Elijahsha: Never Stop Short

Well, ever since the very first week of September, we have been in a series called Elijah Shah.

We've been studying the lives of two prophets in the Old Testament, men that lived about 3,000 years ago, Elijah and Elisha, and we just sort of smushed their names together.

That's why we call it Elijah Shah, and today is the end of that series.

Well, it's okay.

Someone clapped.

Someone said, Oh, you know, it's the good news is if you're sad, it's still in the Bible.

It's still there.

You can go and read it anytime you want.

Um, and if you're clapping, hey, good news.

We're moving on.

I I have I've really enjoyed this series, and we've been in it for a while.

But I actually think that's really important from time to time.

Personally, I would prefer if like all of our series were really long.

And the reality is my personal preferences are not what we use to dictate what we do as a church.

That's really important too.

But I enjoy it when we have time to just dive deep into one thing.

Especially when it's just us diving deep into scripture, because sometimes what can happen in church really easily with teaching is it's kind of like we're skipping rocks.

You know, it's like we're on a lake or something like that, and we're skipping rocks, which means we're covering a lot of ground, we're touching on a lot of different topics, but we're never really penetrating the surface.

And if you skip rocks, it's it's cool and it can be fun, but it doesn't really affect the water very much.

You don't see the effects of those rocks on the water.

But if you were to take like a boulder and just throw that boulder in and it lands in one spot and it penetrates deep and it goes to the very bottom of the lake, there's gonna be a reverberating effect across the entire body of water.

It's gonna change the entire nature of that lake.

And so it's important that we take those moments to dive deep and really go way beyond surface level and explore what God wants us to learn.

And God put these stories in Scripture for a reason.

God made sure that these men's lives were recorded.

He made sure that those stories were preserved, that those stories were kept for these 3,000 years because God wants us to learn not just what happened to two people who lived a long time ago, God wants us to learn who he is.

Because the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, meaning that the same God that Elijah and Elisha walked with and knew intimately and experienced, that same God is our God.

And he has the same power to work in our lives that he had to work in their lives.

And when we study what he did in their lives and we learn who he is, we sort of get our eyes open to what he can do through us and in us, and it's exciting.

And so I've really enjoyed going through their story, but today is the end, and it's important that we finish strong.

We don't want to stop short.

Because stopping short, stopping short is really easy to do, right?

Like if you think about projects you've had at home, perhaps, or something you've set out to do, it's really easy to get from like zero to 80% done with something.

But sometimes getting from 80 to 100% is is more work than getting from zero to 80.

It's just so easy in life to stop just short of some great experience that you could have.

Like, for example, the biggest regrets in my life are times that I have stopped short of something, that I that I like almost got there, that I set out to do something and I got close, and then just for whatever reason at the end I stopped short.

When I was 16 years old, I got to go to Belgium with my dad.

My dad was working with a company at the time that had a branch in Belgium, and so he took me with him, which was an amazing experience.

And we got to go to Belgium and we got to see Belgian things, and you know, we we went to some really cool places.

We got to go to Paris for a day, which was awesome.

We just hopped on a train and went to Paris and checked all that out.

It was incredible.

We ate it, we ate it at McDonald's in Paris.

Remember that, Dad?

We ate at the Paris McDonald's because it was the only restaurant we understood what we were ordering.

We walked by some little like cafes and we were like, nah, I don't want to risk it.

Um, let's go to McDonald's.

I get that.

It was pretty good.

But but I remember when we got back from Belgium, I had this like epiphany.

I went, oh my goodness, what have I done?

I went to Belgium and I did not eat a waffle, I didn't do it.

Like, Belgian waffles are a thing.

You know, you can have a waffle, like an ego waffle, or you can have a Belgian waffle, and Belgian waffles are the big giant waffles, and they've got like strawberries and whipped cream and all kinds of stuff on them.

And I was in Belgium, and I walked by, I walked by storefronts, and in the window were like handcrafted by authentic Belgian wafflesmiths waffles.

It's like a blacksmith with waffles.

I think that's a thing.

So I I saw them, I looked at them as you ate one.

And so I could stand here today and I could tell you, as your pastor, what an authentic Belgian waffle tastes like, but I can't.

And I ask I ask for your forgiveness for that.

I apologize.

Because I can't tell you, because I didn't eat a waffle in Belgium, why I don't know.

I'm joking, obviously, about how deep of a regret that is, but one day I pray for the chance to go back to Belgium, and the very first thing I'm doing is I'm eating a waffle.

And I hope it's it's way better than what I've experienced thus far.

If not, that'd be a big letdown and a severe waste of time.

But I do regret the moments in my life where I have stopped short, where it's like I was there.

I I could have just gone a few more steps.

I could have just stayed in it a little bit longer and I would have seen results, I would have experienced something, but I decided for whatever reason to stop short.

We we have an internship here at his hands for for young college-age students, and it's an amazing experience.

Um I interned at a church in college, actually.

That's a big part of the reason why I do what I do now.

It really sort of spoke to me and helped shape what I wanted to do with my life.

So we have we've had this internship for two years.

We've had 20 plus college-age students go through the internship, we've got a group going through it right now.

One of the rules we have with the internship is that if you ever at any point in time during the internship, because it's a year-long thing, if you ever want to quit, you have to talk to the leadership team first.

And the reason we do that is because internships are hard.

That's why they exist.

Internships are are challenging.

And we know that at some point in time life's gonna get busy, life's gonna get stressful, and and you're gonna start looking at things that maybe you need to drop, and the internship might come up in your mind, and we say, hey, look, that's okay, just first talk to us.

And we have the same conversation every time.

I've I've been able to be in some of those conversations.

Number one, we say if you quit the internship, you're dead to us, and we'll never speak to you again.

No, I don't say that.

Um, no, we we we tell the interns, hey, look, you're part of our church.

You are family.

And so if if you need to stop this, that's totally fine.

We will love you.

We will still like, don't let this be an awkward thing.

We're not breaking up.

You know what I mean?

This is not what this is.

We understand life gets challenging.

Sometimes curveballs come our way, and that's that's totally okay.

So you need to feel released.

But but then I always add this thing, and it's not for guilt.

It's just it's reality.

I say, I do want you to know though, pray about it first, because I will tell you that the greatest regrets I have in my life are the things that I didn't finish.

And it's the things I look back on and I I go, what if I had stuck it out for two more months?

What if I had just even so I could say I did that?

I finished.

It is so important in life to finish strong, but it is so easy to stop short.

And it just so happens that today is the day that we're finishing this series, and the story that we're gonna look at, kind of the last big story in Elisha's life, is a story about the dangers of stopping short.

So let's dive into that.

It's in 2 Kings chapter 13.

2 Kings 13 · chapter mention

We're gonna start in verse 14.

It says, When Elisha was in his last illness, he's very old at this point, King Jehoash of Israel visited him and wept over him.

My father, my father, I see the chariots and the charioteers of Israel, he cried.

Elisha told him, Get a bow and some arrows.

And the king did as he was told.

Elisha told him, Put your hand on the bow, and Elisha laid his own hands on the king's hands, and then he commanded, Open that eastern window, and he opened it.

And then he said, Shoot! And so he shot the arrow.

And Elisha proclaimed, This is the Lord's arrow, an arrow of victory over Aram, for you will completely conquer the Arameans at Athek.

What's going on here is that Israel has basically been at war with a nation called Aram.

This has been going on for a very long time.

Uh, back and forth.

There's times that Aram has had the upper hand, times Israel's had the upper hand, and this king sees a battle coming, and he is terrified.

And he's afraid that he's going to lose the battle.

So he does something very wise, and he goes to the prophet, he goes to Elisha and he says, Help! And Elisha puts him through this thing with these arrows, which seems very strange to us, but but using arrows in sort of pre-war ceremonies as a means of blessing the battle was a very common thing in that day.

It's like some of the rituals that we have that are very strange.

Like if you go to a wedding.

If you were to take Elisha and this king and have them watch one of our weddings, they might have questions like, What's the deal with the bride throwing the flowers over her head at the people?

Well, that means, you know, whoever catches it's going to get married soon.

You know?

Really?

Well, no, not really, but it's just kind of a thing.

And when the bride and groom came out, why did you guys throw rice at the bride and groom?

That seems rude and like a definite waste of food, you know?

And we're like, well, you know, it's like, it's not our way of saying good luck, I guess.

We throw, we throw rice at people.

We only do it at weddings.

You can never do it in any other situation, but uh it's just something we do, right?

This is kind of how it was for them, these arrows and these ceremonies, they're just sort of rituals that they had in their society.

And it goes on.

He said, Now pick up the other arrows and strike them against the ground.

And so the king picked them up and he struck the ground three times.

But the man of God, this is Elisha, was angry with him.

You should have struck the ground five or six times, he proclaimed.

And then you would have beaten Aram until it was entirely destroyed.

Now you'll be victorious only three times, and then Elisha died and was buried.

Like, wow.

He's like, What's wrong with you?

Falls down dead.

And just picture your King Jehoash holding three, like these arrows, going, Oh no, what have I done?

And then the last we hear of Elisha is this is so awesome.

It says, Groups of Moabite raiders used to invade the land each spring.

And once, when some Israelites were bearing a man, they spied a band of these raiders, so they hastily threw the corpse into the tomb of Elisha and fled.

But as soon as the body touched Elisha's bones, the dead man revived and jumped to his feet.

And I love it, it just puts that in there like it's a footnote.

You know?

Oh, yeah, and one time this guy touched Elisha's bones and he came back to life.

It's not easy, and that's just then it moves on.

You know?

Such a strange thing.

But miraculous things happen in the Bible all the time, so much so that some of them are kind of like footnotes.

But I want to focus on this interaction that Elisha has with this king because it's so interesting.

It's so interesting.

Like the king's doing the right things.

He goes to Elisha.

There have been other stories in the story of Elisha and Elisha where kings and queens have gone to false gods.

They've gone to, you know, Baal.

We talked a lot about the dynamic between the God of Israel and this false God Baal and the people worshiping Baal.

This king's not going to a prophet of Baal.

He's not going to some false faith.

He's going to Elisha, the man of God, because he knows that Elisha's faith is real, and more importantly, that the God Elisha serves Israel.

And he goes and he says, Help me, and and he seems to follow Elisha's instructions.

It's not like Elisha says, Hey, take these arrows and strike them against the ground.

He's like, Nah, I don't really want to do that.

He does it, he does it three times.

And then Elisha is incensed.

Elisha loses it.

He says, What is wrong with you?

Why didn't you do it five or six times?

Are you crazy?

And then he just dies.

It's such a strange story.

And the reason that Elisha is this upset, the reason that he's so beside himself is because Elisha understands, like few people maybe have ever understood, just how much of God you can have if you ask boldly.

Elisha is about to take over for Elisha.

Elijah's moving on.

And it says, when they came to the other side of a river, Elijah said to Elisha, Tell me what I can do for you before I'm taken away.

And Elisha replied, Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor.

It's a very, very small thing to ask, right?

Elijah at the time is potentially the greatest prophet that Israel has ever had.

Maybe aside from Moses, you'd have to make an argument between Elijah and Moses, and it'd be a pretty, a pretty tight, tight argument.

It might be a draw.

So Elijah's one of the greatest people who have ever followed God in the history of the world.

And he says, Is there anything you like?

And this is the moment when Elisha could say, No, I'm good, I'm blessed.

You know, just the time I've spent with you, Elijah, has blessed me so much.

Or he could say, you know what, Elijah, if I could have a small percentage of what you've had with God, that would make me content.

And those would be things that we would look at and say, Yeah, absolutely, that's accurate.

But Elisha goes bold.

And Elisha says, Yeah, there is.

I'm so glad you asked.

I'd like double, double the anointing of the Holy Spirit on my life that you've had.

Double.

I want twice as much.

And he gets it.

He gets it.

God says, yes.

And so Elisha understands the importance of never stopping short when it comes to God.

Of never settling for less than you can really have.

Because in the moment that Elisha could have settled, in the moment that Elisha could have stopped just short of what he actually desired from God, in the moment where in the back of his mind he could have been saying, Man, I want to go even further than Elisha has gone with God.

But that just seems like too much to ask, so I'll just ask for some.

Elisha went bold and he asked God for double and he got it.

Elisha knows that God does not hold out on people who seek him.

And so Elisha watches this king in a desperate situation.

And he says, Look, if you want victory, take these arrows and strike the ground.

And the king looks at the arrows and he goes, Okay, one, two, three, what next?

And Elisha's like, What is wrong with you?

Because if Elisha had been that king, he would have struck the arrows until the wood was completely worn down and there was nothing left.

That's who Elisha was.

It is so important for us as followers of God.

And I know that some of us here are still seeking and figuring that out, but I'm so glad that you're here.

I'm so glad that you get to hear this message on the front end of your journey with God, because it's so important for us to understand that we often vastly, vastly underestimate the amount of God we can experience in our lives.

And it is so important that we never stop short.

That we never stop short of what God desires for us, of what God desires for us to experience.

Because trust me, like you can take this to the bank, what God desires for us to experience in our lives is so much greater than what we desire.

Paul was another person who, like Elisha, experienced about as much of God as a person can handle.

In Ephesians chapter 1, he's writing to the church, to the Christians that are that are in his world at the time.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

This is pretty shortly before his death.

And he says, This ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you.

And I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you these things.

And here's what Paul's describing.

These are things he's experienced.

So he's telling them, This is what I want for you, because this is what I've this is what I've had.

To give you spiritual wisdom and insight, so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.

In the Greek language, there's two words there, spiritual wisdom and insight.

It's not just Paul using the same word twice for reiteration.

One of those words, the spiritual wisdom word, means to know the things of God, to have spiritual eyes, so to speak, so that you can recognize what God is doing.

You see and understand some of the mysteries of God.

And that word insight means practical day-to-day wisdom and knowledge, like what you need to get through life successfully.

So he says, I want you to have both.

I want you to have knowledge of God, deep, intimate knowledge of God.

And I want you to have practical wisdom that helps you go through life.

I pray for that.

He says, I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he's called, his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

Paul's saying, I want you to have confidence, to have hope so that when something happens in your life and it's something that isn't good, it's something that's a challenge, you're not sitting there wondering whether or not God's gonna show up for you.

You have confident hope.

And if you know people like that, they are a light.

Paul lived with confidence that God was going to come through, and God came through for him time and time again.

He says, I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe in him.

This is the same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand and in the heavenly realms.

Not only does he want you to have wisdom and understanding of God, not only does he want you to have confidence in God, he wants you to experience the power of God in your life.

And that power, by the way, is the Holy Spirit.

He says, the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and in Romans chapter 8, Paul wrote this in verse 11 the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you.

So when Paul says, I want you to experience the power of God, he's saying, I want you to have the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God living in you, working through you, revealing things to you, guiding you, teaching you, empowering you to do what God calls you to do.

How many Christians in the world learn about God, develop their knowledge of God, and maybe even have confident faith and hope, but never experience the power of God because they they stop short of that experience.

Anyone here like sushi?

I know that's an odd transition.

I'm aware of that.

Anyone here kind of like, I don't really like the idea of sushi, I've never eaten it because it's like, come on, it's raw fish, we're civilized people.

Okay.

And there's no judgment in this place for that.

Um I'm not telling those of you who uh who don't eat sushi that you're wrong.

I'm just telling you that I used to be you, and now I'm not, and there's no going back for me.

Like sushi's probably my favorite food.

And someone said amen to that.

I feel like we've been talking about food a lot lately as a church.

Belgian waffles and sushi.

Maybe to commemorate this message every year we'll have a Belgian waffle and a sushi combo meal and we'll see how that goes.

I don't know.

Put some whipped cream on the sushi, put it on the waffle, syrup.

It's America, someone's gonna do it eventually.

Like, let's just, that'll be a thing one day.

It's a waffle uh sushi fusion restaurant, it's really good.

So for years I was a sushi holdout.

And it's not because I tried sushi and didn't like it, it's because I could not get myself to try sushi.

It's just I didn't, I remember being in high school.

It's the first time someone ever like said, Hey, you want to go get sushi?

And I was like, remind me what sushi is again.

It wasn't kind of as big as it is now at the time, and they said, Oh, it's like raw fish.

And I'm like, Well, then we're gonna stop there.

I don't put raw things in my mouth, you know.

Back in those days, I was the person who would order a steak and get it done well.

You know, I just wanted things cooked, call me crazy.

And so for years I just I held out because I didn't like the idea of it.

It weirded me out.

The idea of putting a piece of raw fish in my mouth, it just was strange, foreign.

I didn't like that.

I thought it was weird, and I said no, and I resisted, and I resisted, and finally one day, I think it was actually uh for my my wife's father's birthday.

We went out to a sushi restaurant and I just succumbed.

I was there, I was in the sushi place, I said fine, and I closed my eyes and I prayed and I ate, and I was like, oh, this is this is good, you know?

Can I can I try one of those?

Can I try one of those?

And that's been about 10 years now, and sushi, like I'm telling you, if you haven't had sushi, you need to eat sushi.

Because we're not sure if it's in heaven.

We don't know.

And we gotta get it now, okay?

There's no, we don't know.

It could be, it might not be.

I don't know.

That actually does have a point, sort of.

Uh for years I was a holdout on experiencing the Holy Spirit for kind of the same reason.

I just I didn't I didn't understand the Holy Spirit.

Anytime, you know, you talk to me about God the Father, I'm like, all in.

You talk to me about Jesus, I'm like, yeah.

You talk to me about getting into a Bible study, I'm like, yeah, let's dive in.

You talk to me about praying and asking God to do some things, absolutely.

But but the whole concept of the Holy Spirit and actually having the Spirit of God in you and working through you.

I had met some people that talked like that, but they were kind of kooky and weird, and and I've always I didn't want to be those people.

Um and and for a variety of reasons, just for the same reasons I didn't try sushi for so long, I just didn't, I didn't like the idea of it.

It was it seemed odd to me.

And so I held out for years, I resisted tasting the Holy Spirit.

And you know then.

Some things happened in my life where I recognized that I had basically been holding myself back from having all of God.

Like it hit me one day, we we pray, and and when we baptize people, we say, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it was basically like I was saying, God, I only want two-thirds of you.

I'm gonna settle for for two-thirds of you.

And that just wasn't enough anymore.

And I had I had spent some time around some people that that had the Holy Spirit, and they weren't super weird.

Like they were a little weird, but most people are, but they were they were amazing people.

And it was very clear in talking to them that they had something with God I did not have.

And I began to develop a desire to experience the Holy Spirit.

I just started that way.

It was a desire, but you know what's amazing is Jesus says that if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, that you will be filled.

If you hunger and thirst for more of God, you will experience more of God.

And I began for the first time, I think, in years to actually hunger for more of God.

I wouldn't leave church satisfied, I would leave church with an appetite.

I wanted more.

And I got more.

And I still want more.

Because there's more of God.

Like there's always, always more of God.

And what Elisha understood, and what Paul understood when he wrote what he wrote in Ephesians, is that we can have it all.

Every single one of us here, we we can have all of God.

There's not one aspect of God that God would hold back from us.

That's always in our minds, this idea that maybe God wouldn't give it to me.

From the very beginning, we have struggled as human beings with the idea that God is holding out on us.

In fact, you can see that in Genesis chapter 3, the very first temptation.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God had told Adam and Eve not to eat from this one tree in their garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you've never story, it's a really quick one in the first pages of the Bible.

God had said, if you eat this fruit, you'll die, and the serpent, Satan says, You won't die.

No, God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good from evil.

In other words, he's saying, God is holding out on you.

God is keeping you from something.

And Satan was lying to them because God does not hold out on his children.

God does not hold out on his people.

But for some reason, we we oftentimes disqualify ourselves from experiencing God.

We look at people who experience God and we say, yeah, maybe for them, but not for me.

And we do it for a variety of reasons, maybe because of sins and issues we have in our lives, and we feel like maybe that has somehow disqualified us.

But what you got to realize is that you were never qualified to experience God.

No one is.

Like no one is.

No one has ever been qualified to experience all of God other than Jesus Christ.

God in flesh.

So you can't be disqualified from something that you could never be qualified for in the first place.

That means that no matter what mistakes you've made in your life, you are not disqualified from experiencing God.

I don't care if you're 20, 30, 50, 60, 80, 90, there is more of God for you to experience.

But we get hesitant sometimes for a variety of reasons.

Maybe it's like sushi, you just don't get it.

It's weird.

You know, we we like fool ourselves into believing that understanding everything about God is a prerequisite for experiencing God.

How much of Jesus did the disciples understand when they started following him?

Like none.

They didn't even know he was the Messiah yet.

Some of them, like they had been following him for a while when Peter finally first went, Hey, I think you might be the Messiah.

And Jesus went, ding, ding, ding.

You got it.

But they were already following him at that point in time.

They were already experiencing Jesus before they even understood Jesus.

Because experience and understanding, like, you don't have to have those things before you take a step forward with God.

He will give himself to you before you even realize what he's doing if you desire it.

And Elisha, he desired it.

He wanted all of God.

Paul wanted all of God, and they understood that God would give anyone all of him if that person would ask, and if that person hungered and thirsted for him.

In the book of Exodus, we have a story with Moses.

This is years before Elijah and Elisha lived.

And Moses is about to go up on this mountain, Mount Sinai.

He's about to meet with God.

And God shows up in an intense way.

I don't know if by the time you guys were coming here this morning, it was still as foggy as it was when I left.

It was intensely foggy this morning.

Our kids were in the car, amazed, like, where is everything?

You know?

They're sitting there and they're like, wow, this is because we couldn't see, you know, stores right on the side of the road.

It was so foggy.

It was like a cloud.

And God shows up on Mount Sinai as a cloud, but a little bit more intense than fog.

There's like lightning and these sounds of noise and blasts, and it's it's the Bible described the sounds like like a ram's horn being blown.

And it was dark and thick and intense, and the people were like, whoa, hold on.

So in Exodus 20, verse 18, it says, When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram's horns, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear.

Exodus 20:18

And they said to Moses, You speak to us, and we will listen.

But don't let God speak directly to us, or we will die.

Don't be afraid, Moses answered them.

For God has come in this way to test you, so that you will fear, so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning.

That fear means awe.

Like you'll have an awe of God.

He wants to see, he wants you to see his power, so that you'll know that he's not some tiny, powerless God.

He's not some work of imagination, some work of fiction, some statue that some person has carved, but he's real and he's powerful.

Like he wants you to see his power.

And it says in verse 21, as the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.

I find it so amazing that there wasn't one person in the entire crowd that day that said, Moses, can I come to?

But there wasn't one person that said, Can I can I go on the mountain with you?

Like Moses, I want to see what you see.

I want to experience what you experience.

The Bible says that God and Moses spoke face to face as one speaks to a friend.

The Bible says that every time Moses would come off the mountain, that his face would shine, literally shine so brightly that they had to cover his face with cloth.

And I wonder how many of the people watch Moses come off that mountain afterwards with the shine on his face, saying, Man, I wish I had been there.

But the reality of the human condition is that sometimes, if we're honest with ourselves, we are content to stand in the distance and watch other people experience God.

Sometimes we're content just to hang back for whatever reason, fear, uncertainty, feelings of insecurity that maybe God wouldn't do for us what he does for others.

And we stand in the distance and we watch others face to face with God and we say, Yeah, them, but maybe not me.

That is not God.

That is not Jesus.

Luke chapter 11, verse 11.

Luke 11:11

Jesus says it extremely clearly.

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, he's saying normal people with problems, with issues, if you 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?

What is the only qualification in that statement about people experiencing the Holy Spirit?

It's those who ask him.

That's it.

Those who ask, not those who ask and prove themselves worthy.

Not those who ask and have never done X, Y, or Z.

Those who ask.

A family of people bold enough to desire all of God.

So that people can have hope, that they can have all of God.

Because we've said this from the beginning, as a church, we we exist for messy people.

I love that we're a church full of messy people because it's because I'm kind of a messy pastor.

And the beautiful thing about us is that if we're experiencing God, if God is working through us in all of his power, if we're experiencing the Holy Spirit like we're meant to, and we're not just experiencing knowledge about God and you know living the good Christian life and doing some good things and and you know encouraging people, that's all awesome.

But if we're actually experiencing the power of God, if we have stories like let me tell you about a time when when I prayed for someone and God answered my prayer.

Let me tell you about a time that God healed someone.

That happens, that happens here.

Let me tell you about a time that God showed up in my life just because I asked him to, and he saved my marriage, and he saved my children, and he rescued my family, and he changed the person that I am.

Let me explain to you what the power of God can do.

I believe God wants to use this church to do that because most of us in the room can't say, and it's because I've lived such a perfect life.

It's because I've been so good that he's done this for me.

It's because he's God and he doesn't hold out on his children.

That's what Elisha knew.

That's why Elisha was just like, I'd rather die than watch you stay like stay, like not get all of God.

That's what Elisha did.

Like, I would rather die right now than sit here and watch you hold back.

Don't hold back, do not stop short.

Because I'm telling you, there's more of God.

More than any of us can imagine.

In fact, and we'll wrap up with this worship team, you guys can come back out.

Ephesians 1:14.

Ephesians 1:14

Paul wrote, the spirit, the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, the same spirit that works in us and through us, the same spirit that gives us spiritual gifts of all kinds, the same spirit that speaks through people, that used people like Elijah and Elisha to do miraculous things.

That wasn't them, they weren't magical, that was the Holy Spirit.

That same spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people.

He did this so we could praise and glorify him, so we could experience his glory.

Now here's what this is saying: it's God's guarantee that we will get an inheritance.

In other words, the Holy Spirit is the deposit to the inheritance that will come.

What that means is that even the Holy Spirit is just a taste of all of God.

It means that even if you've been following Jesus for 20 years and you're sitting here like, yeah, I've experienced the Holy Spirit, I'm good, yeah, there's still more.

No matter where you are, no matter who you are, there's more.

And if I'm gonna take one thing away from the story of Elijah and Elisha, it's that there is more of God than I have experienced.

And I do not want to be a person who stands in the distance and watches as other people go all in with God.

I do not want to be a person who spectates.

Like there are things in life I am happy to spectate.

Nathan ran a marathon a few weeks ago.

I will never do that.

No desire to whatsoever.

I will watch someone run a marathon and I will go, wow, that's really cool that they did that.

Good for them.

I'm good.

There are many things in life that I will be happy to stand in the distance and cheer others on as they do something great, not with God.

And my prayer is that every single one of us would have the same conviction.

If there's one thing in this world that I refuse to be a spectator about, it is God and his presence.

I want it all.

I want to experience it because I believe that he doesn't hold out on his people.

I want to be like Elisha, not Jehoash.

I don't want to be the guy that goes, is this enough?

I want to be the guy that says more, more than I can even imagine, more than I think possible.

I want to experience everything you have for me, and I want it, God, because I want you, because I love you, because I want to know you better, because I just know that there's more of you that I haven't had, and I've got to have it, God.

So let's be people who go up the mountain.

Let's be people who strike our arrows 10, 12, 20 times until God says, stop, stop, that's enough.

And then you strike it one more time, just in case.

But don't disobey God.

Bad analogy.

Will we be the ones who stand at a distance and watch?

Or will we be the ones who taste, who experience?

Will we be the ones bold enough to ask for more?

Pray with me.

Jesus, thank you so much for this day.

God, it's been a good day.

And actually, God, I'm really glad we get to sing one more song.

King David wrote in your word, better is one day in your courts, better is one day in your presence than a thousand elsewhere.

And so, God, I'm really looking forward to spending a few more minutes worshiping you.

Lord, thank you so much for every person in this room.

Thank you, God, for those beautiful children that were on the stage a few minutes ago.

And Lord, we we do agree as a church, as a family, that we will help raise them, that we will help support their parents, that we will be there for them, that we will, you know, help help be a safety net for their lives in hard times, that we will encourage and spur their kids on so that they can know you.

And right now, God, we are a people, we are a family.

And I pray that you would unite us right now by a common desire to experience more of you.

We all have our own junk, we all have our own issues, we all have our stuff.

But what you make so clear in your word, what you've made so clear throughout this entire series, throughout all of your scripture, God, is that our issues do not keep us from you unless we let them.

That our struggles do not disqualify us from you, that the only qualification you give for experiencing you is a hunger, too.

So fill us with that, Jesus.

We will not be the ones who stand in the distance.

We want the double portion because we know that's what you want for us, and we ask this all in your name, Jesus.

Amen.