Life With God
Sermon Notes
Last week we talked about how the phrases “filled with the Holy Spirit,” and “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” are not as transactional as they first appear but must be read in the context to be properly understood
Relational context of the whole Bible (Adam and Eve, patriarchs, Hagar, and on and on)
Context of the words of Jesus, the person most qualified to talk about the Holy Spirit: who speaks of the Spirit of adoption, the personal manifestation of the Father’s love.
In other words, the words “filled with” and “baptized in” the Holy Spirit are short-hand ways of saying that we are now, all of us, individually and together in local community and across the global body of Christ, invited into intimate, transformative, and perpetual relationship with God. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be a friend of God. To be baptized in the Holy Spirit is to know the fullness of his unknowable love.
This week, we are going to talk about what that means. What does relationship with God look like.
Of course, this will not be comprehensive. When we’re talking about relationship with the most creative being in the universe, there’s always more to say, but I do want to talk about some of the key elements of this relationship.
Presence: the first thing that Jesus makes clear that relationship with God through the Holy Spirit means is that God is with us and loves us.
He compares the coming of the Holy Spirit to an adoption
I’ve already talked about this extensively in other messages, so I won’t address it now other than to say that adoption in the New Testament means God chose you, paid a high price for you, gives you a new name, identity, and destiny, and will never change his mind about you.
The task of our lives is believing that’s true and acting like.
This is why he’s given us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. To call us into who we already are.
The presence of God is given to us to create an environment through which we can live into the identity he’s already given us in Jesus.
Jesus’ baptism as an example of the Father’s love before Jesus did anything in ministry, and the Holy Spirit as a tangible symbol and seal of that love.
His persistent presence with us (he will not leave) creates an environment through which transformation into the image of God you were created and recreated to be becomes possible.
His presence means he approves of you. He chose you. He is with you. You are his child. He loves you. He will not leave.
This being true means that you already are who he says you are. Now, you are free to live into it.
This is the opposite of how the world does identity (do then become then be/arrive)
With Jesus, it is be/arrive, become & do together in a cycle)
You are not earning. You are being. Being is always better than earning.
Communication: being in relationship with God, just like every other relationship means communication (and requires communication). In other words, God talks to us and listens to us.
God talking to us means that we should probably do a lot better job listening.
For many people, prayer means me talking to God, most me asking him for things.
And, as we’ll talk about in a minute, that’s certainly part of it.
But if that’s all there is to it, what a miserable relationship. Do you have anyone in your life like that, someone who never shuts up (maybe, you’re thinking, “Yes, I do! I’m looking at him right now!”)? Do you have anyone who never asks about how you’re doing or what’s going on in your life? How do you feel about that relationship?
Yet, that’s what we do with God.
What would it look like to turn half of our prayer life into sitting silent in the presence of God and listening for his voice?
Problems that might arise
I have a hard time sitting silent. Many of you discovered this last week during our 5 minutes of silence. Silence is a discipline that we must practice and that we can grow in, just like bench-pressing or running. You can get better at it.
How do I hear the voice of God?
Well, remember we’re talking about the most creative being in the universe interacting with the uniqueness that is you. There is no end to the ways in which he can speak.
He can speak through your: intellect, emotion, imagination, community, the world around you, and through sacred experiences.
You are probably wired so that one of these is often primary for you (the window through which the wind of the Spirit blows).
But this is not your only. Learn to listen to the many voices of God.
Any way he speaks is supernatural, but he can also speak in more overtly supernatural ways (words, pictures, dreams, visions, voices, prophetic insight). We believe this happens and that we should “eagerly desire” it, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12.
Which raises a third question: what if I don’t feel like I’m hearing from him? Anyone ever felt that way before? Three thoughts:
Go off what he already said (Japanese soldier in Philippines).
Know that sometimes a mark of maturity is being able to be trusted with silence (old people in relationship, parents of adult children)
Understand that silence is not silence but is another of the voices of God (God wasn’t in the earthquake or the fire: Elijah had learned to hear his silence and didn’t move until he heard it.)
Two of the most important things we can do in this community:
Help people learn to listen to God.
Listen to God on one another’s behalf (because sometimes we have a hard time hearing for ourselves).
Power: relationship with God means he gives us the power to be and do what he has made us to be and do. Power breaks down into two categories:
Gifts
Things God gives us to edify (build) the Church.
There are a whole bunch of gifts, not just the ones listed in the New Testament (remember: most creative person in the universe; he can do what he wants).
Extraordinary gifts get most of the attention, and I’ll just say that we do believe they exist still, and we should ask for them and expect to see them in our community (words, prophecy, tongues, miracles).
They are given for the sake of encouragement
And for the sake of evangelism (bearing witness to the new reality of the Kingdom, the inbreaking of heaven).
These are things we can’t do without the obvious, particular presence of the Holy Spirit
Ordinary gifts: most of these gifts are things that we can do on our own (though, everything we do, we do because God sustains us: in him we live and move and have our being), but when we do them with the Holy Spirit, in relationship with him, they have supernatural results.
It’s the mustard seed that becomes a tree.
Our little investments bearing ridiculous, unexpected profits.
We are a charismatic church in that we believe that we’re supposed to ask for and practice the gifts today.
Fruit: fruit is not ministry, it’s character.
Remember, the order is being then doing.
The Holy Spirit is far more interested in the kinds of people we are becoming than he is in the things we do for him.
Gifts matter, but fruit matters more: God gives gifts for as a tool for the production of fruit of character.
If you don’t have fruit but do have gifts, Paul says you’re doing it wrong.
If the gifts don’t produce fruit in you and in others, you’re doing it wrong.
Jesus says he may one day say to such a person, I never knew you.
Mission: we are in relationship with God so other people can be in relationship with God too.
In Luke 4, Jesus said the Spirit was on him for the sake of mission, of justice. He enjoyed intimacy with God, but it didn’t stop with him.
In Acts 1:8, we see that the same is true for his disciples
Relationship with God is expansive. God with us is always so that God can be with them.
Mission is how faith remains fresh. Mission is how community stays fresh.
It requires inlets and outlets to stay fresh.
When we focus exclusively on ministry fruit and neglect character/intimacy, bad things happen (as discussed above). But, in the same way, when we neglect mission in the name of intimacy (self-centered spiritual discipline) and even community (I’ve got to take care of this flock), our intimacy and community will eventually stagnate. Freshness requires outlet.