Ours for the Asking, Part 3

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. The Holy Spirit, when he comes into a church, empowers each of us so that we build one another up in the faith to maturity. In a Spirit-filled church, listen, everywhere you turn, you're being spoken to by God.

Would you like to be in a place like that? When you sit down to pray, what do you talk about? Maybe you run through a list of people in your life who need healing, or maybe it's time to reflect on everything that you're grateful for.

Maybe you pray for family members or teachers for your kids, and those are all great things to pray about and definitely should be a part of our normal routine. But today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer reminds us of the most important prayer request, and it's the one that might have slipped your mind. Grab your Bible and pen. We are in Luke chapter 11 for the conclusion of our message titled, Ours for the Asking.

Here's Pastor J.D. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

I want that verse to be burned into your consciousness at the end of this series. Notice the position that Jesus puts us in in this passage. We are in the position of a child. We are dependent children who cannot survive on their own.

We have to ask for the provision that we need, right? But God in this story is the ever watching merciful father who loves to give the Holy Spirit when we ask. Here is the lesson that I have such a hard time learning. How dependent I am on the power of the Holy Spirit. The other side of this lesson is how willing God is to give it.

I will tell you that when you have learned those lessons or that lesson, prayer starts to become instinctive to you. There is a verse that I want us to pray together this week. It is Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 2. O Lord, says Habakkuk, I have heard the report of you and your work, O Lord, do I fear. In other words, I'm familiar in theory with the power that you have. Look at the next phrase. In the midst of the years, my years, revive it.

In the midst of my years, make it known. So in wrath, wrath is what we deserve. In wrath, remember mercy.

Let us have familiarity with it. There are three primary things I'm going to try to show you about that verse. Number one, I'm going to try to show you number one, that every major spiritual awakening in the Bible was connected to an intense time of prayer. Then number two, I'm going to show you five things that the Holy Spirit does when he comes. Then number three, I'm going to give you a couple of examples of what this looks like in the Bible. Number one, the connection between prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. The connection between prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, every major spiritual awakening, all of them in the Bible, are connected to intense times of prayer. All right, so here's number two, five things that the Holy Spirit does when he's present, things that only he can do. Number one, he convicts, he convicts, John 16, 8, 9, Jesus said, when he, the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world concerning sin, concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment.

Here's number two. Number two, he creates awe. He creates a sense of awe among the people. You see in Acts 2, Acts 2, 43, when the Spirit of God came into the church, a great sense of fear and awe came upon every soul.

It has to do with a sense of awe in God's presence, an awareness of his largeness, a spirit of worship, and a taste of his glory. Number three, he transforms appetites. I've given you this verse frequently here, Philippians 2, 13, it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It's, watch, it's not just the Holy Spirit that gives you the power to do the works of God, it's the Holy Spirit that gives you the desire to do the works of God.

He creates new taste in you so that you begin to desire God, all right? Number four, he manifests God's power. He manifests God's power. 1 Corinthians 14, Paul gives you a description of the Spirit-filled worship service, and he says that one of the characteristics is that a unbeliever, a guest, comes into contact with the church, and the Spirit of God is on the members so strongly that they are speaking supernatural words of insight and prophecy into him or her, and it says, quote, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and falling on his face, he worships God and declares that God is really among you. Number five, he empowers the church.

He empowers the church. This is something, again, we're gonna get to more in a couple weeks, but Paul says in Ephesians that the Holy Spirit gives, in the Holy Spirit, God gives gifts to his church, quote, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The Holy Spirit, when he comes into a church, empowers each of us so that we build one another up in the faith to maturity. In a Spirit-filled church, listen, everywhere you turn, you're being spoken to by God.

Would you like to be in a place like that? That doesn't come through powerful sermons. It comes through Spirit-filled church members, so that everywhere we go, you can't come into contact in our church with anybody without being contacted by Jesus himself. Now, my last section here, all right, quickly, is I'm gonna give you a couple of biblical examples, showing how the Holy Spirit, what it looks like when he comes into a church. All right, I'll give you one from the Old Testament, one from the New. Which do you want first?

New it is. Acts 7, verse 54. Stephen, Stephen is not an apostle, he's just a regular church member. He is in a place where he begins to testify to Jesus, and he's in front of a lot of the religious leaders, a lot of the political leaders, and he basically tells them that the reason they don't believe in Jesus is because their hearts are hard, and for all of Jewish history, their hearts have been hard, and that's why they've rejected and killed the prophets. So, verse 54.

When they had heard these things, they were enraged, and they gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, behold. He said, behold, I see the heavens open, and the Son of Man, Jesus, standing at the right hand of God. Question, do you think that last statement helped or hurt his cause with those people?

Yeah, it didn't turn out well for Stephen. He got stoned right after this, all right? Tim Keller says, to bring him up, says that this provides a pattern for being filled with the Spirit.

There's a little detail in there you shouldn't skip over, because it's unusual. What position is Jesus in? Standing, that's right. Jesus is standing. What's unusual about that is every other place in the New Testament where Jesus is by the throne of God, he's always seated. He's sat down at the right hand of God. What you see happening is you see all of these leaders in hatred of Stephen, picking up stones, gnashing their teeth, calling him a fool, about to kill him. Stephen looks up into heaven, and he sees Jesus.

How awesome would this have been? Stand to his feet, and turn to God and say, they call him a heretic. I call him mine. And Stephen sees that, and he is filled with a sense of God for him. He is filled with a sense of God's glory, and then he turns and proclaims God in boldness to those that are listening. Here is what happens when the Spirit of God fills you. In prayer, God opens your eyes to his closeness to you, his advocacy for you. You see the glory of Jesus. That is the fullness of the Spirit. And then you begin to proclaim with boldness and power in a way that is compelling to people. By the way, the next verse tells you that there was a young man watching all this named Saul, and it was this sermon and this testimony actually leads you to believe that ended up causing Saul to become a believer who would change his name to Paul and become the greatest advocate for Christian missionary efforts ever.

And here is what I thought when I read this this week. One of the things that I pray for in our church every single day is I pray every day for different of our unreached people groups, places where our church is planting churches and places where there is no church. And one of the things I pray is that God will raise up the apostle Paul for that people group, which is not going to be one of us.

It's going to be one of them. That's what the thing about Paul was, is he was a Jew. He was the militant opposition against Christianity that became Christianity's greatest advocate. Our people are there to try to share Christ with the apostle Paul, future apostle Paul, so that he changes from being a militant to an advocate. So I'm praying, God, give us these, give us the one for the Sudan, give us the one for Afghanistan, give us one for Indonesia, give us one for, you know, Tajikistan, give us the one in these areas. And then I had this thought, listen, what if the future apostle Paul's, male and female, for those people groups are right now in one of our universities? What if they are right now in one of our hospitals, because if you work around this area, you know that we've had the best and brightest from literally all over the world that passed through here for four, six, eight, 12 years sometimes. What if they're right now in that place, and what if one of our Stevens, which would be you, not me, because Steven was a lay person, not a pastor. What if right now, listen, you're in the midst of pain, and you're asking God to deliver you from the pain, but what God's intention is to use you to testify to Jesus in a glorious way in the pain so that one of those future apostle Paul's hears and is converted.

What if that were really happening right now in you? I don't want to be insensitive about your pain. I know that with you I will pray that God will deliver you, but do you realize that God did not convert the apostle Paul through Steven's deliverance? He converted him through giving Steven the ability to testify to Jesus in the pain. I'm not telling you to quit praying for deliverance. I'm just saying what if you also ask God for the ability to glorify Jesus in the midst of pain, because there was going to be a Saul who is listening, who would end up becoming the leader of say Afghanistan, who would end up becoming the leader of say somewhere in Russia or somewhere in Indonesia that becomes the greatest apostle and missionary of the Christian faith in that area because of your testimony in the midst of pain. That's Acts 7.

Give you one more really quickly. Exodus 33. There's your Old Testament one. Exodus 33. And real quick, God has declared his intention. He's declared his intention to go with the people of Israel into the promised land. So the children of Israel gratefully respond by taking off their ornaments, which scholars say is indicative of them ridding themselves of any trace of idolatry, because ornaments that they were wearing were part of idol worship.

So they get rid of all the ornaments. And then Moses prays, verse 13. Then verse 15, he says this, if your presence will not go with me, don't bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct, I and your people, I and your people from every other people in the face of the earth?

Here's your pattern. God announces his intention. They repent of their idols. Moses prays. The presence of God comes upon them.

And the rest of the world sees that they belong to God. When and if the presence of God manifests itself at the Summit Church, it will follow those patterns. There are a few things that are always characteristic of the Spirit of God taking over a people.

One of our worship leaders, Matt Papa, was leading at Briar Creek last week. And after the service, he came up to me and he said, J.D., he said, have you ever been in a revival? And I said, well, it's kind of hard to define that because technically anybody getting saved is like a revival for them. And he's like, he said, no, no, I mean like one where the Spirit of God really moves through a people. And then before I answered, he said, because I've been, I feel like in one kind of major one and he told me about it. He said, the reason I asked that is because what I'm sensing now in the Summit Church, from conversations I have with individuals and from watching the congregation from the stage, he says, is the beginning of what I saw in that other time.

I will tell you this. I have been in a few places. We've tasted it here a little bit, the Summit Church, but I've been in a few places where the Spirit of God came upon us so strongly, where it was like people were coming to Christ right and left. The Spirit of God was out doing his own work. We were seeing Apostle Paul's transform from being against to being Christianity's greatest advocates. And I know that the two things that were characteristic of that group of Christians at that time were those two things, repentance and prayer. There was this taking off of the idolatry. There was a short tolerance of sin.

Every major revival in history, Korean, the Chinese ones in the last 50 years, have been characterized by deep and quick repentance of sin. You see a story that scares me? I've been quoting Joshua a lot and the presence of God coming on. This guy, Joshua was leading the men to the Promised Land, presence of God is thickly upon them. They go out to fight this little battle in the midst of Joshua and they lose.

An army they should have been able to beat, they lose. And Joshua comes back and falls on his face and says, God, what is wrong? You promised and you didn't deliver. Joshua 7, God says, there's a leader in your movement who's got hidden sin. And it's because of him I took my spirit away.

And they figured it out. It was a guy named Achan. And I just have to ask, I wonder sometimes, what if the Spirit of God wanted to move in our church and the holdup was you? Because you had some hidden sin. And what if, what if you needed to confess that sin, not only for your sake and for your family's sake, but you need to get rid of it because it is hindering other people coming to Christ and the people of God being able to advance forward because of your hidden sin and your attitude of rebellion by keeping a few things like Achan did that belonged to God. Repentance, prayer.

I remember that group of students that I was with walking around the campus where we were, sometimes for two or three hours, praying over dormitories, praying over various areas where students were and to say, God, would you send your spirit among these people? Spirit of prayer, the spirit of repentance is what always characterizes a genuine and real revival. Jonathan Edwards, leader of the Great Awakening in our country, back 300 years ago or so, talks about the Great Awakening starting through a few sermons, a few new mission efforts, and then he says, and I quote, then God, in so remarkable a manner, took the work into his own hands and did as much in a day or two that under normal circumstances took the entire Christian community using every means at their disposal with the blessing of God more than a year to accomplish.

I want you to hear that. Normal Christian work. Remember this, incrementally moving along. Normal means of grace with blessing using all the new mission efforts.

And he says, and then we started to pray and God's spirit came and did in a day or two what normally would have taken us a year to accomplish. That's what we want. That's what we need. You see, there are still 6,640 unreached people groups and there are 1.7 million people in Raleigh and Durham which are not a part of a church. We don't need incremental movement for their sake. We need the mighty rush of the Spirit of God. And by the way, let me tell you something we figured out this week.

Listen to this. Our growth rate here at the Summit Church, get this, our growth rate for the past 10 years has averaged out to 34.5% a year. Praise God for that. 34.5%. For 10 years in a row, we've grown by 34.5% year to year.

I mean, some years more, some years less. Between 2008, 2009, we grew at 37%. Between 2009 and 2010, we grew at 36%. Between 2010 and 2011, it was 20%.

Not sure what happened there. Between 2011 and 2012, between last year and this year, we've been growing at 37%. If we maintain that growth rate for the next 10 years, in other words, if we grow year by year at the same rate we have grown consistently now for the last 10 years, and this past year was higher than the average, then by 2022, the next 10 years, we will, get this, we will have 111,401 people at the Summit Church. News flash, we cannot sustain that growth. There is no auditorium. There is no, there is no campuses.

We can't do enough campuses to contain that many people in one church. Now, I know when I say that you're like, what? You doubting the Spirit of God? No. Hear me out. Hear me out. You know what that means?

You know what that means? That means that to maintain even the same amount of growth that we've had, we need God to bring revival to other churches too. Because I'm telling you, I mean, God can prove me wrong, and I hope he does, but 111,000 people in one church is just not realistic. We just don't have the auditorium space.

I don't see how it's possible. God proved me wrong. Amen. But I'm just saying that I know that for us to be able to see this kind of revival, it's going to take God bringing revival to other churches too, not just us. So see, at the end of the day, the prayer is not about the Summit Church. The prayer is about our community. We're asking God to revive us for their sake, not just for our sake. You see, we've got an enemy that's coming in to take our children.

We've got an enemy that's coming in to pollute and to transform our community for evil. And I praise God for the incremental ways that we are resisting him, but we need the Spirit of God to raise up a standard against him. And we need him to do it here, and we need him to do it in other congregations around the city of Raleigh-Durham. So they look back on our time period and they say the Spirit of God moved, not the Summit Church moved.

The Spirit of God moved. I pray that we bless other churches and I pray that they grow. I pray that their attendance surges.

I pray that they reach people. We need to be awakened so that the other churches and our community can be awakened to the grace of God. So here is our prayer. This prayer is 2,500 years old.

It's from the prophet Habakkuk. So let me end on it again. Oh, Lord, I have heard the report of you. We've heard about it, God. We've heard that you've done stuff like this, and your work, oh, Lord, it's actually moved us to worship and to fear. But in the midst of the years, revive it now. Revive it among us and our family. In the midst of our years, in our ministries, in our congregation, in my children, make it known in wrath, which is what we deserve.

Remember mercy. God, I don't want to talk about it. I want to know it. I want to feel it.

I want to move in it. The Summit, that's where we are. Here's the question. Are you Achan? Are you the person of Achan in the Old Testament? What area of pride, what area of idolatry, what area of hidden sin do you need to bring to the surface, confess, get forgiveness for? The good news is, listen, Jesus died to pay for that sin.

He's absorbed the penalty. God's not going to beat you over the head with it. He's going to work for redemption. He's going to work for redemption.

He's going to work for restoration. He's already purchased the forgiveness. You just got to believe it and embrace it. You're like, yeah, but for me to confess this sin may cost me my job. It might cost me my marriage. I would tell you the Spirit of God is so necessary in your life that there's nothing that should hinder you.

Nothing, even those things that should hinder you, being right with Him and walking with Him. Spirit of God is speaking to some of you right now. I would urge you to confess and to embrace.

Back at 3-2. Oh Lord, I've heard the report of you and your work. Oh Lord, do I fear in the midst of the years, revive it in the midst of the years, make it known in wrath, remember mercy. Would you pray this verse back to God? Lord, we have heard the report of you.

We know what your work is like in the midst of our years, revive it. God, make it known to us. Pray for your family right now. Pray for your ministry personally. Pray for our church. Pray for our community. In the midst of our years, God, make it known. In the midst of our generation, make it known. God, in your wrath, which we deserve, remember mercy.

Lift your voice. Continue to pray and receive, embrace the glory of Jesus. Amen. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. We don't want to just read about the great things that God has done.

We want to experience His power and mercy firsthand. What an encouraging message from Pastor JD Greer here on Summit Life. If you happen to join us late, or if you've missed any part of our teaching series called Rushing Wind, you can catch up online at jdgreer.com.

The message from today is titled, Ours for the Asking. JD, we've been in this teaching series for a little while now, and can you help us back away just for a minute and give us the big idea and overview for Rushing Wind? Rushing Wind is a series in which we take a look at the often neglected member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. He is the one that brings to us the abundant life that makes our connection with God intimate and that shares with us His heart and His mind.

The Bible tells us that apart from the Spirit, there's really nothing that we can do spiritually that makes any difference. For many people, it's His energy, His strength, and His power that's what's missing in the Christian life. Now, I know, of course, you've got a lot of Christians that focus on the Holy Spirit above everything else, but a lot of others treat Him more like a theory than a person.

It was always said growing up that a lot of people, their Trinity was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be an important part of your life. For both of these groups, God wants to show us that the Spirit-filled life has more in store for you than you can imagine, but it's a Spirit leading that is attached to the foundation of the Word and the centrality of the Gospel. Now, during this series, we're going to hop around the New Testament a little bit, so to help guide you through the teaching, I've created a 20-day devotional that's called Rushing Wind that'll just go along with the teaching that will help you kind of keep your roadmap and where you are in Scripture and also help you dive in just a little bit deeper. I think it'll be a blessing to you, and so I'm delighted to be able to offer it. We'd love to get this resource to you today, so be sure to get in touch. Ask for your copy of JD's devotional about the Holy Spirit titled Rushing Wind when you donate today at the suggested giving level of $25 or more. Your gifts enable us to keep these messages on the radio and web free of charge, so when someone comes across this program while scanning stations or when they share a message on Facebook with their friends, that's all thanks to your support.

Join the team that makes this possible. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or if it's easier, you can give and request the Rushing Wind 20-day devotional online at jdgrier.com.

I'm Molly Wood, Molly Bidovitch. I'm so glad to have you with us, so be sure to listen Thursday when we talk about the best present we've ever received. Join us as we continue our series called Rushing Wind on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.