Where’s the Power

This church is wonderful, and I love getting together on Sundays, but this is a very small minority of our time that we spend, about an hour and a half together here on a Sunday. And Monday through Saturday, your lives are all filled with very interesting and unique things and wonderful opportunities that you have to embody your faith to the rest of the world. So we want to think of church as kind of like a halftime, if we use a sports imagery, where we come and we get edified and encouraged, and we are empowered to then go out into all of the different spaces that we inhabit Monday through Saturday and embody Jesus to those spaces. So we want to celebrate all of you that are doing that in your own unique ways and give you the opportunity also to get to know people here at Midtown a little bit better. So we're going to do one of those this morning and have a lovely interview for you with someone who serves on our elder board here. He's the secretary and helps make a lot of really important decisions. Things that happen behind the scenes here at Midtown. So would you please welcome up Mr. David Itriod for me. right. You've got some fans. Thank you. Well, this first question is the biggest softball on the planet, true to our name. What are you going to be doing, David, this time tomorrow? Tell us about your job, what an average day looks like for you. Yeah. So right now, I'm still staying home with our youngest, Austin. So I'm playing Mr. Itriod. I'm going to be playing with my mom as Lauren goes back to work. So I will be holding a three-month-old in my arms as I chase around an almost two-year-old around the house. So that's what my day looks like, Monday through Friday pretty much. So yeah, it's fun. Wonderful. And in what ways do you see that work that you're having to do, taking care of your son, uniquely image God? Yeah. It's cool being able to teach the word to just little ones. And especially Cameron as he is learning how to speak and say different words and understand different concepts. Being able to not just teach him the stories and the ideas and ideals and things like that, but also just act those out in our daily lives. And it's really rewarding sitting down at the dinner table or right before bed and having him fold his hands and say amen and just see the conviction that he has whenever that happens. So yeah, it's really rewarding. And yeah, it's been a blessing. That's great. And having children, obviously you get to spend time in community with people who have children, people who don't. What are some ways that you've been able to love and serve your neighbors and people around you in this current season that you're in? Yeah. I think having kids has brought us closer to just church community in general, but also other parents that we really wouldn't have necessarily met. Otherwise, meet other parents at parks and things like that. Have good, deep discussions as our kids go down slides or fall off slides or eat sand.

And yeah, so it's given us a lot of opportunities to meet a lot of people and things like that, which has been great. But always happy to meet other folks who either have kids or want to hang out with kids. So text me. Yeah. Go hang out with the Atreides people. There's the formal invite. Yeah. Yeah. In the season of having two children, obviously there's a lot of blessing and wonderful things that are associated with that, but also probably some significant challenges. So what are some of those challenges that you've had to face? Yeah. I mean, having two under two is hard. It's fun. They're awesome together. But it is challenging. More than anything, with the heat coming on, there's less activities that you can really do outside. And so trying to figure that out is kind of a challenge. It's really the hot topic in our household recently. Yeah. Got some of you.

Yeah. So that's been a struggle. But figuring out different things and yeah, different activities we can do, especially on the weekends. So if you have any ideas, let us know. But yeah, that's been kind of the hardest thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to throw David under the bus here a little bit. I didn't tell him I was going to do this. Oh, boy. But when I first got here, I was like, I'm going to do this. Well, I'll first ask David if he would do this This Time Tomorrow segment. He said, I would love to, but this season looks a little bit weird for me. I'm not currently going into my office, I'm not doing regular work things. I'm just staying at home with our newborn child. And I said that's actually a perfect opportunity for you to come up and share, because we want all of you to feel whatever it is that you're doing currently in your vocational space that it matters, that there are things that we can find that are really beautiful that image God and ways that we can bless our families, our neighbors, people in our communities through the work that we're doing. So we want people to feel like their work is actually significant and that Jesus cares about even the smallest of things that we think are mundane or unimportant. So I'm really glad that you agreed to come up here and share a little bit about that. How can we as a community pray for you in your current season? Yeah, I think for expanded community and, I mean, playdates, whatever that looks like, just to run energy off, especially our almost two-year-old. He's a wild child. Yeah. Yeah, but also as Lauren continues to go back to work, I know that's really important. I think that's really important. I think that's really important. I think that's really hard. I know she misses, I know she misses the kiddos, especially Austin as he's just so little. So prayer for her with that transition and that time away from them. So yeah, I think that's prayer specifically for us. But yeah, as we're, you know, Mother's Day is now behind us, Father's Day is coming up. Just prayer for all of the moms and dads and parents out there on, you know, dads who stay home or go to work, God bless you. Moms who stay home or go to work, God bless you. Families who are seeing kids go out to leave the house, God bless you. And families who are hoping to invite new ones into their house, God bless you. It's really, it's an awesome thing to have those little guys run around and see them grow up. So, yeah, that's my little shameless plug. That's great. Well, I would love to pray for you, David, and I'd love if we could pray for David while I pray. Father, we are grateful for the Itriides and for people in our community who are doing the hard work of parenting, raising people up. Lord, we just pray as they're in the season with two young ones, Lord, that you would give them energy, that you would give them wisdom and how to parent well. God, we pray that you would, give them community. Pray that they would feel incredibly loved and supported and valued, not just in the work that they do, but for the people that they are. We're so grateful for the Itriides being a part of our family and that we get to love and bless them. God, I pray that each of us would come alongside them and journey with them as they walk through this lovely new season. God, pray for Lauren, reentering work, just the difficulties that come with that and having to be away from children. God, yeah, pray for David. If he stays home, Lord, would you make them feel so valued and loved and important for the work that they are doing? We're grateful to be able to share this journey with them in their vocational space. Yeah, Lord, pray for all of our parents in Midtown that you would, you would be with them, that you would bless them with wonderful wisdom and energy and excitement and just the steps to take. We're grateful to be able to celebrate that. Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's give a hand for David. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much, Daniel. And thanks, David. Give it up for David one more time.

Being Mr. Mom is no joke. Dude is killing it. Yeah. Morning, friends. Glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for spending your Sunday with us in Midtown. The year is 2016. It's the beginning of the fall in Phoenix, Arizona, and that blazing summer sun that we're about to experience has started to fade at this time. And it's in that changing of seasons that we meet a girl. We'll call her Emily. And Emily has recently made a dangerous and risky decision, one that will haunt her for the rest of her years on Earth. She's gotten engaged. To be married to a male human being. We'll call him Clint. And together, these two are tasked with embarking on one of the wildest and most treacherous paths of the modern American society. And we're going to talk about that. And we're going to talk about the story of but we're going to go through separately. And it's a Bel Devil event. Let's watch. All right, I'll break it down for one more minute. On the unusual basis, a person behind me and another woman And theyeong posters coming off the front door. Well, the there a bunch custom setting toaster. Our bread won't know what hit it. Fast forward a few months, and sure enough, some generous friends purchase them. Us, the toaster. It's now week one of marriage, and that marvelous machine is sitting majestically on the counter. And one morning, I awake with a hankering for some bread. Cooked well done. So with glee and excitement filling my heart, I slide to the kitchen. I spin open the wrapped loaf sitting next to the toaster. I skip over the butt of the loaf, because I'm someone who has standards. And then I select two prime slices of Dave's killer breakfast bread. If you know, you know. And I drop them into half of the slots and push those two levers down. then, to my bewilderment and horror, the slot and bread pops right back up.

And so immediately, I pause. I think, what's going on here? I try again. and immediately up. Once more. Same thing. And as if my effort was the problem, I keep going. Nothing. No toast. Only dry bread and broken dreams.

And I speak across my apartment to my new bride, who was just waking herself up. The toaster doesn't work. And after a short silence, she responded with a question of infinite wisdom, one that will be recited from the annals of history for years to come. Is it plugged in?

My head dropped slightly with a sigh. I peek around the corner of the toaster. And sure enough, it was not. Plugged in. So I grabbed the cord. I plug it in. Try again. And they stayed down. And now, for the first time, I experienced the real power of this machine. See, I had the toaster prior to that moment. It was on our counter. It had just never been activated, never been tapped into, never been harnessed to its full potential. But now, heat emanated from our counter. That beautiful humming, toasting noise, the life-giving and sustaining power of this incredible machine became clear and obvious. It just needed to be plugged in. Now, I tell this story for a couple reasons. First, so you know that any source of wisdom that emanates from the Levitt house comes from Emily, not from me. Yep, Kevin knows. Kevin knows. But secondly, I think it serves as a helpful image to describe a dynamic that's often in play in our spiritual lives if we do some good reflecting. Oftentimes, we are missing the real power that comes with the life of following Jesus. We might believe in him. We might do some praying every once in a while. We might read our Bibles when we get around to it. We've got the toaster on the counter. But at the same time, we read about the life of the people who follow Jesus, the life of Jesus himself in these texts. We read about transformation. We read about powerful healing and sacrificial love and justice for the oppressed and things like that. And then we compare that to our own lives, and it feels like we're missing something. It can make us wonder, is the toaster plugged in? Where is the power? See, every single person in this room and every single person outside this room longs for their days to count. For a challenge big enough to demand our full lives. We long for a life that's shot through with deep and lasting power. And yet everywhere we look, we're disappointed to find that that power is missing or lacking or beyond our grasp. There's a Pulitzer Prize winning author named John Cheever who described this, I think, really well. He said, the main emotion of the adult American who has had all of the advantages of wealth and education and culture is disappointment. And I think he's right. We are people who have achieved more, who have earned more, who have experienced more, who have learned more, who have watched more, who have eaten more, who have toasted more. And we're constantly disappointed. We're wracked by anxiety and numbed by technology and disenchanted by faith and the church. There's an author named Walker Percy who described this well in his book Lost in the Cosmos. He said, work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive. And school is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. And politics are disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because the lack of excitement as it's practiced, but because of the shallowness, the venality, the image-making, as these are perceived through the media, which is one of technology's greatest achievements.

And the church hasn't helped on this front, friends. Rather than journeying together through spiritual lives that are full of adventure and wonder and the power of God in every nook and cranny of our lives and world, we find in our churches a domesticated faith.

The American church has been designed to suit culturally conditioned lives of consumerism and individualism and selfishness in large pockets. We've packaged life with Jesus into this nice, neat, comfortable product that we consume on Sundays like this to make us feel better or to turn us into admirers of Jesus from afar. And we start to buy into this notion that following Jesus is just about believing the right ideas or doing a few churchy things every once in a while or listening to a certain church. Or listening to a certain radio station or voting a certain way. And all the while, our lives look mostly the same. We experience little power. Walker Percy kept going in that book. He said, the churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most discouraged and discouraging institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus, ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

And the result of this disappointing church is that over the last 25 years, people are just kind of giving up. We are living through what scholars have started to refer to as the great de-churching. More people have left the church in the last 25 years than people who came into the church during the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham revivals combined.

And in my regular conversations with people who have left, along with study after study of those people, the reason becomes clear. They don't see in the church the same power and life that Jesus lived. They don't see in the church the same power and life that Jesus lived and promised. They're walking away from Christianity, not because they don't like Jesus, but because they don't see and experience a church that looks and acts and sounds and feels like Jesus. They wonder, where's the power? But that's not an unanswerable question. In fact, I think it's the exact right question to ask. See, we often miss this in our seasons of disorientation or disillusionment or deconstruction or disappointment, whatever you want to term it for you. It's precisely those places in which God stirs up something new. See, our sense of need, our longing for something greater, that's the stirring of our souls from God, for something deeper, for something better, for something fuller, for something new. In fact, throughout church history, that's what this day in the church calendar has often been about. Christians call this Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter, Pentecost Sunday. We remember the power-filled work of God in sending the Holy Spirit upon his earliest followers. And back in the first century, those early disciples of Jesus, they were asking the same question. Where's the power? We believe that he's the Messiah. Where's the power of this new kingdom of heaven? They were longing and hoping and waiting for that power to come into their lives. And here's the good news. God brought it. His spirit pervaded their lives in such a way that it changed not only them, but everything around them. And God is ready, longing, to do the same thing right now for us disappointed people. There's a scholar named Lloyd John Ogilvie who describes this well. He says, the church in America has been lost. It's locked on the dead center once occupied by the disciples between the resurrection and the gift of the spirit of Pentecost. And if we dare to experience the prelude and providence of power that the disciples experienced, we will be ready for the rebirth of the church. New fire for burned out church people and the expulsive power of uncontainable excitement and enthusiasm. What Jesus promises and what God does in Acts 1 and 2 is what God longs to do in you and me. He took a confused and disunified and equivocating band of followers and forged them into a movement of life. And so that's why today on Pentecost Sunday, we're starting a new teaching series here at Midtown. We're calling it God Let Loose. And each week, we're gonna explore a different way that the Holy Spirit is talked about in the New Testament and the ways that that Holy Spirit, God let loose in our lives and world brings us the real lasting power we're longing for. Meets us in that disappointment of our lives and does something, transforms us and the world around us. And so this morning, we're gonna return to this first early passages of the church in Acts 1 and 2. We're gonna see three different facets of the Holy Spirit here. We're gonna see the promise, the prayer, and the power. The promise, the prayer, and the power. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me to the book of Acts. Acts is the fifth book in your New Testament, if you're flipping there. We're gonna read from chapter one, starting in verse four, and then we're gonna skip forward to chapter two a bit after that. So just follow along if you have a Bible. Chapter one, verse four. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, the words are gonna be up there on the screen behind me. So you can follow along there. Acts 1, verse four. While staying with them, Jesus ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This, he said, is what you have heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, is this the time when you'll restore the kingdom to Israel? And he replied, it's not for you to know, the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And when he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while he was going, and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet. Which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath's day journey away. When they entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying. Peter and John, James, Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James. And all these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. Now skip forward to chapter two, verse one. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound, the crowd was gathered and bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language, the language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. In our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? But others sneered and said, they are filled with new wine. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You will be baptized by the Holy Spirit. You will receive power. Those are the words of the promise of Jesus to the disciples here. And you could hardly think of people more confused or disappointing or disappointed than this group. Remember who they were. Peter, just weeks before this, had openly denied Jesus three times. Peter, James, and John had fallen asleep in Christ's most desperate hour. The rest of the male disciples deserted him when he was crucified. Thomas doubted the resurrection, and others doubted even after they saw the resurrected Jesus. Jesus' mother, Mary, is here in the room with many other female disciples. They had desperately grieved his death. And now, after he's back for 40 days, he's saying, I'm leaving you again. Think what they must be feeling. Are you kidding me? This doesn't make any sense.

Friends, in many ways, these disciples are like us. confused, inconsistent. Doubtful. And it's to those exact people that Jesus makes this promise. Not to the insiders who have all the answers. Not to the holy huddle of religiously elite. Not to the crowd of bike riders that are driving by right now. They just haven't stopped for like two minutes.

Jesus came to the weak. To the scattered. To the ones who know their need. To you and to me. And it's a confusing and glorious promise he makes. It's confusing because Jesus says that by going away, he will become nearer to us. That's what he told the disciples back in John. But how does that work? How can his presence possibly be nearer to us as he leaves? It's because his presence, with them in the Holy Spirit, transcends what a physical body could ever accomplish. See, in his physical body, Jesus was limited. He was contained in time and space and so forth. But the Spirit wouldn't be. The Spirit would be his continuous, ongoing presence in every part of their lives. And so he had to leave them in one sense, in a physical body, in order to return to them in another sense. As an indwelling, all-pervasive power in their lives. And in that new presence, people will be able to meet Jesus in ways no physical body could ever accomplish. In every corner of the world, the love and the power and the presence of God can be known and experienced. That's why this is all so glorious. The same Spirit who dwelt within Christ, who drew disciples to him and draws each of us to him through the scriptures, can be received in our own lives. And become the inciting power for everything we do. That's the promise of Jesus. But what does that really mean for us? That sounds nice, but how does that really change us? At least for me, the word Spirit feels kind of ambiguous. And I think that's because of a couple different reasons. One, I think it's because how we use the word Spirit in our culture. For some folks, Spirit is something like this image here. It's an internal force that you need to tap into, or an impersonal force that you can manipulate, through meditation practices or mindfulness practices or something like that. For other folks, the word Spirit is more like this. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Ghosts or afterlife spirits that you can go hunt if you go to like an old mining town like Bisbee or Jerome. For other folks, Spirit is like this, which is an entirely different thing.

So when we hear Spirit in the Bible, it can easily make us think of stuff like this. Hopefully not as much alcohol, but it does often make us think about ethereal, ambiguous power, right? So that's why it can be intangible, confusing for us. But not just that, on top of that, in our churches, the Spirit doesn't get talked about all that much. We hear about Jesus a lot, we hear about God the Father a lot, but the Holy Spirit's kind of the forgotten member of the Trinity. And so I think it's important to set aside a couple minutes to outline the concept of the power of the Holy Spirit as the New Testament unfolds it, just real briefly to give us an intro into this series. Because I think when we understand what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit well, in these passages we're gonna explore, it actually, we see that it brings power into our lives. And it's not just this ambiguous, ethereal force. It's a personal power of God that we can know in every facet. You guys with me? Okay, so real quick, I think we need to see that in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is often connected to power itself, the power of God. There's a guy named Gordon Fee, who's a brilliant Bible scholar. He wrote a thousand page book on the Holy Spirit. Feel free to go read it, but in short, the book says this. The Holy Spirit is God's empowering presence. God's empowering presence. It's God's because the Spirit is personal and relational. It's empowering because it really makes a tangible change in our lives. And it's presence because the Spirit is near to us. That's a dictionary definition, which is great, but dictionary definitions don't really give us how it looks embodied in the world, and so what you find is that when you read through the Gospels, the Spirit is actually a main character that we often overlook, we miss. In fact, Jesus' entire life and ministry is fueled by the Holy Spirit. None of what Jesus does or says happens without the Spirit. So for instance, take Luke three, the start of Jesus' ministry, he gets baptized. The text says this. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like a dove. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like a dove. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized, not an actual, like a dove, not an actual dove, and a voice came from heaven, you are my Son, the Beloved, with you, I am well pleased. So before Jesus does or says anything in his messianic ministry, the Holy Spirit comes upon him. The Spirit is the catalyst from this point forward to everything that Jesus does. And we see that in the next chapter. Keep reading in Luke four, we read this. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, that's where he was baptized, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tested by the devil. And then later, a little bit farther down, in verse 14 in chapter four, we hear this. Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returns to Galilee, and a report about him spread all throughout the surrounding region. He began to teach in their synagogues, and was praised by everyone. So not only did Jesus receive the Spirit, all of his work now is being done in the power of the Spirit. And in case that wasn't clear enough, in chapter four, Jesus acknowledges this himself, in his sermon, in his hometown synagogue. He says this, he cites the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down, and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. And then he began to say, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. He's saying that he is the anointed one by God to bring the kingdom of life and flourishing and peace and wholeness into the world, and that that's happening by the Spirit of God. So, one question, quick Bible quiz. Where does Jesus get his power to do everything he does? The Holy Spirit. Yeah, not a trick question, the Holy Spirit. Literally everything Jesus does and says happens in and through the power of the Spirit. Now another quick one question quiz. Is Jesus human? Yes, and you guys are theologians in this church, I love it. But, Jesus is human. He slept, he ate, he drank, he died. So what Luke wants us to see with all these Spirit references is this. The life of Jesus is exactly what true power in human life looks like. There's not ambiguity to the character of the Holy Spirit, or where the Spirit's working. In Luke's mind, he's saying that when humans walk in the power of the Spirit, it will look like Jesus. That's what the kingdom of God is all about. Humans partnering with God through the Spirit and becoming vehicles of life, and sacrificial love for all people. And here's why all that theology matters to us. That means that Jesus is the prototype for all humans. If he is the true human life, anointed by the Spirit, and he has called us to become his disciples, that means that right now, we as his followers are anointed by the same Spirit for the exact same purposes. The same power that enabled Jesus to be who he was is available to us in such a way that the whole of our lives can look and sound and act and feel like his. And Jesus himself even acknowledged this. In his last meal with the disciples, he told them that this is how it would work. He said, very truly I tell you, which is Jesus' way of saying, this is super important, put your phones away, listen. The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact, will do greater works than these.

So last pop quiz, what are the works that Jesus has been doing? Shout them out. Miracles, what else?

Healing the sick, the mentally ill, tearing down dividing walls, practicing justice, calling out religious hypocrisy, feeding the poor, extending love to those who are overlooked, experiencing lasting peace and life and unity with God, and extending that to all people, teaching powerfully the good news of the kingdom, dying for the sake of others and living again. That is Jesus' resume. And without flinching, he says that those who entrust their lives to him will have the power to do the same things. And not just the same things, but even greater things. Now by greater, he probably doesn't mean by quality, because I don't think any of us are gonna die and rise again for the sake of the whole world. In quantity, yes, because by the spirit, we can do things that he and his limited physical body never could. Billions of Christians around the world have proclaimed the kingdom and have done miracles, miraculous things around the world. We forget this in our western world because we've gone to like university or something and we think that we're smarter than that. Now a pastor friend of mine, John, was talking about this in his own life. He was pretty skeptical that miracles like this really could happen. He traveled to India and he met this guy who he was talking to about faith in India, practicing faith in India, and they were at this session where a bunch of people were talking about resurrection. And he leaned over to the guys, he's like, do you really think resurrection happens? And the guy looked at him and he's like, yes, yeah, I know someone who was resurrected. He's like, who? My wife. She's standing back there. We prayed, she was dead three days, she's alive.

What? Like, my friend John was like, are you kidding me? That happens. That can happen because of the spirit. Now I'm not saying we all have to go to the morgue and start praying for dead people to rise. I'm not saying that that's, I think there are certain unique places where God does this. Even Jesus didn't raise every dead person, right? We have to remember that. But we also have to remember the exact same spirit that resided in Jesus resides in us. That's the promise here. And I already know that there's this inner skeptical voice that starts to talk back when we hear that. Even those of us that are years long Christians. We think this may be theoretically, but do we really think that our lives are filled with that power? Because when we wake up and have to go to that job that isn't our favorite, it doesn't feel like we have that power. Or when we keep feeling bitterness towards that person in our lives, it doesn't feel like we have that power. Or when we keep returning to that bad habit over and over again, it doesn't feel like we have power. And so it leaves us with the question, how do we get plugged in? How do we get plugged in to that sort of power in a way that we can truly experience it in our day-to-day lives? And that's where I think that personal nature of the Holy Spirit that I mentioned earlier comes into play. Remember, God's spirit is not a force from Star Wars. Sorry, those of you that are like wannabe Jedis in the room. And the spirit of God is not just some inner self that we realize. The spirit is a living, personal being with whom we have a relationship. And that's incredibly important when we talk about power. There is power in the Holy Spirit, but it was personal, relational power. It's not an abstract, detached power. That's why when the disciples hear this promise from Jesus, look what they do, they go and pray. Immediately afterward, in chapter one, they return to Jerusalem, they go to the room upstairs where they're staying, and all those were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. And that keeps going. In chapter two, they're still together 10 days later when the Holy Spirit comes, they're praying together. Because they know that the power that Jesus promised them was relational. And they knew that if they were ever gonna receive that power, it had to come through relationship. They couldn't conjure it or manipulate it or force it. And they couldn't just sit on their hands and wait for it. They had to develop their relationship with the God who was this Holy Spirit and be receptive to him. You guys, if we really wanna see the power of the Spirit realized and working in our lives, it has to start with cultivating receptivity. True power only comes in relational connectedness to God. A quick example here that I think is somewhat helpful, a little silly, but somewhat helpful. In college, I had a good friend and roommate named KJ. KJ played football in college and then he transferred to the school that I went to to throw javelin on the track team, so dude was jacked. And by comparison, during college, I played Ultimate Frisbee, which meant I was running after a plastic disc like a dog for a dozen hours a week or so. And I was in shape, I was fit, I was in shape like a runner is in shape, right? Which is a fancy word for saying I didn't have big muscles. But KJ, if you saw him, dude looked like Thor. Like he had the long hair, it was amazing. He's living proof that not all men are created equal when it comes to genetics. But all that to say, particularly when we were roommates, we developed a really close relationship. We did everything together. We'd play intramural sports together, we'd watch movies together, we'd go to Raising Cane's every Sunday night together, we'd talk about faith and relationships and generosity together. And that relationship meant that in college, when I needed power, a certain type of power, usually moving power to like move couches and things, who would I call? I'd call KJ. He helped me move out of numerous dorm rooms. He helped Emily and I move into our first apartment. He helped us move that toaster. Oh, amazing connection.

And that, by the way, that power of KJ has stuck around for years. Not too long ago, I asked Emily, if a zombie apocalypse started today, who would be the first person you'd call? Without hesitation, you said KJ. Your wife will always know how to humble you best, friends. I'll tell you that one more time.

Ultimate Frisbee's not helpful in a zombie apocalypse. But all that to say, even though I'd sometimes have to wait a bit on KJ or I had to time it up with him, my pursuit of relationship with him is what enabled me to receive his power in my life. For a long time, I built a friendship with him and so that when that friendship was built and I called on him, he would come. He arrived in my life. I didn't just try to move the couch on my own by conjuring the power of KJ, right? I asked KJ to show up, I waited for him to do so.

Now, stick with me on this. Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is kind of similar. Our growing relationship with the Holy Spirit, spending time with the Spirit in prayer, in spiritual practice, in receptivity and listening, that's what enables us to receive the Spirit's power. There is a direct correlation between how we live in prayer and spiritual practice and the level of power that we experience in the day-to-day. And I've experienced this firsthand. I actually had a mentor in my life a few years ago who, in a really beautiful and subtle way, trained this into me. I was, at the time, struggling with some vocational questions, which I'm sure none of you in this room have ever struggled with. I was in a job that I didn't like, and I was lost as to what to do next, and it created this anxious restlessness in me, and so I'd get together with my mentor and I'd talk to him about it. I'd frustratedly vent and talk about how I felt like God wasn't opening the right doors for me, and he clearly didn't care about me. He wasn't giving me the things that I wanted, and should I even pursue these things, and I'm a failure because I'm not doing the things that I want to do? And in conversation, lovingly and patiently, he asked me the same thing. What is prayer? What does prayer and spiritual practice look like for you in your life right now? And every time I realized that in the middle of all of that, I hadn't spent much time pursuing the power and strength of God in that part of my life. I wasn't pursuing relationship with God in a way that would enable me to hear what he needed to speak to me in those spaces, and so it was no wonder I felt the way I did. It was no wonder I was disappointed. It was no wonder I felt powerless. I was cutting myself off from the relationship of power, and what I found is that slowly, over time, in the development of more consistent times of relational connection with God, prayer, solitude, silence, listening, scripture reading, it opened me up to the Spirit's power, and it changed how I showed up in my life. I found spaces in that job that I did not like where I could find joy in blessing the students whom I served. I found a passion for loving my coworkers and building a team dynamic rather than just being consumed with me and myself. I found a healing of those insecurities that kept calling me a failure and worthless, and I was able to let go of the idolatry of a perfect job and simply pursue what was right in front of me as God had given it to me. My life changed. I found real power through pursuing relationship with God. You guys, so often, I meet with people who say, I just feel disconnected from God, and it doesn't feel like any of this Christian anything matters and so forth, and oftentimes, I ask them the same question. What does prayer and spiritual practice look like in your life? And most of the time, not always, but most of the time, the response is the same. I don't really pray much. I don't have spiritual practice. Is it any wonder that our lives feel disappointing and lacking of power when we aren't pursuing a relationship with a source of power? It's like saying, I don't feel connected to my spouse while you're scrolling on your phone and never speaking with them. Friends, the only way we can receive what someone offers in relationship to us is if we offer relationship to them, is if we offer ourselves in relational response to them. There's a great minister who wrote a book on this. His name is John Wimber, and I think he captures it beautifully. I want to share this quote with you guys. He says, the most fundamental skill required for healing is openness to the Holy Spirit, emptying oneself and receiving his leading and power. And there are many ways in which we can be open to God's presence, scripture study, worship, prayer, meditation being foremost. But when I speak of listening to God's voice, I mean developing a practice of communion with the Father in which we constantly ask, Lord, what do you want me to do? How do you want to use me? Sometimes he gives me specific insights about people for whom I'm praying. These come as impressions, specific. Specific words, pictures in my mind's eye, physical sensations in my body that correspond to problems in their bodies. But those impressions help me know who and what to pray for as well as how to pray. I do not imply that I have an infallible hotline to God, that I always hear his voice and follow his leading. But my point is that I am open to God, listening to him, and confident that he wants to lead us to minister to others. Power is here, friends. It's available in the spirit. We just need to become receptive people, praying people, people who pursue relationship with that power. That's what the disciples do in this passage. And when they do that, the power comes in a remarkable way. And I want to look at Acts 2 and just a couple characteristics of this power that we see in the Holy Spirit here, the way that it changed their lives. First thing we notice here is that the power comes from outside of them, not from their own strength. They certainly participate in receiving the power through prayer, relational pursuit. But when the spirit shows up, it comes from beyond them in such an undeniable way that it's clear God is at work. And there's two phenomena that communicate this in the story. First, they hear and feel something like the blowing of a violent wind. Notice it says it's like the blowing of a violent wind, not a violent wind itself. They're saying it's something like that that shakes us in some way. I was reminded as I was reading this a few years back during one of our massive summer monsoons here in Phoenix, I decided that I want to go outside. I don't recommend doing this, but it was really remarkable. I stood out there. There were like wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour. Trees were bending. Rain was pouring down in buckets. Hail started. Thunder and lightning. And I was standing there. I'm like, I have never felt a power like this completely outside of myself that could shake me, that if I'm in the wrong spot, could actually do away with me. That's like what the disciples are experiencing here, this power from beyond them. And we see it in the flames here as well, the tongues of fire. Fire is an image that's regularly associated with God's presence throughout the scriptures. Back in Genesis 15, God appears to Abraham through a flaming torch. In Exodus 3 and 4, you may remember, the burning bush and Moses. In Exodus 19, he appears to the people of Israel in fire and smoke. And in Ezekiel, the glory of the Lord appears in a chariot of fire surrounding him in glory. In the scriptures, when God shows up, it appears to us again as this overwhelming, powerful force that ignites us in some way. And so in both of those signs, what we see is something that came from outside of these men and women, hit them with such force that it fundamentally changed them. To be filled with the Spirit is to have a divine force come from outside of you in such a way that it shapes you and changes you into a different kind of person. And that truth flies right in the face of what a lot of our culture tells us about where power comes from. See, our culture says that your problems, your feelings of disappointment, they're because of things outside of you. And what you need to do is reject all those things outside of you and go inward. You can find the power within yourself to summon the strength, your own inner strength, to overcome those things. This has become just the dominant mode of how our culture lives. I was reading an article in the New York Times that expressed this. It was talking about the state of modern therapy today. And it was interviewing a bunch of different therapists who have talked about this and the way counseling has shifted. The article was entitled, What Brand is Your Therapist? Which is a wild rhetorical question. But the premise was this. People used to come to therapy decades ago with the notion, I need to more deeply understand things inside me in order to change. But now people are coming to therapy saying, my problems are because of people and circumstances and they need to change. So Casey Truffaut, who's a master's of family therapy and licensed professional counselor, she leads a therapist leadership unit. She's interviewed in the article. She put it this way. She said, I see fewer and fewer people coming in and saying, I want to change. What I see now is people coming to therapy because they wanted someone else or something else to change. And it's become so prominent that in her marketing materials, she's seen in her own and another therapist, the marketing materials change. The pitch used to be, I treat people with depression and anxiety. But now, it's are you having trouble with difficult people in your life?

Now to be clear, there are problems out there in the world. Definitely problems. I don't want to discredit or ignore that. But those same problems are also in here. The same insecurities, the same brokenness, the same trauma and hardship and selfishness, that's all in here too. And if we ever think that our problems are just out there, people and other things that we don't have any control over, what a miserable life we'll lead. Because we'll never have the power to change anything. If it's all everyone out there, we never actually can do anything in response. But this is why Christianity is such good news. Because Christianity says, there are problems out there in the world, but those same problems are in you. And your feelings of disappointment are because of those things. And you can find power to respond, not from inside yourself, but from a power that comes from outside of you. By receiving the power and healing of God, you can actually see radical change in you that extends out into the world. And if we can become people who start there, if we can acknowledge that we need some power from outside of ourselves, then we can really experience the Spirit in our lives. So that's the first thing we see about the Spirit's power here. Second thing we see, it's joyful, not somber. Notice what the power looks like to the people who are around them. What did they say that it looked like? In verse 13. They're drunk! Look at these people! Now, why would they say that? They weren't stumbling around, right? What was going on there? Well, what they're seeing in the disciples is a sense of joyful fearlessness. were utterly uninhibited, too filled with joy to be afraid of anything. They crossed boundaries like those didn't even exist. See, that's partially what alcohol does. It takes away our inhibitions. But the Holy Spirit does it in a way that those other spirits don't. See, alcohol is a depressant. Alcohol works on us by depressing parts of our brain functions so that aspects of reality are blocked to us. We can no longer see all the aspects of reality. But the Holy Spirit works in the other direction. It brings you joy, not by hiding reality, but by revealing it, by showing you who God is, who you are as God's beloved child, what God is doing in the kingdom, breaking in and around you. And suddenly, you can face disappointments with a profound joy because you've seen more of reality, not because you've seen less of it. Life with God is not some somber religious experience. It's an exercise of joyful walking in the power of the Spirit that is reminding us who we are and reminding us what he's doing in the world.

Johannes Weiss, who's a historian of the early church, put it this way, unless you can understand the constant mood of victorious, jubilant happiness, you simply will not understand early Christianity.

And finally, friends, the third thing we see about this power of the Spirit, it sparks boundary-breaking love, not just private renewal. And notice the speech of the disciples here. It's not magic speech. It's not otherworldly language they're speaking. They're actually speaking the languages of all the people who were there for Pentecost. Pentecost was one of the largest festivals in the Jewish calendar. Some scholars estimate there could have been 100,000 people in Jerusalem at this time, crowding in from all around the ancient world. And Luke doesn't actually spare that detail. He goes out of his way to interrupt the action to give us a list of 15 different places. And that list covers basically every direction on the compass, people coming from all over the known world. What Luke wants us to see is when the Holy Spirit is at work, it sparks a love that crosses all political and social and linguistic divides. The arrival of the Spirit is not just an exercise of power for us in our own personal spiritual lives. It's not just private or inner joy. It's a call to mission. It's a call to love the people who are divided from me. It's a call to love the people who are outside of our little circle. It's a call to be people whose speech and actions and entire lives move to the world in love. The church does not exist for the sake of the church. It exists for the sake of all creation.

In fact, that's what we see throughout the rest of the book of Acts. These Christians become vehicles of healing and life, reaching across every possible known boundary in that time. By Acts 13, you see African Christians, Asian Christians, Greek Christians, Roman Christians, Jewish Christians, male Christians, female Christians, free Christians, slave Christians, rich Christians, poor Christians, Christians with disabilities, all coming together around the shared message of what God is doing in the world. Every category of person. It was confounding to people back then. There was no community like this. It's why Christianity, to this day, is the most diverse world religion. Because we say that when the Spirit comes, it brings unity across diversity. It doesn't flatten us out and make us all the same. It's not uniformity, but it brings unity in our diversity. And so Acts 2, it's a thesis statement for the whole purpose of the church. As followers of Jesus, friends, in the power of the Spirit, we become vehicles of an untamed and uncontrolled and boundaryless love, which forms this thing of this diverse and united kingdom that redeems and restores all things. That is power. As Teresa of Avila put it, Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes. You are his body.

Friends, the power is here. Real, transformative, lasting power for a disappointed and broken and thirsty and hungry and oppressed and frightened world. And Jesus is speaking to each and every one of us today the same promise. You will receive power. You will be my witnesses. So there's just one question left for each and every one of us. Will we plug in? Let's pray, friends.