Temples: God’s Personal Plan

Jesus, when I went through the fire,

you were out there beside me.

You were always on time.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful to be here today,

so thankful for the opportunity to come and worship you

with other believers.

God, we're thankful for all the people who gave their hearts

to you all throughout history to lead to the point

of one man putting on a revival here in this community,

where so many people got saved that they had to start a church

that we now call Graham Chapel.

For working and moving in so many different lives.

For over the past hundred years to just bring us

to the point where we are today.

Lord, how you work and move in people is so amazing and unique.

And Lord, we will never know the names

of a tenth of the people who played a part

into us being able to have this service today.

Of people who wrote songs, people who poured their life out,

people who donated the trees and sawed the lumber

just for this building to be built so many years ago.

But Father, you have worked and moved in so many people's hearts

and we gather today because we believe that you want to work

in our hearts right now.

Because there's more to be done.

And Father, for every person in this room,

every person who's watching online,

every person who may listen to the podcast later.

Lord, I pray that we would have a heart and attitude

of surrender to allow you in our lives

in a way that would give you freedom

to work and move and to change the very fabric of who we are.

Lord, we need to become new people.

We need to become new creations.

It doesn't work if we don't.

So God, if we're sitting here this morning and we're fighting you

and we're just, God, I believe,

but I'm just not ready to surrender.

I pray that you would help us this morning

to just ask you to help us get to the point

where we can truly surrender.

Lord, it's not something that we can do on our own.

We desperately need you in our lives

to teach us and guide us and show us your ways.

So, Father God, I pray this morning

that as we gather, as your people,

you would help us to welcome you in

for your Holy Spirit not to just be in here,

but to be inside each and every single one of us,

and for us to surrender to your will and your ways.

Lord, you know all of our requests.

You know all of our people who need you.

We pray for them this morning.

We thank you for how you've been working and moving,

and God, we just ask that you would speak

and guide and work and move in our hearts this morning

to help us follow you and serve you the way you've called us to.

Jesus, we love you, and we thank you,

and we ask all this in your precious and holy name,

and all God's people said. Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, it is a privilege to be here.

It is a wonderful privilege to know you.

And Lord, to think about all those people

on the other side of the world and people here.

Who are simply doing what they've been taught,

and they just don't know.

And Father, we thank you for the people

who have agreed to follow the calling

that you've placed on their life to go

and to teach them something different.

Lord, we pray for them this morning.

Pray that you would speak to their hearts,

Lord, that you would empower them,

fill them with your Holy Spirit,

Lord, that you would prepare them

for this festival that's coming

to be able to speak and teach in a way

that is pleasing and honoring to you

in a way that would draw people to you

through the power of your Holy Spirit.

Father, we thank you for what you're doing among us.

Thank you for the testimonies this morning.

But Lord, we're not the only church.

There's hundreds of thousands of other churches

that are meeting even right now as we meet.

So God, we pray that your spirit would be with them

just as you're with us.

Lord, I pray that you would work in our lives

and help us to be the people you've called us to be.

Lord, we love you this morning.

We thank you so much.

And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

And you might have to turn me down just a hair.

Well, this month we're talking about how

we are temples of the Holy Spirit.

If you've ever sit around and you've just wondered,

like, what am I supposed to do?

What does God want with me?

The truth is, is that God did not create you

and form you in your mother's womb

just so you could be whatever it is in this world

that you could possibly become.

Whatever your dreams or aspirations in life may be,

there's so much more to life than beyond

what this world can offer us.

No matter how much fame or fortune or recognition

you could ever receive,

God created you and formed you in your mother's womb

because He created you and I to be the temple

for His Holy Spirit to dwell in.

And there's a lot of scripture surrounding that mindset,

and we're going to talk about a lot of this stuff there.

We're going to read a lot of scripture.

But this is God's very personal plan

for each and every single one of us.

God wants to bring you and I to a point in our lives

where we literally house His presence in this world.

And the act that you are a mobile temple

means that wherever you go,

you usher the presence of God into the places that you go,

into the relationships that you have,

into the workplace, into the people.

Wherever you are, that the presence of God goes with you

and now it is presented to other people.

And that's what God has created each and every single one of us to be.

So we're going to read our focus passage of 2 Corinthians 6, verses 14-18.

2 Corinthians 6:14–18

And in this, Paul writes to the church in Corinth

because these people have given their lives to Jesus.

They're Christians.

They're meeting together.

They're worshipping.

And if you've ever read the book of 1 and 2 Corinthians,

it's a mess.

These are not perfect people.

They have a lot of problems and issues that they're working through.

It's pretty wild.

Like if we were sitting there comparing Corinth and Graham Chapel,

Graham Chapel's looking really good compared to Corinth.

So that's a good thing.

We got our problems too,

but it's a lot better than what Corinth was dealing with.

And so as he's talking about this and he's writing to Christians,

he quotes Leviticus 26.12, Ezekiel 37.27,

Isaiah 50-11, Ezekiel 20.34, and 2 Samuel 7.14.

There are five different Old Testament passages

that Paul is quoting to remind these people

of the importance of the things that God has called them to.

There's a calling that God has put on our lives,

whether you realize that or not.

If you sit here this morning and you think that the goal

for what we do here at church is for us to acknowledge God,

claim Jesus as Lord and Savior,

and ask him to forgive us of our sins,

we've really missed a lot.

There's so much more to what God has called us to do

than to just pray a prayer and to sit on that

and wait for an egg to hatch whenever we go meet the Lord one day.

So much more.

And so as Paul quotes this passage,

listen at what he's telling the church in Corinth.

In verse 14, he says,

Don't team up with those who are unbelievers.

How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness?

How can light live with darkness?

And what harmony can there be between Christ and the devil?

How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?

And what union can there be between God's temple and idols?

For we are the temple of the living God.

And I'm going to pause right there

because this passage has been used a lot

as people have talked about you shouldn't marry

or you shouldn't date other people.

And, you know, there's truth in that.

But I want us to go so much further beyond this whole idea

of just like partnering yourself with a person

or dating someone or being friends

or going to work at a place that's not honoring of the Lord.

But there's something so much more here to this passage

than just guarding yourself from these situations in life.

Because he says, and go back and look at this,

in verse 16,

and what union can there be between God's temple and idols?

And anything in this world can turn into an idol.

Anything.

Your child can be an idol. Your parent can be an idol.

Your job, your sport, your hobby, your interest,

whatever is in this world can be turned into an idol

in any way, shape, or form.

For we are the temple of the living God.

As God said, I will live in them and walk among them.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

Therefore, come out from among unbelievers

and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.

Don't touch their filthy things and I will welcome you.

There's some conditions to this,

and you need to see that this morning.

Yes, Jesus died on the cross for your sins.

He did that 2,000 years ago before any of us were ever born

or ever known that we were going to exist

for anyone else who lived here in that time.

Jesus died for you and I.

And his death and his sacrifice stands on the platform

to be given to you when you are ready to receive it

and ask him into your heart and life.

But there's a calling for us, and Paul is writing this.

He's quoting these passages from the Old Testament,

but it still applies to New Testament believers.

These are Christians.

They're struggling with tons of different sin,

a lot of sin, and he's saying,

look, come out from unbelievers, separate yourselves from them,

says the Lord.

Don't touch your filthy things and I will welcome you in.

And in verse 18, he finishes up and says,

I will be your father and you will be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.

There is a desire from our Heavenly Father

to have these amazing, intimate, close relationships with us

that go far beyond what we could ever dream or fathom.

It's a point number one this morning,

is that God wanted to dwell exteriorly among people.

This is what you read about from Genesis all the way through Malachi.

As God introduces to his people creation

and he calls them, he calls Abraham, he calls the people of Israel,

he leads them out of Egypt.

As he's preparing them all throughout the Old Testament,

you see this relationship between God

that is almost very distance related to people.

Even in the Garden of Eden, in perfection,

he comes down and walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening

and then he goes back and there's still like that separation.

He comes and walks with them, but it's temporary.

Then he comes back and then they sin and the connection is broken.

But even in the Garden of Eden,

there's still a little bit of distance between God and man.

It's like God comes down, he walks with them,

he fellowships with them, but there's still like this

give and take, this push and pull kind of aspect to it.

You keep following the Old Testament, he calls Abraham,

I will go with you, I will lead you to this place.

But there's still these moments where God comes and he visits with Abraham,

he gives him a vision, he gives him dreams,

angels are sent to him to deliver a message,

but there's always some distance there in between.

He led the people of Israel out of Egypt

with the presence of his pillar of fire by day and cloud by night.

The people of Israel could visibly see

the presence of God leading them and they followed him.

But it was always at a distance, even when they went to Mount Sinai,

and this is really important too.

And God's presence descends on the mountain.

Initially God says, tell the people to come.

And the people are terrified.

They said, nope, you go.

We don't want to die, you go.

They were afraid of the presence of God

and they send Moses on their behalf.

And so then you see these times where God

has these really close and intimate relationships

with certain individuals, not because Moses deserved it.

Moses was a murderer.

He had killed someone.

He had argued with God that he should not be the one to sin.

He should not be the one to talk.

He had to send his brother Aaron along with him

to speak for him because Moses just argued with God

over and over and over again how he did not want to go.

And yet Moses was the one who's willing to go

and experience the presence of God

where people were like, other people were like,

no, we don't want that.

We want to keep God at a distance.

And so the Old Testament is this like just books

and books and books of the people that God has called

to have fellowship with them and walk with them

and the whole time most of the people in these stories

are just keeping God at a distance.

A lot of Christians have done that.

There's a lot of people who claim to believe in God.

We like God.

The idea of God is great.

He's in heaven.

He's in control.

We like that.

He's up there.

We like it when he blesses us.

When there's a problem, we can holler at him,

like, Lord, help me.

Do this.

But if there's no problems and life is good,

God, you stay there.

We're here.

We'll do our thing.

If a problem arises, we'll let you know.

That's most people's attitude towards God.

That's Old Testament.

And in ways like that looks pretty good.

For a lot of people, they're completely satisfied with that.

In Leviticus 26 verses 9 through 13,

Leviticus 26:9–13

this is God given the conditions for his covenant

with the people of Israel.

And he says in verse 9,

I will look favorably upon you,

making you fertile and multiplying your people

and I will fulfill my covenant with you.

You will have such a surplus of crops

that you will need to clear out the old grain

to make room for the new harvest.

I will live among you.

I will not despise you.

I will walk among you.

I will be your God and you will be my people.

I am the Lord your God

who brought you out of the land of Egypt

so you would no longer be their slaves.

I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck

so you can walk with your heads held high.

That's great passage, right?

It's good stuff.

And so God interacts with these people

for hundreds of years that we read about in Scripture

and there's this relationship where God says,

look, he wants a relationship with them.

And what you find is that the people

who truly seek after God, guess what they get?

They get more of God.

Moses had more of God.

Joshua had more of God.

When Moses was going into the tent of meeting

and all the people of Israel would come out

and Scripture says they would stand at their tents

and they would watch Moses go into the tent of meeting

and Moses would go into the tent of meeting

and he would come out

and it says he would be transformed, his presence.

He was glowing from the presence of God.

And all the people of Israel stood at a distance

and let Moses do his thing

and they just liked the idea of,

Moses experiences that, but I'm good where I'm at.

Maybe I'm afraid.

Maybe I don't want to deal with that responsibility.

Maybe whatever the conditions may be,

we keep God at a distance.

We stay over here and we let someone else do that job.

And you look at Joshua

and Joshua was the only one

who would follow Moses and go with him.

The temple gets built.

It's dedicated to the Lord.

God's presence comes down.

Then all the people have to go to the temple

to worship the Lord.

There's always a distance.

There's always an effort that has to be made.

But make no mistake about it,

even as we read that book and verse

and book and verse and book and verse

all the way through the Old Testament,

it was never the fact that God wanted

to keep himself distance from his people.

God very much wanted to be with his people.

It's the people who kept him distance from themselves.

Because there were so many people

who had great relationships with the Lord,

had messages from the Lord,

experienced wonderful things from the Lord.

And then point number two,

we see that Jesus dwelled among us.

So we jump into the New Testament.

Jesus comes.

Everything that God had been doing,

everything that he had called all these people to do

in the Old Testament to be faithful,

God had worked it all out.

Jesus is born.

God is in the flesh.

He dwells among his people.

He literally lives with them and does life with them.

In John chapter 1 verse 14,

John 1:14

John wrote and said,

so the Word became human,

or your translation may say flesh,

and made his home among us.

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness

and we have seen his glory,

the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

And we see this amazing effort of God once again,

doing something above and beyond to come

and to have relationship and fellowship with his people.

Now I don't know about you guys,

it's pretty important

and pretty special whenever somebody agrees

to like live with you and do life with you.

It's my anniversary today.

Twelve years.

It's been a long, hard road for Hannah.

It is amazing to think,

like, you know,

I remember the night I proposed to her

and you wonder, it's like,

she could say no.

You know, most of you guys have had to go through that,

like she could say no

and this is really going to hurt.

And it's amazing to sit there and think,

like somebody actually agreed to do life with you.

Like your parents, you know,

it was just a card they got dealt, okay?

Like you just happened to be what came out of it

and that's okay.

But for your spouse, like they choose you,

they choose to live with you and do life with you.

And Jesus is God.

He was in heaven, he was in perfection

and he literally chose to come out of heaven

and to dwell among his people.

When you look at the characteristics of God,

it screams, I want to be with you.

I want to not just dwell among you,

I want to dwell with you.

I want to do life with you.

Jesus came, he ate with us for three years.

And I just imagine like what that would be like

because I know all the terrible, gross things

Hannah's had to deal with over the past 12 years.

And it's like all of the stuff that a spouse sees

and deals with and does and all the things

that she's had to help with,

like it's amazing she's still around.

And Jesus came and I think about what would it be like

if Jesus came and he had like access to my life.

Because he does, whether we realize it or not,

like he does.

But it's one thing for him to be there

and you just like believing in that.

It's another thing for him to literally be physically present

and walking with you and like,

and you can like watch his facial reactions

whenever you say something stupid.

Or you treat someone the wrong way.

Or like you literally give in to sin and temptation

and like to see the look on his face.

Like one of the most sobering passages of scripture

is in the Gospel of John.

When it talks about when Peter denied Jesus

and it says that Jesus looked at Peter,

he made eye contact with him

when he denied him that third time

and Peter ran away and went bitterly.

Totally different for your God to live with you

and do life with you and see you at your absolute worst.

But he loved us enough to come and dwell with us

and the most important part in verse 14 is,

it says, and he was full of unfailing love and faithfulness

because if he wasn't he would just be like,

these people are terrible.

There's no point in me sacrificing my life

for these people because they're terrible.

And you know this because there's people like you can sit

and you can look at.

And especially after you've been married for a long time

and you know how hard marriage is

and how hard you have to work at it

and the things that you go through as a couple

and there's things that you see other people do

and say, dude, I could never live with them.

And that's okay.

And Jesus looks at each and every single one of us

and he literally came from perfection

into imperfection, from sinless.

You know, it's like we're trying to get to heaven.

We're trying to get to where he was.

He came to where we are.

Like we're trying to get out of this place.

He came to this place and he did it willingly

and he was full of love and compassion

because if he wasn't, he just said,

bump these people, I'm gone.

I used to go somewhere else and sit on a beach.

But he loved us regardless.

He came to dwell among us

and that was for the first time since all of creation.

I don't know if you've ever thought about that before

but for the first time since God created all things,

even in the garden, Adam and Eve did not have the access to God

that the disciples and the people of the New Testament had to Jesus.

They lived with him, ate with him.

They were on a boat panicking while he was over there laying asleep.

Like they like did life with him for three years

because he was willing and that's the type of relationship

that he wants with us.

Point number three.

But Jesus left.

Here's the thing about it.

In the Old Testament, it always seemed like God was kept at a distance

and the gospels, Jesus was living among them, dwelling among them.

And then when we get to point three

and we get to the most important part is that Jesus left them.

He rose from the grave.

He was alive.

He appeared to them like 40 something days after he rose from the grave.

He gave them commands.

He like got them rallied back up.

He communicated forgiveness.

He communicated and reiterated the calling that he had put on their lives.

He like come in.

He sealed the deal, brought them back together

and then said, it's best for me that I leave

because if I don't, the father won't send the advocate.

And so God does not just want to dwell among you or with you,

but God wants to dwell in you.

Point three, the Holy Spirit wants to dwell in us.

This is the very essence of what it means to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.

It's the very essence of what it means to be a Christian.

You cannot be a true Christian and believer without being filled with the Holy Spirit.

I want to say that again.

You cannot be a true Christian and a believer without being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And some of you may not like that statement,

but we're going to talk about it here in a second

because there's a lot of people who believe in God,

a lot of people who have proclaimed, yeah, I believe in God,

but God's at a distance.

A lot of people love to say, I believe in Jesus.

I asked him to forgive me of my sins.

Jesus walks with me.

It's great, makes me feel good to know that Jesus is with me.

He's my co-pilot. He's the big guy.

Like that's the attitude that people have towards Christ and that he's with you.

But that's never what Jesus intended.

He looked at his own disciples whom he dwelt with way closer than we've ever gotten

for three years and said, it's better for you that I leave

because when I leave, God's going to send something even better

and he's not going to dwell around you.

He's not going to dwell among you.

He's not going to be walking with you.

He's going to literally live inside of you.

And that's what you need.

Jesus said, you need this.

The disciples needed it.

You need it.

I need it.

It's essential to our faith.

And in Romans chapter eight, verses nine to 11,

as Paul writes through the church in Rome

and in these passages of scripture,

this is kind of like this is called the Roman road.

It's one of the most like best chronological like lumped together passage of scripture

that explains salvation that you find in all the Bible.

Paul does a great job of this.

And as he's talking about what it means to be a true Christian,

look at what he says.

But you are not controlled by your sinful nature.

I don't know about you guys.

Not being controlled by your sinful nature is extremely difficult.

There are times that I do better than others.

And it just so happens that whenever I'm more spirit-filled,

I'm not controlled by my sinful nature.

When I'm not as spirit-filled as other times,

my sinful nature seems to win the battles.

Look at what he says.

But you are not controlled by your sinful nature.

You are controlled by the spirit if you have the spirit of God living in you.

You can't overcome sin.

You can't overcome your nature unless the Holy Spirit lives within you

and empowers you to do that.

And remember that those who do not have the spirit of Christ living in them

do not belong to him at all.

Try to deny that one.

If the spirit of Christ does not live within you,

you do not belong to him at all.

And in verse 10 he says,

and Christ lives within you.

So I want to make sure we understand that this morning,

like the spirit of God does live within you.

The spirit of God comes in when we get saved.

I truly believe that we receive an outpouring of the spirit

in the moment of salvation because we're forgiven of sin.

We're cleansed in that moment.

We have this wonderful feeling of hope and joy and peace.

And like we talk about the fruits of the spirit

and in that moment of salvation,

you experience those wonderful aspects of fruit in the spirit.

But I guarantee you, many of us in this room have asked Jesus to come into our heart

and we have these wonderful moments where we feel those fruits of the spirit initially.

And then after a little bit, it's like,

I don't feel as great as I did whenever I prayed that prayer.

I don't feel as great or as strong or as close to the Lord as I did a week ago,

a month ago.

Man, the poop hit the fan this week and life is garbage

and now I'm just like blah.

And we have to be filled with the Holy Spirit

again and again and again

because we must be filled with the spirit.

And verse 10 says,

So even though your body will die because of sin,

the spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God.

The spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.

And just as God raised Christ from the dead,

He will give life to your mortal bodies by the same spirit living within you.

There's this expectation that as a believer,

the spirit should be living within you.

It should be living within me.

And the problem is that many of us are like,

we like to keep God at the distance

or like we like Jesus walking beside us.

And some of us have even dabbled a little bit.

We're like, yeah, Holy Spirit, come on in.

I like the idea of that.

Come on in and make yourself at home.

You ever told somebody make their self at home?

Welcome them into their house.

How many of you ever had somebody come in your home

and they actually made themselves at home and it got really weird?

Like they made it a little too homey.

And it's like I said that, but I didn't really mean it.

It's like, you know, this is the living room.

This is the kitchen.

That door was closed for a reason.

Like you're not welcome there.

We laugh about that, but we very much do that with people

and we very much have done that with God.

We asked God to come in.

We said, hey, come on in.

Mi casa esu casa.

Like we're like super excited about it.

And then all of a sudden it's like, no, that door's closed

because there's a bunch of stuff.

Like that's where all the junk goes.

We're embarrassed of that room.

Nobody's allowed in there.

And I don't know what to do with that room,

but I know one thing.

I'm not ready to throw everything in there away.

I just don't know what to do with it.

And I don't want you to go in there.

There's all kinds of stuff like that in our life.

We want Jesus to come in.

We want the Holy Spirit to come in.

And yet there are just parts of our life.

It's like we know it's not good.

We know it's ugly and gross.

And something needs to be done with it,

but we're just not ready to let it go yet.

And so we say, Lord, you can come in

and you can have access to this,

but you can't have access to that.

And we cut him off.

And the problem is that we survey God.

For lack of better terms, he doesn't need us.

We need him.

And if he can't have all of us,

he will just turn you loose eventually.

He may be patient with you for a while.

He may come in and sit in the chair in the living room,

give you a chance to get to know him,

become more comfortable with him,

carry on those conversations.

But eventually he is going to demand access

to every single aspect of your life.

Every thought, every hope, every dream,

every little piece of garbage

that's swept underneath the couches

and the rugs that needs to be tossed away

and cleaned out and done away with,

he wants it and he will not settle for anything less.

Because that's the kind of God he is.

And I don't know about you guys,

but for Hannah and I,

one of the things that we try to do

before we leave and go somewhere

is clean our house before we leave.

Because if you've ever been gone for somewhere

for a long time and you walk in and your house is a mess

and the first thing you walk in and see is,

dang, now we've got to deal with this.

It's depressing.

But if you walk in and your house is clean

and you can say,

now we're home and we can rest,

that's a wonderful thing.

We need to be cleaned.

We need to give God access to our life

and let him take care of us

and do all those things with us.

And the truth is,

is many of us have just never been

fully obedient to the Spirit and just let him in.

You know what the difference between the disciples

and the gospels are versus the rest of the Bible?

And the gospels,

they did a lot of really dumb stuff.

It's kind of funny.

You should read them.

Like, it's really funny to watch

all the mistakes they make

and all the dumb things they say

and all the times Jesus has to correct them

and teach them because it's like,

this is awesome because they're not perfect

and I'm not perfect.

It makes me feel really good.

And whenever Jesus is being crucified

and he was being beaten,

what did the disciples do?

They ran away and they hid

and they cowered in fear

because they were afraid.

But then it's like

John ends and Acts begins

and the disciples are all of a sudden,

they're standing before the Sanhedrin.

The very people who put Jesus to death,

they're standing before them.

They're speaking with boldness

and they're calling them out

and they're telling them that they're wrongs.

They're the ones who put an innocent man,

that they killed the Son of God

and they're saying all these things

and then when it comes time for them to be

to be put to death in their own way

for many different ways,

they weren't hiding and cowering in fear.

They were willingly walking to their deaths.

Like, Paul literally willingly went to Rome

knowing that he would die.

And then the disciples willingly go to their deaths

and they're singing hymns of praise.

And it's like, what changed?

What is the one thing that changed?

Because Jesus was with them

and they failed miserably.

They could literally see him.

He was there and they failed miserably.

But Jesus ascended to heaven

and he said,

do not leave Jerusalem until you pray

and God sends the Holy Spirit in your life.

And for 10 days they sit up in a room

and they prayed for God to do what Jesus told them

he was going to do and what they should do

and they were obedient for 10 days.

And most of us have never come to a point in our life

where we were just willing to say in a moment,

Jesus, please send your Holy Spirit in my life

and do whatever it is that you want to do.

We've never even come to having a moment of that

but the disciples finally got to the point where they understood

if we don't get what Jesus is talking about,

it's sitting on a work.

And so many of us sit in this room this morning,

so many people in our culture and our town

claim to believe in Christ

and we're weak and we struggle with sin

and we carry guilt and shame

and most of the time we feel like garbage

when we walk through these doors

because we haven't lived the way that we know we should

for the past week

and we dang sure ain't going to try to talk to anybody else about it

because we haven't done it

because we don't want to be hypocrites.

And we've never had the power of the Holy Spirit

helping us in our lives overcome all these things

that we just keep on struggling with.

We keep on failing in.

You're not the only ones to do it.

I've done it. The disciples did it.

But it was the Holy Spirit that literally changed everything.

And the situations and circumstances of life did not matter.

When it came time for them to face their own death,

they went willingly

singing songs of praise to their God

whom they were excited to go and die for

and excited to go meet.

And I would love to tell you

that like I have that figured out this morning,

I'm not there yet.

Like I would love to say like if that happened today,

I don't know. I'd probably be like,

what song should I sing?

Like I don't have one in mind.

Like I'm not ready to make that journey yet.

But it's like that's where we should be.

That should be the goal for us to have the attitude

to be filled with the Spirit

so that God leads us in all these moments of our life

because it's going to be hard.

There's going to be miserable moments.

There's going to be things that you're going to have to go through

that you aren't equipped to go through.

But the Holy Spirit is more than able to do everything within us

that God has called us to do

and would ever allow us to endure.

The question is, is will you be the temple

that God has called you to be?

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you again for this day

and for bringing us here together.

Thank you for these people

and Lord for all of us, myself included.

I pray that you would help us to surrender

to your Holy Spirit

and to invite you in.

Lord, it is a terrifying thing.

I know it's a terrifying thing

to relinquish that control

and those desires in our life.

But Lord, it is also one of the most joyous experiences

we'll ever have.

To know what it's truly like to be filled with your presence

and to experience the fruits of those Spirit.

Experience the fruits that you produce within us

that we don't have to try

and make the effort to produce ourself.

That it just comes up because you are in us.

And that is exactly what you want from every person in this room.

Help us this morning to welcome you in.

And if we're not there yet, Lord, I pray

that we would at least be willing to say,

Lord, help me to get there.

Lord, we love you and we thank you

and we ask all of us in your name.

Amen.