to our village and show the Jesus film, and he said, sure.

So we talked about it and set a date, and I went back home out in the sticks and prepared for his coming, and I had to have a screen, there was no screen anywhere.

So my wife's bed sheet, one of the bed sheets became the screen.

I found enough wood to make a screen big enough to attack a bed sheet to and uh and set it up out in our garden plot, you know.

And uh so I made preparation, and sure enough, when the day came around, he showed up with the film, and we were so happy.

I'd already told people around the village that we were going to be showing the Jesus film, and and um time came to show it.

He had his projector set up, and uh people were gathering.

He turned on the projector just to try it out, and sure enough, had a beautiful picture.

The sheet worked perfectly for the back of the screen.

And so he turned on the projector, showed there's a beautiful picture, but no voice.

No sound.

The the bulb, they called it an exciter bulb, that picked up the soundtrack off the film and produced it along with the with the vision.

It was burnout.

So we had picture but no voice.

This is where this started, and I want to read, and you'll see as I tell the story, you'll see these verses fulfilled.

And one is Philippians 4 19, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

The next one is Psalm 46.1.

God is our refuge and strength, and a very present help in time of trouble.

And the next one, Hebrews 4.16, let us therefore come boldly under the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

And the next one is in John 10, there's three or four verses there.

And one is, and the sheep hear his voice, and another area there of verse 4, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

And in verse 16, and they shall hear my voice.

And uh but those those verses are incorporated in the story.

And so I had no voice.

And 300 miles away in the city of Santa Cruz, you might could find one.

No guarantee you'd find one if you were even in the city, and certainly not in our little village.

You know, they sold yucca and bananas and stuff like that, but an exciter bulb that went on a projector to show a film, no way.

And so there we were.

And a dilemma.

What am I going to do?

Now, I heard in my mind his voice.

I had never taken or changed a bulb in my motorcycle headlight.

Never.

And he said very clearly, go take the bulb out of your motorcycle headlight.

That was it.

That's all he said.

So boy, I took off out there to the shed where the old motorcycle was parked, took the lens, took the cover off and pulled that bulb out, and it was a three-post connector where you push it in.

These had to have three holes for three spikes to go through, push it in and give it about a quarter or eighth of a turn, and it would lock in.

I took it out and I took it up there to the man with the projector, and I said, I don't know, God told me to do this.

See if this will fit.

And he took the old bulb out.

It fit perfectly, like it was made for that projector.

I pushed it in, gave it a little quarter of a turn, it locked in.

I went out and fired up my generator, had a good generator, 10 kilowatt generator, fired it up.

He turned on the projector, and there was voice and the voice, I mean there was picture, and the voice was beautiful, just as clear as crystal.

A bulb out of my motorcycle headline.

God shall supply all you need.

And there we were.

I had no idea that that bulb would fit, but God knew it would.

And here's the here's an interesting thing about it.

That current, that uh DC coming off the motorcycle was 12 volt.

That AC coming off that generator was 120 volts.

And it's a wonder it didn't blow the bulb out, you know.

But nothing happened.

We showed the film, everybody was blessed.

I took the bulb back out, put it back in my motorcycle, never gave me a minute's trouble, and we showed the Jesus film.

That God supplying all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.

It all unrolled and happened right there in that moment.

Of my sheep shall hear my voice.

And I heard it, obeyed it, it worked, and we showed the film.

Seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You can't do it without Him.

That that applies to ministry right here, wherever we are.

You must be sure you are filled with the Holy Spirit because He will enable you to do things that I could relate to you, and hopefully, maybe in the future relate to you how the Holy Spirit literally took over and sh and taught me how to do things that just we we tried and tried to get it done, and it wouldn't happen until the Lord, I obeyed the Lord and He told me what to do.

Down there, the bamboo serves so many purposes, and it's so big until it goes from serving as water buckets to boards.

Well, you go and you cut down these bamboos, and they have a way of splitting them, and it opens up into like a board.

And you use that, we were roofing the church.

You lay it across the ceiling, the uh uh roofing joist, lay it across, fasten it with either a vine or a small nail, and then you pour the mud onto that, and you lay your tile, you stick the tile in the mud and keep going higher and higher, and come back with another row, and like that you do the roof.

So we were replacing the roof.

And as we were cutting the bamboo, there was a man working with us and for me that uh he was cutting a bamboo, he cut it off at the bottom, and the vines, some vines was holding it at the top.

And there's a little tree that had broken over about two feet from the ground, had been broken over for some reason, and was laying on the ground like this, and he thought it was a good place to step, to step up on, to reach that vine, to cut it loose so he could get his piece of bamboo out.

So he stepped up on it and it was rotten.

He didn't realize it.

So it threw him, and when he fell, he fell on his shoulder and knocked it out of joint.

And we are 300 miles from the city.

No way to get there, seven days by horseback, 45 minutes by DC3, but that only came in twice a week, and his shoulders out of joint and in pain.

So we go to the doctor.

The doctors down there have to spend a year out in the boonies for interim.

They serve as interim doctors out there for a year in order to get their to fulfill their license requirements.

And so there was a doctor out there in the village, and so we went into the village and took him to the doctor.

And uh the doctor, uh he was a good doctor.

He did everything he knew to do to get that shoulder back in joint, but everything failed.

And here's the thing: the word of knowledge, just the Holy Spirit giving you knowledge that you did not have on how to do something.

My mind was just filled with this what to do, how to do it.

And so I asked the doctor if I could try something.

He said, sure, he had tried everything he knew to do.

So the Lord said, Lay down, lay him down flat of his back on the floor, and you lay down next to him, your feet to his head, and his head to your feet.

Pull your shoe off.

So I pulled my shoe off, left my sock on, and put my heel in the arm his armpit.

Just stood it down to where I could get my heel right in his armpit.

And when I did, I could feel the ball on the end of that shoulder bone.

I could feel it.

My foot was against it.

And so I just pushed gently on that bone and pried his arm over my leg.

And it went right back in joint.

Just like that.

And the doctor's standing there, flabbergasted, I'm flabbergasted, the man is flabbergasted plus joyful because his arm was back in joint.

And that's just what I mean.

That's one of the comforter, the helper, our instructor in righteousness, our teacher, our guide, the Holy Spirit.

That is one thing that is absolutely necessary whether you're at home or the mission field, if you're going to do the work of the Lord.

The man got his arm back in joint.

He was so afraid he wasn't gonna, hey, he was gonna have to go around with his arm hanging down, you know.

Put it back in joint.

He wore his arm in a sling for a week or so, and he was alright.

He was alright.

Well, I'm sure you can see why I enjoy listening to those stories so much.

And in fact, if if you enjoyed that, at the very end after we take Lord's Supper, we're gonna have a third bonus story, and so stick around and you can listen to Brother Tanner share another story.

You know, I've thought a lot over the years about what it must have been like for him living in the jungles in Bolivia, not having the resources that all of us have.

Sometimes, whenever you're in a situation where you don't have access to anything else other than God, you tend to rely so much more on what's around you than what's within you.

And the Holy Spirit is within you.

Now, he in the jungles of Bolivia knew that his only hope, his only hope in those situations where he didn't know what to do was for God to show up.

And there's there's something about when God is not your plan B, but he's your plan A, and you fully rely on Him having to work through you and give you what you need that just opens you up to experiencing Him in ways that you just don't experience when God is kind of like the fifth, sixth option.

But He lived His life with God as option number one, and God followed through on those promises and gave him exactly what He needed when He needed it.

How amazing would it be if we all lived life that way?

If we all lived truly trusting and even depending on the Holy Spirit to give us what we need.

When we don't know what to do.

Before we made a phone call and called somebody else, before we we googled whatever the solution to our problem might be, not that those things are wrong.

It's fine.

God's given us lots of resources around us to help.

But if before any of that, the very first thing we did was to seek out the Holy Spirit's guidance, how powerful would that be?

It would be life-changing for us.

Because the Holy Spirit always knows what to do.

Jesus is clear.

The Holy Spirit will guide you, the Holy Spirit will teach you, the Holy Spirit will give you what you need when you need it.

How do we actually experience that?

How do we live that out?

Just two really simple words that come to my mind when I think about that and trying practically to experience this on a daily basis.

The first word is simply ask.

Just ask.

In Luke chapter 11, Jesus says this.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for.

Keep on seeking and you will find.

Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives.

Everyone who seeks finds.

And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

You fathers, if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead?

Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion?

Of course not.

So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Jesus says, Ask God for the Holy Spirit.

Now, this gets a little dicey when it comes to like theology and how we understand the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is spoken of in Scripture in a variety of different ways, especially in terms of how we experience the Holy Spirit.

For example, Romans chapter 8, 15 through 16.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.

Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.

Now we call him Abba Father, for his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children.

God does not hold the Holy Spirit, like he doesn't hold out when it comes to the Holy Spirit.

He's not holding the Holy Spirit back from us.

It makes it really clear that when you put your faith in Jesus, God gives you his spirit.

His spirit joins with your spirit to affirm that you're God's child.

At the same time, Jesus talks about us asking for the Holy Spirit.

And many times in the New Testament, we see moments where people encounter the Holy Spirit in like a really powerful way.

We see that at the day of Pentecost is what it's called, when the Holy Spirit comes upon all of Jesus' disciples in this really powerful way and equips them to preach to all these people who speak all these different languages.

We see lots of other times in the New Testament where people had sort of this encounter with the Holy Spirit that was palpable.

It was something that you couldn't deny.

Paul actually, in his travels to all these different churches that have gotten started, he encounters a group of people who have given their lives to Jesus, but but they haven't have never heard of what Paul calls the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul's like, well, you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

And very often that was something in Scripture where people would lay hands and pray on other people and say, hey, we pray that you receive the Holy Spirit.

So how do you receive something that you already have?

Right?

Like Romans says that when we give our lives to Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit.

And the truth of the matter is it's mysterious.

I can't explain it.

I can't tell you how it all works.

It's not like some scientific thing where it happens in the exact same way all the time.

But what's really clear from Scripture is a few things.

Number one, when you give your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit's inside of you.

But also, it's possible to have kind of a greater encounter with the Holy Spirit, to have experiences that are so undeniable that it strengthens your faith and equips you in ways that maybe you haven't been equipped before.

And Jesus says that we should ask for that.

That we should just ask.

It's as simple as that.

And so all I'm trying to say is this the Holy Spirit gives us what we need when we need it.

If you've given your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit's there.

It's within you.

But if there's some part of you that's like, yeah, but I just want to experience more of that, then just ask.

All of us this year should just ask God.

God, give me more of your spirit.

Or at least give me a clear understanding of your spirit.

Help me hear your spirit.

We'll talk about that more in just a second.

But whatever it is, Lord, whatever you want to do, I just want, I want to make sure that I'm equipped to handle whatever comes my way by your spirit working inside of me.

Trust that you have the Holy Spirit, but ask for more.

If you want to experience what we're talking about, number one, you got to ask.

Number two, I hinted at it just a second ago.

Listen.

I am not naturally a good listener.

It's actually one of my biggest priorities in life is to become a better listener, a better listener to those around me, and a better listener, especially to God.

I shared a few weeks ago my New Year's resolution this year, is to always obey the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit.

Always, always obey the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit in my conversations and my decisions.

It's already mid-January, I've already failed in some ways, but I'm not letting this one go.

I'm just I'm trying.

Every moment I feel, even just the faintest pull of the Holy Spirit in some part of my life, I just want to do that.

And it's a matter of listening.

Now, I I've shared this before, but the room I'm standing in right now, the big room where we all worship together, for years, before we replaced the roof a few years ago, we used to have major issues with leaks in our building.

And so every time it rained, it would leak.

And leaks would pop up in all kinds of different places.

And I got really good at hearing the most faint drips of water.

Because I was responsible for this, every time there were leaks, you know, it's like I wanted to address those.

And so I got so good at just hearing the smallest drip of water that sometimes I'd be walking through this room, walking through other parts of the building, and I'd be having a conversation with someone, and then all of a sudden I'd be like, hey, stop, did you hear that?

And they're like, No.

And I'd hear a drip.

And I'm like, Did you hear that?

And they'd say no.

And I'd be like, oh no, I heard one.

And then I'd go and, like, sure enough, there was a drip of water.

It wasn't because I have better hearing than the person I was with.

It was because I had spent so much time over the years listening out for leaks that my ears had just become really attuned to that sound.

So I was just always sort of always consciously or subconsciously listening out for that noise.

So when it happened, I heard it.

We can be the same with the Holy Spirit.

We can always be listening out for the Holy Spirit, which which sometimes the Holy Spirit, uh, the Holy Spirit might speak to us in really obvious ways.

Maybe the Holy Spirit uh gives a sign, the Holy Spirit speaks through a dream.

But in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is described as a gentle whisper.

God's voice is like a gentle whisper in the story of Elijah on the mountain.

If you're not familiar with that story, Google it, look it up, it's really cool.

I want to always listen to the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit.

But in order to do that, my ears, my thoughts have to become attuned to the Holy Spirit.

And so that's something we can pray for.

We can say, God, give me very, very attuned ears to your voice.

Holy Spirit, I believe you're speaking to me.

I believe you're going to guide me.

When I find myself in those situations where I don't know what to do, speak to me, but I want to be listening out for that.

And the more you listen, and specifically the more you obey when you hear, the more attuned your ears will become, the more attuned your mind and your thought will become to the Holy Spirit.

It'll be easier for you to hear the Holy Spirit later.

And so if we just ask and if we listen, then we'll have experiences this year where we don't know what to do, but the Holy Spirit does, and the Holy Spirit does exactly what Jesus promises.

The Holy Spirit guides us, the Holy Spirit teaches us, the Holy Spirit reminds us of what we already know, the Holy Spirit gives us what we need when we need it.

Just like Jesus said, just like Brother Tanner experienced in Bolivia, the Holy Spirit gives us what we need when we need it.

Ask, listen, and believe.

That's what God does, that's who he is.

And so