Plainfield Christian Church
09-15-24 | Finish Line Faith: Rely on the Spirit
Welcome to the Plainfield Christian Church podcast. We hope that this message encourages you today. For additional resources to learn about what it looks like to be fully alive with Jesus, visit our website at plainfieldchristian.com. Enjoy the podcast. The church. My name is Luke. I get to serve as one of the ministers here and I'd like to tap into something today. Something in your soul. I'd like to tap into that desire you have for more, because all of us have it. You know, none of us want to just settle for normal old life as is. We don't want to just do the same old, same old, just getting through the day. We're hungry for something more than that, but we've also lived long enough, haven't we, to know that without some intentional effort toward that more, we always tend to drift back toward that day-to-day, mundane, kind of, you know, you've heard the phrase before, if you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got. For example, look at a railroad. This is, plain old railroad, you guys have seen them many times, did you know that the standard United States railroad gauge, that is the distance between the two tracks, is four feet, eight and a half inches wide. Seems like a pretty random number, right? Four feet, eight and a half inches wide. Why is that? Well, the U.S. railroad gauge is four feet, eight and a half inches wide, because that's the same railroad gauge in England. And the people who helped design the U.S.'s first railroad system also designed the English railroad system. They were English engineers, and so the English railroad gauge is four feet, eight and a half wide. Well, it begs the question then, right? Why was the English railroad gauge four feet, eight and a half inches wide? Well, because that's the same as the railroad gauge used for the trolleys and trams that were going around England at the time. So we got to ask the question, why were the trolleys and the trams using a railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches wide? Well, it's because the people who built the trolleys and the trams were the same people that built the wagons. They used the same tools and jigs to make the trolleys that they did to make the wagons, so it begs the question, why did the wagons have a wheel spacing of four feet, eight and a half inches wide? Well, it's because the people who made the wagons had to make the wagons so that they could travel around on all those old country roads throughout England that had well-worn ruts in them from hundreds of years of use. Otherwise, the wheels on the wagon would break. They had to fit right into those ruts. So it begs the question, right? Why were those ruts four feet, eight and a half inches apart? Well, it's because those ruts were first put there and worn into the old English roads from the Roman chariots that had wandered across the English countryside hundreds and hundreds of years before. So it begs the question, right? Why did the Roman chariots have a wheel spacing of four feet, eight and a half inches wide? Well, to put it simply, that was the ideal width to accommodate two rear ends of Roman chariot horses. Now, hold on to that for just a moment. Now let's fast forward to the 20th century. 20th century. Many of you will remember when the United States produced the space shuttle, and when the US produced the space shuttle, you remember that to launch, it has these two big rockets on either side of it. Those are called the solid rocket boosters known as the SRBs. The SRBs are actually manufactured in Utah, and then once they were completed, they were transported via railroad all the way to the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And the engineers who were originally designing the SRBs wanted to make them a tad bit bigger, but they had to downsize them so that they would be able to fit through a specific railroad tunnel in the mountains. Some of you can see where I'm going with this. That railroad tunnel, of course, is just a little bit wider than the standard US railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches, right? You see what this means, don't you? This means that the space shuttle, which at its time was the most incredible marvel of human transportation and technology ever produced in the history of mankind, was directly influenced by the width of two Roman horses rear ends. This is not just a preacher story, it is true. Are you ever tired of the same old same old? Just drifting through life, not even really sure why you're doing what you're doing. You're just doing the same thing today because you did the same thing yesterday, but what if there is more that you were made for? You've probably heard this quote before, but even if you have it, that still stirs something in me every time I read it. A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. God built you for a life that is deeper and richer and more adventurous and riskier than you ever imagined. Around here, like Kyle said, we talk about it as being fully alive in Jesus. The God made you for life with Jesus in community and on mission. That means that before you were ever even born, God marked out a race for you to run. And this fall we're walking through this series called Finish Line Faith. And our dream is to help you run this race all the way through. We want to help you get to the finish line and to finish well. And so here's my question for you today as we prepare to dive into God's word together, just one question we're going to ask. How would your life look different if you actually believe this? Now of course I'm not implying that you don't believe the Bible or anything like that, but I'm talking about like if you actually took this truth and moved it from your head to your heart. If you actually really, really believed that this was reality and you let it shape your actions, how would your life look different? We're just going to walk through two verses today. You'll remember that there's a guy named Paul. He's in prison. He's about to get executed. These are his last words to his son in the faith. A young minister named Timothy and Paul says this. We'll read it twice. He says for this reason, I'd remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us, does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. Let me ask you our question one more time. Paul's right here. How would your life look different if you actually believed that? One more time. Paul says for this reason I reminds you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us, does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. How would your life look different if you actually believed that? Because Timothy, the guy that Paul is writing to here, he is a young minister and he is facing some real hard stuff. It's hard stuff that you're gonna face too. Timothy's facing manipulative, false teachers, wayward church members, loneliness, sickness, anxiety, weariness, insecurity, trying to be faithful in a sexually charged society. Does that sound familiar to anybody else? And Paul says in the face of all that, what you need to remember is that God gave you his spirit. And if you are a follower of Jesus this morning, then the same thing is true of you. So what does that mean? That God gave you his spirit? It means that God gives us not just an extra little bit of strength to get through the day, but actually he himself comes and takes up residence in our body. Not just God with us, but God actually in us. I've heard it said before that God the Father is God without skin, God the Son is God with skin, and God the Holy Spirit is God in your skin. Acts 2.38, some of you will remember that verse. This is the day that the church was born. Jesus died, he rose from the dead, he's ascended up into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit on his followers, and now Peter, one of Jesus's followers, is preaching the very first sermon to some of the same people who killed the Jesus, killed Jesus, and this is how he ends this sermon. He says all of you, repent and be baptized. Every one of you. In the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's what happened to you when you got baptized. So how would your life look different if you actually believed that God gave you his spirit? We could answer that question in a thousand different ways, but I think I see two particular implications in the verses we just read. How would your life look differently? If you actually believe God gave you his spirit, here's the first way we just saw. Well for starters, your fear would not win. You'd still have fear because you'd still be a human, but you wouldn't let it win because Paul says the Holy Spirit does not make you timid. He's not a spirit of fear. And so that means when fear does show up in your life, like it does for all of us, I don't know how it shows up for you, but like when you feel worried, when you feel anxious, when you feel jittery, when you feel angry, when you feel controlled by the opinions of people around you, when you feel enslaved to the way that others perceive you, that is not of the spirit of God. And so if you are afraid of people seeing you as different, if you are worried that somebody's gonna find out what you actually believe, if you're embarrassed about the truth of the good news of what Jesus has done for us, Jesus talks about that in Mark chapter 8, he says, "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, and this adulterous and sinful generation, well then the Son of man, that's him, will be ashamed of them when he comes in his father's glory with the Holy Angels." Those are heavy words. I don't know about you, but I don't want Jesus to be ashamed of me. And so when the Holy Spirit comes and lives in us, we don't let our fear win and look what the Holy Spirit can do in somebody's life. Paul says by contrast in Romans chapter 1, he says, "No, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes." That's the transformation that happened in Paul's life. It can be the transformation from yours too. You don't have to let your fear win anymore. How would your life be different if you actually believe that God gave you his spirit? Your fear would not win. Here's the second thing though. Your gifts would not wither. Your gifts would not wither. If it's actually true that God has given you his Holy Spirit living inside of you, that means he has also given you spiritual gifts. When I was in college, I got to do this thing called the wilderness challenge, where me and some of my buddies, we got to go out and we got to spend a week hiking through the Ozark Mountains. And it was awesome just out in the wilderness. We packed everything on our backs, the food, the whole nine yards, hiking up the hills all week long and canoeing down the river's mile after mile after mile and the snow and the rain and the sleet and the hail. It was awesome. I can remember we're canoeing down the river one night. Sun is setting. It's about dusk and we saw herds of wild horses flashing through the wood right beside us. It's just absolutely amazing stuff. And at one point in the week, they sent us out off by ourselves to have 24 hours of silence and solitude just to go be alone in the wilderness with God. And so about an hour before dusk, they sent us out. None of us had tents or anything. You had to build your own shelter. And so they sent us out right before dark. We built our little shelters. And so I went down to a spot by myself by a brook, a really pretty little place, built the shelter, kind of all, you know, ready to go for the night. And I went to sleep and all night long it snowed and it snowed and it snowed and it snowed. And so I woke up and the whole place is covered in a blanket of white. It was beautiful, but that was also a problem. And here's why. Because they told us that in the morning they said, "We are going to bring you one silver dinner spoon full of glowing hot embers, just one spoonful. And we're gonna dump it wherever you tell us to dump it and then we're gonna walk away." They didn't say a word to us. They were there about 30 seconds. And we didn't know when they were coming. And so if we were prepared and ready and we could slowly kindle and and nurse that little glowing coal into a roaring fire then we'd have some warmth there in the snowy day all by ourselves in the woods. And if not then we would just be shivering in white and cold. And so I mean I ever so tenderly tried to get my little dry spot ready for whenever they would come. And I didn't know when they would come. And sure enough they they brought the hot coals and I can remember just so carefully. You only get one shot at this, you know, trying to find some dry kindling and slowly nurse and then fan those embers into flame. And soon it did become a roaring fire. I was fairly proud of myself. I'm not gonna lie. And and Paul says that's what God has done in you. The God has put in you one glowing ember. You have a glowing coal of a spiritual gift. You have a spark inside of you. Now what you do with it is up to you. It's a spiritual gift. So how will you use it or will you neglect it and let it dry and let it go? Now maybe you're thinking listen preacher I know you're probably talking to some other people in the room who are like super Christians but that's not me. I'm like I'm not a spiritual gift. I don't know what I could possibly do there. But let me just remind you the Bible says there's no such thing as an ungifted Christian. If you're a follower of Jesus you've got spiritual gifts if the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. I don't know if you know this. God doesn't make spare people. You're not just like a replacement part or somebody sitting on the bench in case one of the eight team members gets hurt. You get to go in. God wants all of us to be on the team involved and using our gifts. And so one of the things we love to do is when we get to walk alongside people to help them discover their spiritual gifts. And we ask questions like hey what are you good at? What brings your joy? What brings you joy? What's your skill? What's your passion? What unique opportunities has God put around you? What relationships? What is breaking your heart right now that is a need God might be calling you to me. And if you don't know already let me just get on my shameless soapbox here. We've got these journals all around the building. I hope you'll grab one of those there for you. They're totally free. It's got some good tools in there for you to use in your daily time with Jesus. It's also got some exercises to help you discover what your spiritual gifts are. Some ways you can get plugged in. Starting using those to serve to fan those things into flame. It's got a spiritual gift assessment you can take that we'd love to walk through with you. Because Paul says in verse 6 to Timothy he says hey fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. Now confess we don't know exactly what Paul's talking about there but he's likely referring to when Timothy got ordained into ministry. In the first letter Paul wrote to Timothy he says this in chapter 4 he says don't neglect your gift which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. So the principle of what Paul's saying here is this. Timothy does not need any new spiritual resources to fulfill God's call on his life. What he needs he already has. He just has to stir it up and fan it into flame. The embers there just blow on it. Stir it up. And the same thing is true with you. God has given you every gift, every opportunity, every resource you need to be who he's calling you to be and do what he's calling you to do. Fan that thing into flame. Now if you actually believe that that God gave you his spirit then your fear wouldn't win, your gifts wouldn't wither. So my question is like do you believe that? For the last few minutes we have together here could I just remind you of some things you probably already know. Can I remind you of who this Holy Spirit is who lives in you now as you follow Jesus. We see three things here in this text. Number one he's the spirit of power. He's the spirit of power. Let's look back at verse 7 again. Paul says for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid but gives us power, love and self discipline. You probably know this but you are not strong enough to live the Christian life on your own and if you try you will quickly find out that you can't. Which is why over and over again Paul prays for the early followers of Jesus that they would have power. Look at Ephesians chapter 3. He writes to this church in Ephesus where Timothy is the preacher. He says I pray that out of God's glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being. Why? So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power and what's the power for together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. One of the great lies of the enemy is that following Jesus is really just about limiting your options and restricting the horizon of possibility on your life. That if you follow Jesus you're just gonna spend your days looking around at all the fun things that you can't do anymore and wondering what life could have been if you would have done things your own way instead. And the enemy wants you to believe that the Christian life is about obeying rules and struggling and trying really hard not to sin but mostly failing and missing out on what all your other friends are getting to enjoy. But I want you to know that God's dream for your life is so much bigger than that. Paul prays I want you to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. I want you have power to see the horizon of possibility of what God can do through you when his spirit lives in you because he has given you his Holy Spirit and he wants to fill you with power so that you can play the role that he pre-ordained for you from before the foundation of the world to bring about the reconciliation of absolutely everything in the cosmos under the loving lordship of his son Jesus Christ. That's the story that you and I get to live out together and it's big and yet if you're anything like me you hear that and you think wow that's great that's cool. And then you look at like the mediocre reality of your own day-to-day existence that's pretty much like one step forward and two steps back right. There's a lot of days I'm living like a horses hind end kind of life if you know what I mean. And I look at my own struggles and my back-and-forth wrestling with sin and immaturity and weakness and sometimes made if you're anything like me I wonder is the spirit of power really living in me or am I missing out on something that other people have figured out and I don't. And there's a lot of people in the faith who become a follower of Jesus and they grow some but then they reach a certain level of Christian maturity and they say to themselves mostly unconsciously this is enough and I'll stay right here. And instead of continuing to seek the face of God and be conformed into the image of his son Jesus Christ day by day from one degree of glory to the next they just kind of spend the rest of their years managing the level of spiritual mediocrity they have achieved in a powerless Christianity. But when the spirit of power lives in you there's always more and I want it but we can't get the more on our own right can't do it on our own strength in that finish line Facebook that we're walking through as a companion to this series that a lot of our groups are going through it tells the story of many years ago and in the Rose Bowl parade one of the floats ran out of gas the whole parade came to a stop boom boom boom boom boom all backed up the whole thing came to a screeching halt and the irony of that whole thing was the float that had run out of gas belonged to the standard oil company. You can't make this up right? They have vast reservoirs of fuel at their disposal that they just failed to tap into. You have the spirit of resurrection power that breathed life into Jesus's dead corpse and rose him from the dead coursing through your veins. One author says it like this. He says Christian sermons ought to ask more of people than mortals can rightfully do because we are equipped with inward supernatural potency thanks to the Holy Spirit. Christians have in the Holy Spirit more power than they know what to do with. That's really good news because if that's not true think about what the Christian life is like. If the Christian life is just you coming to listen to some preacher man lecture you about how to be better and every week I stand up here and I say be like Jesus go get it done don't mess it up good luck that's really bad news because that's like the equivalent of me standing up here and saying hey go swim like Michael Phelps go dunk like Michael Jordan go compose like Beethoven go right like Charles Dickens go sing like Aretha Franklin go think like Thomas Edison go paint like Michael Angelo good luck don't mess it up man if that's what the Christian life is you'd be sunk you wouldn't stand a chance but what if what if somehow you had access to the spirit of Michael Angelo in dwelling you changing the way you think and changing the way you see that piece of art and actually painting through your very fingertips how would your life be different if you actually believed the God's spirit of power lived in you for example do you think you'd pray I've heard it before that prayer over action equals passivity that God actually doesn't call us to just sit around all day going hmm like closing our eyes and folding our hands in prayer we're actually supposed to do stuff and to live out our faith in the Bible talks a lot about how our faith is measured by our actions we are called to work out our salvation on the flip side prayer under action is pride the most prideful thing you could ever do is live a prayerless life if you are living a prayerless life you are essentially saying no thanks God I can do it on my own but I have done that enough to realize that my best work on my best day is entirely insufficient to bring the kingdom of heaven and so what we're called to do is prayer plus action equals power how would your life be different if you actually believed God's spirit of power lived in you years ago there was a student at Texas Tech University named Steve winger and he was taking a logic class and the final in this logic class was incredibly brutal everybody knew it but the thing was Steve winger had to pass this logic final in order to graduate from college and the professor before the test he said to his students he said hey you can bring anything with you that you want to help you on that final as long as it fits on one eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper and so for the whole semester you can imagine these students are just cramming notes writing as tiny as they possibly can like barely legible trying to fit every little nugget of information they can on this one sheet of paper the day the final comes all the students come in with their tiny little handwritten notes on their pieces of paper but Steve winger walks into the class and his piece of paper is entirely blank not a single word written on it and Steve winger sat down in the chair put his eight and a half by 11 on the ground and in the door walked a graduate level logic student and stood on the paper and so every time Steve had a question the grad student just told him what he needed to know Steve winger was the only person into the class to get an a true story that's the Christian life you and I get to walk in every single day say I have no idea how to do this but I'm gonna go ahead and put my paper down because the good news is there's somebody who always promises to come stand on that paper and help me when I need it and his name is the spirit of power how would your life look different if you actually believe that let's go back who is this holy spirit for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid but gives us power love and self-discipline so yes he's the spirit of power but we see also he is the spirit of love he's the spirit of love this word for love here is the word agape you might be familiar with it sometimes agape can be defined as an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person is there anybody in the room besides me who has some imperfect people in your life that you are trying to love am I the only one if you can't think of anybody you probably are that person for somebody else so congratulations in fact made if you're new with us here I can't promise you much but I can promise you if you stick around here long enough I will be that person for you I promise I will disappoint you we will disappoint each other that's how life goes that's especially how church goes isn't it I mean Timothy's live in church life just like you and I live in church life and it's like in every stinking church we've we've got grumps and we've got immature believers and complainers who should know better and sometimes they're nice people but they're just annoying at the end of the day right like welcome to church here we are guys and so when you're faced with somebody like that how would your life look different if you actually believe the spirit of love lived in you hypothetical scenario I'm not going to do this but let's say I put a gun to your head this morning I'm not going to if I put a gun to your head this morning and I said I want you to go around the room and hug 50 people and tell them how much you love them and care about them now with a gun at your head you could do that right you could go around you could hug 50 people you could probably even smile and fake it but as you're doing it like you're gonna have a hard time meaning those words you're gonna be thinking about more about yourself than about them wondering what I'm gonna do and and you're gonna have a hard time like feeling really like moved and loving toward those other people it's gonna be rough even though you can pull it off right why is that it's because blackmailed behavior never leads to joy and some of you are struggling in your Christian life and you're worn out and you're exhausted and you're tired because you are living a life full of blackmailed behavior you're doing all the right things that you think a Christian's supposed to do but you're doing it for the wrong reasons because you're just worried that God's gonna get mad at you and punish you if you don't but what God wants to do is he wants to overwhelm you with such a deep sense of how wide and long and high and deep is his love for you that that love just begins to transform your heart until it's actually his heart overflowing with his love for his people not blackmail the spirit of love and do you know what kind of people God loves the kind of love he wants to put in you my best friend in college who's the best man in my wedding he wrote a list he said I could share it with you he walked through the alphabet imagining the kind of people that God loves starting with the letter A God loves the addict and the alcoholic God loves those who've been abandoned and those who've been abused he loves the atheist and the agnostic God loves the broken-hearted and the heart-breaker the bully and the bullied God loves the carefree and the careful he loves those who go to church and those who would never dare to darken her doors God loves those with chronic pain God loves those who are fighting cancer and he loves those who've been told they can't have children of their own God loves the delighted and he loves the depressed God loves those who are deaf and those who have Down syndrome there is no disability that could defy God's love for you he loves the defeated the destroyed the downcast and distraught and he loves those who've gone through a divorce God loves the easy going and the excitable he loves the easy to please and the easy to forget he loves the empty and those who've given every last effort they have to give God loves the favored and the forgotten he loves those who have found him and those who have fallen away God loves the fatherless and those who found their forever home God loves those who've lost a family member or a friend he loves the grateful and the greedy the geek and the gambling addict God loves your grandma and he loves your grandpa too God loves the helpful and the helpless he loves the heterosexual and the homosexual God loves the hippie and the hungover and the hungry they're all loved by God and he loves those who've been hurt horrendously God loves the intellectuals and the ignorant the insecure and the immature God loves those who get invited to the party and those who feel isolated God loves the judged and the judgmental he loves the kid who spent time in juvie he loves the jealous and the joyful and the jaded and the jokester and the jinxed God loves the kind-hearted God loves those who've been knocked out knocked up and kicked around he loves your kid even when he's kind of a knucklehead God loves the loser as much as the winner he loves the leper and the lame and the lost and the left behind both the liar and the lover are loved by the Lord God loves those who are messed up from messing around God loves those who are mad at him God loves those who suffer to miscarriage and he loves your baby too God loves your nosy neighbor your neat neighbor your negligent neighbor he loves those who are nice and he loves those who never seem to have anything nice to say God loves the oppressed and the oppressor the obsessed the obnoxious the obstinate the opulent and the orphan God even loves those who are watching online hi guys God loves the pathetic and the picture perfect he loves the parent who feels so much pressure and the parent who's in a whole lot of pain he loves the poor and he loves those who pretend to have it all together and even those who can't pretend just one day more God loves the quirky and the quaint he loves those who are quiet God loves the person who's thinking about quitting God loves the righteous and the refused the radiant and the ridiculed he cares for those who need a day of rest God loves those who are struggling to pay their rent God loves the sinner and the saint he loves the suffering and the insufferable he loves the student who's wondering what's next God loves both the single he's ready to mingle and the single who wishes people would shut up with those suggestions about who they should date he loves the silly in the seriousness he loves both the single mom and the single dad who are simply trying to survive God loves those who've seriously considered suicide God loves the traitor in the trespasser he loves the tainted in the tattered God loves the trickster in the troublemaker he loves the tough and the tender God loves that baby you saw on that ulcer sound he loves the one upper and the underperformer he loves the ugly and the unblemished God loves the uncompromised and those who feel unacceptable God loves the vain the virtuous the vicious the victorious and yes God loves even the villain God loves the wacko and the weirdo and the widower God loves those who are wishing or waiting for something God loves those who dare to ask him why God loves those who've had an x-ray and those who play the xylophone that one's hard and God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you whether you're zealous for him or you feel like a zero he loves you a zillion and a zillion times more so how would your life look different if you actually believe that because God's not just holding the gun to your head saying fake it till you make it no God God wants the spirit of love to so overwhelm you that you have his heart and when the spirit of love lives in you he doesn't just tell you all the people that you should love he starts by telling you just how much that God loves you and he tells you and he tells you and he tells you until finally finally maybe just maybe you start to believe it just a little bit and your heart starts to overflow with that love for everybody else think about it Paul talks about this in Galatians chapter 5 he talks about what is the fruit of the spirit you remember he says but the fruit of the spirit is love but he goes on enjoy and peace and forbearance and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control that one's always felt like the downer on the list to me you know but it's important because he says hey against such things there is no law those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires since we live by the spirit let us keep in step with the spirit so who is this spirit verse 7 we've seen it before see it again for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid but gives us power love and self-discipline so yes he is the spirit of self-discipline you know there's this interesting mix in the Christian life isn't there between God's sovereignty and our responsibility we see it even in Timothy's story that God's sovereignty took him so far Timothy he had a mother and a grandmother who could teach him scripture Paul could disciple him and teach him God could put this glowing ember in him to give him the spiritual gift and this opportunity to use it but now Paul says to Timothy now you've got a fan it into flame now you've got to stir it up you have to add your own self-discipline to the mix to activate what you have been given and for some of you that's where you are today like God has brought you this far you just got to choose whether you're going to fan this thing into flame or not maybe if you're honest looking at your life like your life is a little bit like an octopus on roller skates it's a whole lot of movement but not a lot of progress maybe you're looking at the train tracks and thinking man I've been headed down this path for a long time I don't even really know where it's headed I've never even stopped to think about what if there could be something more and better available for me and the good news is that when you follow Jesus and the spirit of God comes and lives in you there is more there is more power there is more love there is even more self-discipline the word here for self-discipline means to control yourself in the face of passion do you understand how rare that is in our world who's doing that and so when that urge comes up inside of you that we're all familiar with that urge to react quickly or to give in to greed or to lust or self-righteousness or anger or jealousy instead the Holy Spirit comes and he pulls you back just a little bit he says no no no no there's more and he gives you the power to be in control of yourself instead of leviting yourself control you see us Lewis when he talks about it he uses the illustration of walking your dog imagine you're walking your dog down the sidewalk and you're walking along the street when all of a sudden you come to a signpost and you walk around this side but your dog goes the wrong way around the signpost and so now your dog she's got her leash wrapped around the signpost and so what she do you walk a dog before right she starts pulling and she starts tugging because she wants to keep going and she doesn't know why she's stuck maybe that's where you are today and so what you can do is she your dog she can't see what's holding their back but you can you can tell you went the wrong way you got all tangled up here and so what you have to do is you have to start pulling her back you have to start pulling her back so that you can untangle her from around the signpost because she's not gonna like it but your desire for her is the same as hers you both want to go forward and you even want to go forward together but first you have to pull her back and she has to be self-disciplined self-control she has to yield to your will instead of your her own so that you can untangle her from the mess this is our story isn't it my goodness it's my story that left to my own devices I have wrapped myself around that post time and a time and time and time again and we all do this don't we we live shallow lives mired and bad habits and spiritual mediocrity with a narrow vision and an absolute inability to untangle ourselves but praise God that he has given us his spirit of power and love and self-disciplined so so how would your life be different if you actually believe that toward the end of the service our prayer team is going to gather around the edges of the room they'll have their glowing lanyards on maybe we'd love to pray with you we'd love to help you discern whatever the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life so man if you got something pressing on your heartless let's do it let's talk and in just a minute we're gonna sing a song inviting the Holy Spirit to come and work in us to work in to work in me to work in you but also to work in us as a family but first if you would just close your eyes take a few deep breaths let's become aware of God's presence with us and then I'm gonna give you a few questions to ask him would you ask him hey Lord where am I wrapped around the post where does your spirit of self-discipline need to pull me back so that I can go with you to the more that you have would you ask him Lord if I actually believed that you have given me your spirit of love how would my life look different would you ask him Lord if I actually believe that you have given me your spirit of power how would my life look different King Jesus we want whatever it is that you have for us but we don't know the way but you are the way so we'll follow you I ask for my brothers and sisters that where they need your power you would supply it wherever you need to pull us back Lord do it because we want to go with you we praise you so much for your death and for your resurrection means there's no such thing is hopeless and until we await your return we thank you for your Holy Spirit who lives in us enables us to be your people but right now Lord would you would you just run your finger across the surface of our souls and for my friends in every place that there's a crack in every place that there's brokenness where there's a whole would you just pour your love right into it fill us up we love you because you first loved us it's in Jesus name all God's people said amen let's stand and worship our King together thank you for listening to the podcast today it is our deepest desire here at Plainfield Christian Church that you would experience the joy of being fully alive in Jesus if you have any questions about our church or would like a plan to visit with us go to Plainfield Christian dot-com if you'd like to receive our podcast every week we encourage you to subscribe to the Plainfield Christian Church podcast on whatever podcasting platform you prefer have a great week you