Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. A little later in the program, we'll tell you how you can get a copy of Dr. Graham's book, Diamonds in the Dark. But first, here's the message. Uprising.
Open God's word to the book of Acts, chapter one. We're beginning a series called Ablaze. We're praying for revival.
Now what is revival? The word revise simply means to live. Again. to live in the power of his Spirit. And when God's people get together and cry out to him and pray, wait on him and trust in him, a spiritual uprising takes place.
We know that our world is deeply in trouble. We are reminded of that daily. In fact, it appears that the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. In our own day, when he said there will be a time when they will call evil good. And good Evil.
We are in days such as these right now. Evil is called good, and good is called evil. Sin is running rampant. Christians are under attack.
So, what are we supposed to do? Withdraw. Isolate ourselves. Are we supposed to, you know, just go buy our ascension robes and wait for the second coming? No, we're not called to isolate, but to infiltrate, to penetrate the darkness with the light of Christ.
to be ignited on the mission of Christ. The church. And if there is ever a time that we have needed revival, it is now. If there's ever a time for the fire to fall, it is today. And I'm praying, oh God, one more time, let me see it.
Let the fire fall. Let your church Fulfill its mission. and it's calling and its commitment. And it is God's purpose and plan for the church that the church would ignite and spread the fire and go and grow. You know, it's been said: we will either go and grow or we will dry and die.
We will either evangelize or we will fossilize. And if we are strong and healthy, healthy bodies reproduce themselves. And so we are called to be healthy in our commitment. And the purpose of the church is clear: it is first upward. In Glorifying Jesus Christ, that's the first.
The purpose of the church is to exalt. Christ Then the church is to edify believers, edify the church, which means to build us up in our most holy faith, to strengthen us in our walk with Christ so that we can effectively share our faith. And so the church is first vertical, it is upward, and then it is inward, but then it always turns outward, and that means we evangelize. People who need to know Jesus, people who are far from God, people who are without the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who came and lived and died on a cross and rose again that we might be saved from our sin and have eternal life. That's our message.
So, the purpose of the church is to exalt Christ. to edify The congregation, and then to evangelize the community. It is upward, it is inward, and it is always. outward. And so, in order for us to accomplish this, we know that we need something above and beyond ourselves.
And something is missing. in the church today, in many churches today. And it's my view that the failure of the church today to fulfill the mission of Christ. is The neglect of the promise that we're about to see today, and the absence of power. Spiritual power.
We have programs. We have technology. We have Marketing strategies. We have methodologies. We have so much to get the job done.
Yet, when I look at the New Testament church, those early believers, they did so much with so little. And yet it seems so often we do so little. With so much, what's the difference? Power. God's power.
Which comes when the Holy Spirit births and baptizes his people. It comes when the fire falls. Jesus said, I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with Fire. A.W. Toesler, the devotional writer, said: if the Holy Spirit was taken away from the New Testament church, The early church.
then 90% of what they did would go away. But if the Holy Spirit was taken away from the contemporary church, the church today. then 90% of what we do would go on. Where's the power? Is the promise That is given to us in the Acts.
The Acts of the Apostles is called in your Bible. But really the acts of Jesus Christ through His Spirit, through His church. Verse 1 says, in the first book, O Theophilus, the man writing is Luke, Dr. Luke. We met him, this gospel of Luke bears his name, this beloved physician.
Sometimes we think that the gospel is for just the ignorant. It certainly is for the ignorant, those who do not know, the uneducated, anyone. But the gospel is also for the educated physician. The bright mind Because every man, whether they're down and out or up and out, needs Jesus. And Luke, the beloved physician, who was the personal physician of the Apostle Paul, who traveled with him, who was an eyewitness to many of the apostles and the acts that took place here.
He writes this book. And why did he write it? He said, I wrote the first book, the Gospel of Luke. To tell you about all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Began to do and to teach.
You know what that means? Jesus is not finished doing and teaching. He came out of the grave. He is alive. And then, until the day, verse 2, when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
What commands?
Well, specifically to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel and to make disciples. to receive God's Spirit. And he Bless those apostles. And then he presented himself alive to them. After his suffering, by many proofs, infallible proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
And then look at verse 8. He said, but you will receive power. When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses. in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria. And In all And not to the end of the earth.
The promise of the Spirit. Heaven's throne gift.
Now, let me remind you that God is three persons in one. One person Expressed in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eternally Coexistent. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each one just as much God as the other, fully God. And so, when we speak of the Holy Spirit, we're not speaking of an impersonal force, an it factor.
But we are speaking of God with us and Jesus in us. The work of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the Holy Spirit, is to testify of Jesus. And if you are really defining the fire, the revival that we're praying, it's all about Jesus. It is Jesus. And when revival comes, you cannot stop it.
It is an un quenchable Fire.
Some people today are talking about reinventing the church. We don't need to reinvent the church. We need to ask God to revive the church. That's what we need to do. We don't need a reinvention.
We need a renewal. Of what God and God alone can do when we call on Him. I tell you what, we need, we need to get back to the Bible. Back to the playbook, the original playbook, and that's why we're going to do this series in Acts because God has given us a plan. God has given us a pattern in the book of Acts as to what we're to be about, what we're to be doing.
Jesus has already clearly told us what our mission is. I love the story of Vince Lombardi, who is the great coach of the Green Bay Packers and the. Super Bowl Trophy, NFL is named after Lombardi, the Lombardi Trophy. The story is told that one year at training camp, Coach Lombardi got his team together. They hadn't played very well and had missed a lot of assignments and so on, and he just was concerned that they weren't.
fulfilling really the fundamentals of the game.
So what he did that particular day, he simply walked in and held up a football. And said, gentlemen. This is a football. Reminding them To get on again with the fundamentals. And do what they were supposed to do.
So I'm standing here with the book of Acts, the Word of God in my hand, and I'm saying: church, this is a Bible. And let's begin to know and do what Jesus has told us to know and do, and let's do it, but thankfully, not in our own strength, but in the power. that he gives us, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. The fire that burns in our souls. One of the biggest problems that we have among Christians today is lukewarmness.
And Jesus spoke to a church. In the last book of the Bible, the revelation about their lukewarmness. And you know what he said? He said, you're not hot, you're not cold. You're a loop warmer.
And you're making me sick. I will spew you out of my mouth. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message Uprising. If you're walking through a tough season, Diamonds in the Dark is a message you need to hear. In this honest and hope-filled book, Dr.
Graham shows you how God uses grief. Loss and hardship to reveal spiritual treasures you'd never discover otherwise. We want to send you Diamonds in the Dark as a thanks for your gift of $10 or more. Call now to request your copy. Call 1-800-795-4627.
That's 1-800-795-555-555-5777. 795 Mm-hmm. or text the word DIMOND to 59-789. Don't let stress rob you of peace. It is possible to break the destructive grip of stress on your life and enjoy the peace and abundance God desires for you.
That's what Dr. Graham helps you do in his booklet, Breaking Free from Stress. We'll send you a digital download of Breaking Free from Stress when you sign up for email updates from PowerPoint today. Just go to PowerPoint.org slash stress and sign up today.
Now let's get back to today's message. Uprising. So God's people, the church, Gathered together, they waited. They prayed. And the Spirit baptized them.
With power, revival. Power. I'm not talking about emotionalism. I'm not talking about extremism. We don't have to be fanatics or fringe.
To be a spirit-filled Christian, to be spirit-filled believers, a church. Because God didn't give us His Spirit in order that we would necessarily feel something, but in order that we would fulfill something, and that is His great commission. Verse 8 says, But you will be my witnesses after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses unto you. To me.
If you want to know what a spirit filled, Believer looks like, look at Jesus. Because Jesus, as in his humanity, in His holy humanity. Said that he was living in the power, in the baptism of God's Spirit.
So I'm not talking about hyper-cataclysmic experiences. I'm talking more about what the Bible is saying here when the word power is used. It's the word dunamis. Dunamis in the language of the New Testament. We get our word dynamite.
From Dunamis. And sometimes When the Spirit comes, it is explosive. And it will shake you to the core of your soul. And there are times when You're walking with the Lord, or you're worshiping the Lord, that His presence is palpable, His power is real. You just believe, you feel it deeply, and that's a good thing.
I wouldn't give you much. for a man or a woman's faith who never felt it. And God give us an emotional. compassionate. devotional love for you.
But we don't ride. experiences. A better Description of this power, this dunamis. This work of God's Spirit in us is dynamo, same kind of word, or dynamic. It speaks more of an inner strength.
A solid, ongoing, continuous source of divine. Energy, the kind of energy that prompted the Apostle Paul to say to us, I can do all things through Christ. who strengthens me. The comforter has come to minister to us when we are suffering. The Holy Spirit enables us to overcome the enemy, to overcome temptation.
The comforter, the Holy Spirit, has given to us that we might exercise spiritual gifts and abilities in serving Him. The Holy Spirit is given to us to unite us as a church and melt us and bring us together in the work that He has called us to do. The Holy Spirit is given to glorify Jesus Christ through His people. The Holy Spirit is given that we would be His witnesses, enabling us to obey Him daily.
So, what happens when revival, remember what I said about revival earlier? Revival is a new beginning of obedience to God. It's not really how loud you shout or how high you jump, but how straight do you walk and how well do you live when you come down? This is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's precious gift to us.
Let me shut this down by saying from Acts 1.8. This power is for a purpose. The revival It's for the purpose of fulfilling the mission of Christ. This is why we acquire the fire. That we would be fiery.
Flaming witnesses. For Christ. That we would be like those Men on the road To Emmaus, who walked with the risen Christ, and after being with him and realizing they were with Jesus. They later said, did not Didn't our hearts burn within us. When we walked with him in the way, on the road, and he opened the scriptures to us.
That's what I'm praying that will happen as we open the scriptures, as Christ opens the Holy Spirit, opens our eyes to His word in these days, that our hearts would burn within us. That it would be Burning. in our souls. We're seeing sparks here and there. But oh for the fire.
Firefall. The word witness here, when we are filled with God's Spirit, meaning we will be witnesses, is the word for martyr. We get our English word martyr from this very word. And many Christians, spirit-filled believers, are being martyred for their faith. Even today.
In fact, We're told that More Christians are being martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ than ever before. Through the centuries, there have been men and women who have been willing to die for their faith. Certainly that ought to be a part of the DNA of God's people and God's church. anywhere, anytime, it is necessary. But a witness doesn't necessarily mean a martyr in this sense doesn't necessarily mean that you die for your faith.
It does mean that you will live for your faith. that you will live for Jesus. And be willing to die for Jesus. It means that we will die to ourselves. Our selfish ambitions.
Sometimes Phew. This mission of Christ we're talking about, we want to use Jesus for our mission. Jesus is not interested in being used for my mission. He wants to use me for his mission. And so the mission is clear.
Be my witnesses. And where do we start? He said, In Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world, or to the ends of the world, to the ends of time, to the end of everything. March off the map. With this gospel.
Why? Our God is a global God. And Jesus died for the world and everyone. Matters. To him.
So we start, notice the order. Yeah, sometimes we say Let's go witnessing. And that's okay, but better than saying, let's go witness, let's really say, let's witness as we go. Because we are called to go. And as we go, as we are going.
Starting with our own Jerusalem. These believers were at Jerusalem.
So Jesus said: start right where you are. In your own town. In your own backyard, in your own neighborhood, in your own office, at your own school, start right where you are and live the word and speak the word of God. A witness is not only something you do or say, it's someone you are. You are a witness for Christ.
You're either a good one or a poor one. But we're all witnesses. And if we're filled with the Holy Spirit, God will give us the words to say and the ability to communicate His word because we're simply telling what we see and know. That's what a witness does. A witness.
Simply says, here's what I saw, here's what I know. We're not prosecuting attorneys. We're witnesses. We're not here to judge anybody. We're witnesses.
When the apostles were told to shut up and never speak the name of Jesus again, they said, We cannot help but speak of those things that we've seen and heard. We can't help it. It's in us. He is in us. You might as well tell the sun to stop shining.
has to tell a spirit-filled Christian to stop talking about Jesus. And so we witness in Jerusalem, starting right where we are. Then Judea, that was the region around Jerusalem. is right where we are, is walking across the room. You may not be able to go across the ocean, but you can walk across the room in God's Spirit and tell your friend about Christ at that party or that function.
You can be faithful right where you are. And then Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria. Samaria was the region hated by the Jews. The people despised this so-called half-breed of people. They detested them.
They wouldn't even walk through their territory. Jesus said, You go even into Samaria. And to us, that means cross the cultural barriers, cross the socioeconomic lines, cross and go to people that aren't like you, that are so-called on the other side of the tracks. Who are not your socioeconomic level. Break out of your own lifestyle and share Jesus with people who are not like you.
And then to the ends of the earth. Don't ever stop until the job is done.
So here's what I want to ask you to do. I want you to begin by asking God to revive your own soul. And if you are lukewarm. And Riding the fence. and just kind of hanging out.
Discover the mission of Christ for yourself. Let there be a new beginning of obedience to God, repenting of sin, asking Him to cleanse us from sin. Restoring our souls. Would you just draw a circle? Around your own life, in your own place of prayer, and say, Lord, in me, in me, send the fire.
That I might obey you. And do your will every day with the internal combustion. You know, fire consumes us. And fire then spreads to other people. When your fire gets with the fire of others, The light grows, the fire spreads, the flame.
penetrates the darkness. I'm praying that God will. They'll turn us into a bonfire. And that you Yeah. would get in and all in on the mission of Christ and His Church.
and that God would fill us with His Spirit that we would fulfill. His calling on our lives. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message Uprising. Life doesn't always unfold the way we hope. There are setbacks, losses, and seasons that leave us asking: where is God in all of this?
In his honest and encouraging book, Diamonds in the Dark, Dr. Graham shares how God is not absent in our pain. He is present and he is at work. This powerful resource walks you through some of life's hardest places to reveal spiritual treasures God plants along the way. If you or someone you love is facing grief, fear or uncertainty, this message will help you find strength, comfort, and clarity and hope right where you are.
And when you give a gift of $10 or more, we'll send you a copy of Diamonds in the Dark as our thanks. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-755. 795-4627. or just text Diamond to 59-789.
Pastor, what is your PowerPoint for today? You know, some people today are talking about reinventing the church. But from my viewpoint, from my vantage, we don't need to reinvent the church. We need to ask God. to revive his church.
We need the renewal of faith in order to trust God to do what He and He alone can do when we pray, when we call upon His name. We need to get back to the Word of God, the Bible, which is God's playbook for doing life and church the right way. We really don't need to sit down and brainstorm about what our mission is as believers or as the church. Jesus has clearly told us about our mission and what that mission is. Right in the Word of God, it says we are to live in the power of God's Spirit and share the good news of salvation till the whole world hears.
That's what this new series we began today is all about. We're going to be taking a look at the book of Acts to see clearly what plan God has given each of us. And I'm praying that you will be strengthened in your walk and in your witness for the Lord Jesus Christ as you listen. I also want to encourage you to visit us at jackgraham.org, jackgraham.org, so that you can request prayer, you can learn how to follow us on Facebook and Twitter there, and thank you for considering giving an online donation. When you go to jackgraham.org, you can give an online donation to support this ministry as we desire to take the message of Jesus around the world.
Thank you and God bless you. And that is today's PowerPoint. Remember, when you give a gift of $10 or more to PowerPoint, we'll send you Dr. Graham's book, Diamonds in the Dark, as our thanks. Call 1-800-795-4627.
That's 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word DIAMOND to 59-789. And join us again next time as Dr. Graham brings a message about how you can have a heart that is on fire for God. That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham.
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