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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. The same power of God that flung billions of galaxies into existence with a single word. The same power of God that changed five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed 25,000 people. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Are you longing for something more in your Christian life? Maybe more connection with God or victory over sin?
What you really need is the power of the Holy Spirit. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress answers some common questions about the Holy Spirit and how we can access his power today. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David. And welcome to a brand new week of Bible teaching on Pathway to Victory as we venture into our next teaching series called Unleashed. As a pastor, I've listened to many struggling Christians tell me how they're longing for something more.
No, they weren't talking about more money or a nicer home or more success. They are unsatisfied Christians who are looking for greater joy in worship and a deeper sense of God's supernatural presence in their everyday lives. Well, if more sounds out of reach for you today, then let me assure you it's not. In fact, your desire for a richer spiritual life can be realized by the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. And this is the overarching theme of our new teaching series that begins today.
Now, many Christians simply don't know how to access the power that's available to them through the Holy Spirit. And so I've written a book to help you activate and unleash the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. My book is titled I Want More. It's the perfect complement for our new study beginning today. I'll say more about my book later and I'll give you details on how to request your copy. But right now, let's get started with our study called Unleashed, Experiencing the Power of the Holy Spirit. Today, we're going to start by asking and answering this important question.
Who is the Holy Spirit? Open your Bibles to 2 Peter Chapter 1 for a message I've titled You're Richer Than You Think. An old Indian chief living in Oklahoma was thrilled when he struck oil on the small parcel of land that he owned. Suddenly, this Indian chief was richer than Jed Clampett. And he had always wanted more than anything a shiny red Cadillac automobile. And now he had the money to purchase it. So one day he went down and he pulled out a wad of $1,000 bills and he bought his shiny new red Cadillac automobile.
The chief was so proud of his new car. Every morning at 10 o'clock he would get in his car and he would drive around the town square in that small city in Oklahoma. And the old chief while driving the car would open his driver's window and he would wave at folks on the left. And then he would open the passenger window and he would wave at folks on the right. And sometimes he got so distracted he would actually lean out of the driver's window and he would start talking to the people on the town square. And they would talk to him back. But nobody was really too concerned about the chief's erratic driving patterns.
Instead, they would simply smile and wave back at him as they watched him in his shiny new red Cadillac being drawn by the two horses he had attached to the front bumper. You know a lot of Christians are like that old Indian chief. They saunter through their Christian life convinced that they can travel no farther and no faster than they're traveling right now. They have no idea of the tremendous spiritual horsepower that's available to them. Instead, they have convinced themselves that they can never experience any miraculous answers to their prayers. They can never experience victory over temptation in their life. They can never expect God to speak to them in a supernatural way.
Instead, they just travel around in the same circle year after year. But there are some Christians who want more in their Christian experience. They long for more power in their prayers. They long for more success in their struggles. They want to experience more joy in their worship.
Perhaps you're one of those people. And sometimes when we want more, we look around and we see some Christians jetting past us, whizzing by us in a faster model of Christianity. And we wonder, well maybe what's wrong is I have the wrong kind of Christianity. Maybe I need to trade in my faith for a shinier, a newer model.
Well before you do that, it's important to read the owner's manual and understand the power that is available to you already. If you want more than you're experiencing in your Christian life right now, what you really are longing for is the power of the Holy Spirit. And today we're going to begin a brand new series of messages I've titled Unleashed, Experiencing the Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Everyday Life. And as we begin our study today, we're going to answer two essential questions about the Holy Spirit of God.
If you have your Bibles, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 as we discover why it is you're richer than you think. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. The first question we're going to look at briefly today is who is the Holy Spirit? If indeed the answer to the greatest longing you have in your life right now is the power of the Holy Spirit, we need to understand who the Holy Spirit is. And I want to make two statements this morning about the Holy Spirit. First of all, the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is God. I have a pastor friend who grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and he said, you know, whenever we heard the Trinity talked about, we never heard about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Instead of a Trinity, it was presented to us as a dynamic duo, the Father and the Son. But we never heard anything in our church about the Holy Spirit of God. Unfortunately, that is the trend in too many Baptist churches and too many evangelical churches. Afraid of the excesses of some believers when it comes to the Holy Spirit, other believers have just ignored him altogether. There are people who go through church without ever hearing a word about the Holy Spirit of God. That is a tremendous mistake because the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is God. He is not inferior to the Father or the Son. He is equal to God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son.
How do I know that? Jot down a couple of Scripture references that mention the Holy Spirit of God as equal to God. Genesis 1 verse 2 reminds us that the Holy Spirit was involved in creation.
Moses wrote, the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Who was that Spirit of God? He's the Holy Spirit of God. Or in Matthew 28 verse 19, Jesus said, When you baptize, baptize in the name of God the Father, the Son, and who? The Holy Spirit. Or remember the Apostle Paul equated the Holy Spirit with God in 2 Corinthians 13 verse 14.
He wrote, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you. Remember the story in Acts chapter 5 verses 3 and 4 about Ananias and Sapphira? Ananias and Sapphira had made a pledge before the whole church that they were going to sell a piece of land and give all the proceeds to the church's building campaign they were having back then. And Ananias and Sapphira, even though they publicly made this commitment, they sold the piece of land, they kept back a portion for themselves.
What happened to them? Verses 3 and 4 of Acts 5, Peter confronted them and said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart as to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? And then in verse 4 he says, you have not lied to men, you have lied to God. Do you see that? He says, why did you lie to the Holy Spirit? And then he says, you've not lied to men, you've lied to God.
The Holy Spirit is God. And I can read your expressions this morning. I can tell what some of you are thinking. You're starting to yawn a little bit. The overcast sky is starting to get to you. You're starting to doze off.
You're wondering, so what? The Holy Spirit is God. What does that mean to me? I want you to think about this. The same power of God that flung billions of galaxies into existence with a single word. The same power of God that changed five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed 25,000 people. The same power of God that lifted Jesus Christ out of the grave. That same power of God is in you right now if you're a Christian. The power of God resides in you. In fact, right now I'm going to take a chance. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes where you are right now.
Okay? And I just want you to think about that thought. The power of God resides in me. Say it with me. The power of God resides in me. Again, the power of God resides in me.
Now one more time. The power of God resides in me. Isn't that a terrific thought? That's why the Holy Spirit being God is so important to us. He is in you. There's a second truth about the Holy Spirit we need to understand. Not only is the Holy Spirit God, the Holy Spirit is also a person. And that's why whenever the New Testament talks about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is never referred to as it. It is always referred to the Holy Spirit as He. He is a person. Now what do we mean the Holy Spirit is a person?
Well, think about what distinguishes you as a person from this pulpit up here. To be a person, a living being, you have to have three things. Intellect, a will, and emotions. For example, as a person you have thoughts all the time. You're having many thoughts right now. This pulpit that has been here since 1890 has never had one single solitary thought. Not one. You have a will.
That is you make decisions about what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. This pulpit doesn't have a will. It's not sitting here right now thinking, you know, as soon as this clown gets through preaching, I'm going to go have lunch. It doesn't think that at all. It's never had a thought before. You have emotions, all kinds of emotions. This pulpit has never shed a tear.
It's never smiled at all. Intellect, emotions, and will is what makes us a person. It distinguishes us from objects. It's the same way with the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God possesses an intellect. That is He thinks, He understands, He comprehends the thoughts of God.
Jot down 1 Corinthians 2, verse 11. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God can understand what we can never understand, and that is the thoughts of God Himself. Secondly, the Holy Spirit possesses a will.
That is, He makes decisions. One of the decisions He makes is what spiritual gifts He's going to give to individual Christians. 1 Corinthians 12, 11 says, But one in the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills. And then number three, the Holy Spirit of God possesses emotions.
He can actually feel things. One of the things the Holy Spirit feels is deep sorrow when we sin as a Christian. When you as a Christian sin, and think about this, any sin you engage in, you are taking the Holy Spirit with you to be a part of that sin if He's living in your life. That's why Ephesians 4, verse 30 says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed in the day of redemption.
The next time you're tempted to enter into sin, ask yourself, Do I feel comfortable making God a partner with me in this sin? Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Who is the Holy Spirit? He's God.
He is also a person. Now the second question. How and when do we receive the Holy Spirit in our lives? How and when do we receive the Holy Spirit in our lives? If indeed the deepest longing we have can be filled by experiencing the Holy Spirit, don't you think it's important to ask and answer the question, Well, when do we receive the Holy Spirit of God in our lives? For example, do I need to pray as a Christian to receive the Holy Spirit?
Do I need to beg Him, to plead with Him to come into my life? Or is the Holy Spirit already part of my life? Philip Yancey says for a Christian to search for the Holy Spirit is like looking for your eyeglasses while you're still wearing them. The fact is if you are truly a believer in Jesus Christ, you have already received the indwelling, the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. Now I realize not everyone believes that.
In fact, some of you here this morning are watching right now. You don't really believe that every Christian possesses the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For example, you can point to some passages of Scripture that appear to teach that receiving the Holy Spirit happens after you become a believer.
And you ask a very good question. You say, and what about those experiences, not of these nut jobs, but of real legitimate Christians in the past like D.L. Moody, R.A. Torrey, and others who said that even after they were saved, they had a second or a third additional experience with the Holy Spirit of God. And Pastor, if you are right and say that every Christian possesses the Holy Spirit of God, why is it not every Christian has joy in his life? Why is it most Christians are living bound up in sin? Why is it so few Christians exhibit the fruit of the Spirit if every believer possesses the Holy Spirit of God?
Those are all great questions that we're going to address in the weeks ahead. But as I began studying this subject of the Holy Spirit of God myself, I threw out everything I'd learned in seminary, everything I had been taught in church about the Holy Spirit of God, and instead started looking at what the Scripture really teaches about the Holy Spirit of God. Some of the things I'd been taught were wrong.
They were dead wrong. And the conclusion I've come to after studying the subject of the Holy Spirit is this. It's a statement I want you to write down because it's the foundation of this series. Here's the statement. Write it down. Don't stare at me.
Write it down. While every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, not every Christian is empowered by the Holy Spirit. While every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, not every Christian is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We're kind of like that old Indian chief. We have the spiritual horsepower. It's not an it. It's a he. He's available to us, but very few Christians are accessing the power that he has made available to us.
Let me show you why that is more than just theological hair-splitting, indwelling and empowering. Let's go back to the old Indian chief for just a moment. Let's suppose he goes into that Cadillac dealership. He says, I want to buy a brand new Cadillac. How much does a Cadillac cost? And the dealer says, well, it depends.
And the Indian chief says, well, it depends on what? The dealer says, well, do you want it with or without an engine? With an engine, it costs $50,000. Without an engine, it costs $40,000.
You can't imagine such a thing, could you? Nobody makes an engine optional in an automobile. It's part of the basic package. And it's the same way with the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God is not optional equipment. The Holy Spirit of God is part of the basic package for every believer.
No, I'm not even going to say that. He's not part of the basic package. He is the basic package for every Christian.
That's what A.W. Tozer said, deity dwelling in man is the essence of the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit is indwelling every believer.
How does that happen? How is it that the Holy Spirit comes into every believer's life? We call it the baptism with the Holy Spirit of God. Now I want you to look at verse 13 of 1 Corinthians 12. Paul explains the process by which the Holy Spirit sets up residence in every believer's life. In verse 13 he writes, For with one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. Now remember to whom Paul was writing.
We've seen this on Sunday night. The Corinthian church was filled with believers who were divided over their favorite pastor. They were divided over political philosophies. They were divided over their beliefs about the role of women in the church. They were divided over their beliefs about spiritual gifts. They were divided over contemporary versus traditional music.
I just made that last one up. But you know, there was all kind of division in the church there. And it's interesting how Paul addresses the division in the church. He doesn't say, now I want you all to be just like one another. I want you all to be uniform.
I want you to talk alike, think alike, believe alike in everything. He doesn't call for that. God doesn't call for the church to be uniform. He calls us to be unified. And there's all the difference between the two.
Cookie cutter Christianity says everybody has to like the same thing, believe the same thing, and so forth. I want to tell you, there's some of you watching right now. You're over in the day one service. You're hearing great music by that band. God bless you. There's nothing that makes you more spiritual or less spiritual than people in the sanctuary. And sanctuary members, there's nothing that makes us more spiritual or less spiritual than the people over in day one. Nothing says we have to all like the same thing. We can have diversity, but there still has to be unity. Unity in diversity.
Well, how in the world do you have unity in diversity? Paul says just look in the mirror. Look at yourself.
Look at your body. You're not all one. You're not one giant ear or one giant eyeball or one giant nostril. Your body consists of a variety of different parts, and yet all of those parts are functioning together for the same purpose. Now that's the way the church is to be. Look at verse 12 in 1 Corinthians 12. For even as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. Just as the human body has a variety of parts that are working together for one purpose, so does the body of Christ, the church.
Many different kinds of people all join together for one purpose. This past week I received a letter from Dr. Al Mohler, the president of our Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Mohler was here for our Good Friday service, and Dr. Mohler wrote and thanked me for the opportunity to be back at First Baptist Dallas. He said, Robert, I will never forget that experience of being in your church, and what I'll always remember is the 10 minutes before the service, seated right there where Amy is right now, and watching people come through that door into the sanctuary. He said, I have never seen such a diverse group of members coming in to one church. He said, I go around, I don't see that in other churches. First Baptist Dallas has the most diverse membership of any church I've ever seen. People from all backgrounds, all walks of life coming together, that is what the church is supposed to be. Let me say to some of you watching by television, some of you listening to this broadcast on radio, if you're a part of a church where everybody's the same age, the same race, same economic background, dresses in the same clothes, guess what? You're not in a church, you're in a country club. God didn't call us to be a country club. God called us to be a church. This passage in 1 Corinthians provides a beautiful image of the church as one unified body.
The parts may all be different, but together they function in perfect harmony for the glory of God. Perhaps this imagery doesn't describe your situation. Maybe you live in a part of the country that's void of healthy churches, or perhaps your health is such that you're unable to attend a church service.
Well, you're not alone. Lots of people find themselves in these situations, and countless Christians are seeking more, more joy in their worship, more answers to their prayers, and more of a sense of God's presence in their lives. If you're searching for a deeper encounter with God, I've written a book especially for you. This book contains a highly personal description of my own journey, from lackluster faith to being on fire for the gospel. My book is titled I Want More, and in my book I'll teach you how to satisfy your spiritual hunger for more by experiencing God's supernatural power in every area of your life. Let me send you a copy of my bestselling book I Want More. It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory.
And thanks for giving generously, because whatever amount you're able to send today will be channeled directly into helping others learn how to unleash the power of God in their lives too. Don't forget you can watch Pathway to Victory on television. On Saturdays we're on at noon Eastern on TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. On Sundays we're on hundreds of stations, including TBN at 10 a.m. Eastern.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. You're invited to request a copy of the book I Want More when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Here's our toll-free number, 866-999-2965, or visit online at ptv.org.
And when you give an especially generous gift of $75 or more, we'll also include this month's teaching series called Unleashed on both CD and DVD. Call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could send your request by mail. Write to P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. One more time, that's P.O.
Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. Join us again next time when Dr. Jeffress explains how and when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. That's Tuesday right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway partner, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
