Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. We're living in a perilous moment in history, and this is a great time for the church to become the church again, the way God intended us to be.
So open your heart today, and I believe the Lord's going to speak to you in a very, very special way. Um Thanks for joining us this week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the triune God who lives in the believer's body. Pastor Carter teaches that there is this inner groaning of God inside of his own people who cries out, if you only knew what I have for you. God is trying to speak to you.
Believers must learn to listen.
Now here's Carter Conlon with his message from Romans chapter 8. Uh I spoke about the year 2020. As being a year that we will see wonders.
Now, let me define that. When I say wonders, when we begin to experience things in our lives that only God can do. Human effort, even in religion, can only take a person so far. And usually it ends up in exhaustion. questions and oftentimes even failure.
But God, by His Holy Spirit, is able to take us so far beyond. anything we've even thought or hoped or imagined that our lives could be. He's able to give us freedom that we can't purchase through human effort or even efforts to cleanse ourselves up. We can't purchase freedom through anything that we have done. It's because of what He has done.
and who he is, that you and I have hope. For the future, I want to speak to you a message called The Groanings of the Holy Spirit. the groanings. of the Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 8.
Beginning at verse 22. For we know that the whole creation groans. and labors with birth pangs together Until now.
Now, let me just stop there. I'm going to just go line by line, verse by verse. When sin entered into the human race, sin came into the into this world through Adam and Eve, our initial parents in the Garden of Eden. Up till that point, everything was in divine order. The Spirit of God had moved, God had spoken, everything was created.
Life was created. Life was given, borders were established. There was a divine order to creation up to this point. But because sin entered into the human race, everything that was of order began to spiral down. into disorder.
And everything in creation groans because you and I know that Without humankind Living in sin, things would be a lot different than they are today. And not that only, not only that, verse 23, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. I don't know about you, but I groan every day. From the day that I became a new believer in Christ, I see the high calling of God in Christ Jesus that's written over my life in the Word of God, but I also know clearly how short I fall sometimes. And there's this inner groaning.
Lord, you have promised that one day I will be delivered from this body that fights against the Holy Spirit. One day, my God, I'll be in a place where I can't even be tempted anymore. One day, I'll be in a place where my thoughts are clear, my words are clear. One day, Thank God for that. You and I, we will have a heavenly body that no longer fights against the Spirit of God and the Word of God inside of us.
And if you've had a taste of God, you groan for that. You groan, there's an inner groaning. Say, oh God, not only does this world need to be completely redeemed, but Lord, you have promised, you've given me this raindrop of a thunderstorm of life that will one day eternally and forever be mine. And I thank God with all of my heart. that one day I'll be in a place Where I don't ache when I get out of bed in the morning.
You understand what I'm talking about? If you don't, just hang around a few years, that's coming your way. One day, I'm not tempted to be angry with somebody. One day, unforgiveness will no longer be tugging at my heart. One day, the words that were spoken over my life, or people are speaking today, will no longer have the power to pierce through and wound me.
One day, the sorrow that maybe some here are experiencing that you wonder if it will ever go away will suddenly be gone. And we groan inside for that redemption. We groan for that place, praise God, and we know that it's not that far away from us. Eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. Verse 23, verse 24.
For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.
In other words, there are things that you should be praying for right now, but you don't know what it is you should be praying for. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Did you know that? According to the word of God, the Spirit of God, the third person of God, of the triune God. Dwells inside these physical bodies, and he is groaning about something right now.
Right now. Right where you sit, there's an inner groaning of the Holy Spirit.
Now he who searches the hearts Knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according. To the will of God. In other words, God has something specific for your life. specific things that he wants to do that you don't even know about. You don't even know what your future is going to be.
You don't know clearly what it is that he wants to do and how he wants to do it. But I can tell you one thing, the Spirit of God inside of you is making intercession for you according to the will of God. The will of God for your life. Whatever it is that God has for you. We are so Resistant to what God has for us.
It's anything that's outside of the parameters, in a sense, of our self-view of what we think our life should amount to, or will amount to, or can amount to. We somehow just want to push it away. We don't want to believe it, even though the Holy Spirit, God, God. Who's taken up residence inside our earthly bodies and said, I have something that I have designed specifically for you through which I will be glorified in the earth. It's not something you can do.
It's not a skill that necessarily you have. It's something God says that I intend to do through you. that my name might be glorified in the earth. And we know, verse 28. that all things work together for good to those who love God.
To those who are called according to his purpose. In other words, so he's not leading you into something that's harmful. Or hurtful, it's good. Everything God does is good. Remember when the Spirit of the Lord moved on the face of the waters in the beginning?
Before even humankind was created, everything he said, everywhere he led, everything he did, he looked down and said, It is good. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. When Christ was raised from the dead, the same spirit, the Bible says that raised Christ from the dead, will now also quicken our physical bodies, our mortal bodies. and we will be given new life. a new future, a new hope.
new giftings, new abilities. The Bible promises a new mind, a new heart, and a new spirit. That's the inheritance. That is yours in Christ. He bought it for you on the cross.
Remember, the scripture says when he was raised from the dead, he took captivity captive. He took everything that captivates you captive and gave gifts unto men. He took your captivity into captivity and then showered everything that he won on that cross. Everything that belongs to him now belongs to his church, now belongs to his body. Moreover, verse 30, whom he predestined, these he also called.
In other words, you were predestined by God. To bear the image of Christ in this earthly body, and he also called you. And whom being called, he justified, and whom he justified. These he also glorified. What shall we say then to these things if God?
is for us. Who can be against us? If God is for us, Who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely? Give us All things.
Now listen to the words of Jeremiah. And Jeremiah, God was speaking through Jeremiah to about a people who had spent a long time in captivity. And he says, after 70 years I will visit you and perform my good word towards you and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil.
to give you a future and a hope. I know the thoughts God says that I'm thinking about you. They're not necessarily in line with the thoughts that you're thinking about you. You look into the mirror in the morning just like I do, and what do you see? You see a history of the flaws and the failures, the things you shouldn't have said, the things you shouldn't have done, where you fall short.
God said, those are not the thoughts I'm thinking about you. I called you and I've already justified you. I've already cleansed you. I've already declared you to be mine. And I have a pathway, a plan, and a purpose for your life that's so far beyond the thoughts that you think about yourself.
I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future. And the hope. I have a future for you, God says. An incredible future. Then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
And you will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all of your heart. What does it mean to search for God with all of your heart? It just means, God, I want what you want. Yeah. That's what it means.
I want Your heart They become mine. I want your will to be mine. I want your pathway for my life. He said, you'll pray, and I will listen to you, and you will find me when you search for me. With all your heart.
Lord, I want to make a difference in this world. I want to make a difference in my family. I want to make a difference in my workplace. I want to make a difference in my community. My city, my town, my country, there's no limit to you, God.
There's no limit to what you can do. And if you have a specific plan for my life, I want to know what that plan is. And I'm not going to draw back. through unbelief. I'm not going to say, no, this can't be.
It can't be for me. All through scriptural history, God has always come to people to do the work He can do, but He waits till we're too old to do it in Moses' case. He calls us when we're too young in David's case. He calls Esther when she feels unlovely and unwanted by the king. He needs a prophet.
How many times did he wait for a barren womb? to bring a prophet into this world to do what only he can do. And when you and I get to the point Where we say, God, if anything's going to happen, it's going to have to be you, then we're at the point when actually we're ready to be used by God in this world. You'll search for me and you'll find me When you search for me with all of your heart. You know, too often, perhaps most often, We think that prayer is you and I trying to move the reluctant hand of God.
Or asking him to do something he hasn't thought of already. You know, Lord, in case it escaped your attention. My son is lost. My daughter is lost. My family's in shambles.
Lord, in case you haven't seen, in case you haven't noticed. Or somehow we get it in our head, and religion can do that to us. It's a sad thing. That somehow God is really, he came to the earth, went to a cross, went through all this public humiliation, suffered the beating he suffered, was nailed to a tree, and died just so that he could go back to heaven and sit on the throne, fold his arms, and point out all our mistakes. And somehow is reluctant to answer our prayer.
But that's not who God is, that's not the way God operates with people. As a matter of fact, the very opposite is true. Listen to the condition. of the nation in Ezekiel's day. Chapter 22, beginning at verse 27.
Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, to shed blood, to destroy people, to get dishonest gain.
So that's the leaders now. are tearing the country apart. They're destroying people. And they're greedy. Her prophets, that means there's a religion attached to this, plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, divining lies for them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord has not spoken.
So you have a corrupt leadership, you've got a religion attached to it that is encouraging it. The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, mistreated the poor and needy, and they wrongfully oppressed the stranger. And so it's so easy to say, God, judge the nation. When a nation gets like this, I'm sure everybody there was of the opinion, including those in God's house at that time, This nation has gotten so corrupt it deserves the judgment of God. But God was thinking something else and was looking for somebody.
To agree with him, he says, So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it, but I found. No one. Imagine that. God has thoughts in his heart. of mercy.
And he's looking for one person in the nation. Who will agree with him? It's so hard to agree with God sometimes when everything in the natural seems to be the opposite. It's so hard to agree that maybe God has a call on your life when all you see every night is the failure. And He's trying to speak to you.
He's trying to say, I have something so much bigger for your life than what you think your life is going to amount to. I feel when I read this passage of scripture that there was nobody left that thought that God could be merciful. But even deeper than that, there's nobody left who believes that God could actually use him. Uh-huh. Isn't that amazing?
There's nobody left who believes that they could actually become a wall or stand in the gap or somehow their life could make a difference and push back the deserving judgment of God from a nation and usher in a season of mercy. God help us if we ever get to that place. In America today, if you get there, or I get there, and we somehow believe that God can no longer use our lives in the way. that he wants to. It's not God who's reluctant to show mercy, it's you and I who are reluctant to believe that when He speaks to us about doing something in or through us.
that we haven't personally thought was possible. Hence, the groanings of the spirit. The Holy Spirit knows. the will of God for you. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the triune God who lives in your earthen vessel and knows that He can perform the will of God through you.
And there's this inner groaning of the Holy Spirit. I feel it again today in the church of Jesus Christ, this inner groaning of God. inside of his own people saying if you only knew what I had for you. I didn't know all of this about the groanings of the Holy Spirit. I didn't understand it, but I remembered a half of a verse, verse 31: If God is for us, who can be against us?
And I believe there's this inner groaning in my life for freedom. Remember, we talked about the groaning of creation, the groaning that we have in our physical bodies, and the groaning of the Holy Spirit. I felt this courage that could only be born of God rise in my heart. And I went into my living room that night and I said these words: I said, Satan, you can only kill me if God allows you to. And if he does, I'm going to heaven.
So I win either way tonight. I win. This is a win-win for me.
So, you throw at me everything you've got. You throw the full force of it at me, but I throw back at you what I now have in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I resist you. And as I stood there, I felt a heat. Hit me in my feet.
Now, I'm not talking about fuzzy warmth. I'm talking about a heat. Hit me in my feet, go through my calves, go through my thighs, go through my center core of my body, and right out the top of my head. That's 40 years ago. I was set free that night from nine years of hell in one minute in the presence of God.
And knowing the power of God, it started to open my heart to the groanings of God. The whispers of God, the whispers of the Holy Spirit, the things that God had destined my life to be.
Now, listen, folks, if you think you're so far down the alley that there's no light at the end of your tunnel, I was farther down than you are. I'll tell you right now. I was hopeless when it came to preaching the gospel. I didn't care about people. I didn't even like myself.
I didn't want to be in ministry. Couldn't care less about any of that stuff. But there's these whispers of God started coming into my heart, these inner groanings of the Holy Spirit that God had something bigger, God had something better, God had something deeper, God had something more profound, God had something that only God could do, that He wanted to do, and all He asked me to do was agree with Him. That when he opened the door, he asked me to walk through it. And as best as I know how, for the last 40 years, when he has opened the door, I have walked through it.
I've asked him for the strength and for the power, and it's been a glorious life. I'm telling you right now, because I'm never qualified to do anything that I do, and I thank God for that. I don't have to put a certificate on my wall. Because it's not by might, it's not by power, it's not by human intellect, it's not by ability, it's by the power of the Holy Spirit, it's by the presence of God. And so all the glory goes to Him for everything He's ever done.
All the glory belongs to Him. And so the point is really simple. He is no respecter of persons. He doesn't just pick one here and one there. Maybe that was the way it was done in the Old Testament.
There would be an anointing here, an anointing there, somebody would gift it here, somebody there. But I remind you that the prophet Joel said, when God's Spirit comes, he would pour out His Holy Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters would prophesy. Your old men would dream dreams. Your young men would see visions.
There would be a complete level ground at the cross of Jesus Christ. The anointing of God wouldn't be just for a select few. That would just rise up and somehow take the preeminence in the house of God, the anointing, the plan, the power of God would be for you and you and you and you and you and you. Yes, you, the anointing of God. In the upper room, 120 failures went in and began to pray.
They'd all run when Christ needed them. They were all completely aware of their glaring failings. in their lives There was not one there that could have a boast of his or her own righteousness or faithfulness or anything else. Everybody had run. when Christ had needed them.
They couldn't even pray with him in the garden. All their boastings of love and loyalty had come to nothing. They'd fallen like dust. Through their fingers. Yet here they were.
And when God's Holy Spirit came, Then this inner groaning of the spirit, they began to speak it. They left that room and they began to speak it in the marketplace. The Bible says they begin to talk about the megalith of God, which really means the anticipated outworkings of the inner life of Christ. They began to speak about the things that God was going to do in a way that only God could speak it. People coming home from the temple from just casual everyday religion, as sincere as it might have been, were stopped in their tracks.
Thousands of them were stopped in their tracks by just 120 people who had had an encounter with God. And they were speaking the things that God was speaking to their hearts. They were believing what God was revealing to them. And as they began to speak and as they began to move, in the power of God. 3,000 at least bent their knee that day and said, We thought we knew who God was, but you have a living presence of God within you that we now desire.
And in my heart, I say it's time. For you and I, it's time for the church in America to rise up again. It's time for us to respond to these inner groanings of the Holy Spirit. And say, Lord, I will not be sold short.
Now, listen to me. I'm not talking about heaven now, okay? You understand? You can be a mediocre Christian and still end up in heaven, folks. Or you can be a man or woman that says, God, I want everything you've got for me.
Whatever the pathway is for my life, don't let me live my own plans and my own life, but whatever it is that you have for me and the giftings you have to make that happen, I open my heart to it. Oh, God. I opened my heart to it. You know, there's an old poem we used to love to quote, it's called Flanders Fields. It's about soldiers that have gone on before and they fought a good fight.
And there's a line that I just love, and it says, To you from failing hands, we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high. If you break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep. Her pop is grow in Flanders fields. And so here we are.
I've walked this walk and I know this to be true. And I asked for those that are 35 and under. that are here for a specific reason today because it's your turn now. Those of us who are getting older can't go on forever. One day our bodies are going to fail.
But we've known and walked in the power of God. And if you don't understand that, just read. Read the book, It's Time to Pray. You'll get it all there. But I challenge her with all of my heart.
with all of my heart. Respond. to the inner groanings of the Holy Spirit. It's not your plan that will glorify God. It's God's plan that will glorify His own name through you.
Praise be to God. You bear the living Christ in these earthen vessels. And if you will let him do what he wants to do. It will be no less miraculous than it's been throughout history.
Some were Sometime somebody's going to lay hold of this truth again in our generation. May it be you today. May it be you. May it be you. May you be like that young girl in Mongolia that would go out in her dream and look at the stars.
and learn to stop ducking the thoughts of God. and is now on a journey. that only God can take her on. May that be your calling and mine. And so here's my altar call.
It's really simple. Lord, I want to know. What you're speaking to me. Help me not to resist it. Help me not to push it away.
Not because of youth or because of age. or because of past experience. Lord, you've called me. You've declared that I'm a new creation. You said that you won't withhold from me everything I need because of Jesus Christ in me.
And so God, I'm asking you.
Now this is a sober moment. because you don't know where this prayer is going to take you. But I do know one thing, Christ will be glorified in it. You don't know where it's going to lead. And you can't even start thinking about where it's going to lead.
You don't know. Just Lord. I want to know. Your thoughts. Towards me.
Uh You've been listening to Carter Conlon. pastor of Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk with Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Uh Be sure to join us again next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
Yeah.
