The Power of the Kingdom, Part 2

You can study and read and study and read and study and memorize and nothing change because there is no power. Dr. Tony Evans talks about what life is like when we really connect with God and His strength. You're not full of the Spirit until it's normal for you to have God's point of view on everything you do. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas and president of the Urban Alternative. No matter how much we desire to be a Kingdom Christian, none of us has the power to actually do it unless we get it from God.

Let's join Dr. Evans as he tells us how that can happen. What we are lacking today personally and as churches is power. Something is missing that we're falling apart like we are. Something is missing that we're throwing in the towel like we are. Something is missing that instead of being victors, we live as victims. Something is missing. What is missing is power.

In Acts chapter 1, Jesus is having final words with His followers. They have been walking with Him, by and large, for three years. They have seen His life. They've seen His power. My goodness, they've seen people rise from the dead.

They've had it all. I mean, three intense years with Jesus Christ. But when it came time for Him to die, they all ran. They fled.

Peter denied Him three times. It says they hid for fear of the Jews. When Jesus arose from the dead for forty days, verse 3 says, He presented Himself to them with many convincing proofs. I mean, they could see the nail prints in His hand. They could see Him. His Bible says He ate with them.

The Bible says one day the door was closed and He walked right through the door. So now they're convinced that Jesus is exactly who He said He was and could do exactly what He said He could do. And verse 3 says during those forty days, He had a Bible study with them. It says He taught them things concerning the Kingdom of God. That's what we're talking about, the rule of God. He taught them how to operate under His rule. He gave His apostles the orders, the instructions, the governance, the guidelines of how they were to operate underneath His rule.

But then He throws a curve ball. After the Bible study, after the miracles, after all of the things that they saw for those forty days by the risen Christ, He tells them not to do anything until they receive power. Jesus says, even though I've taught you these forty days, don't go anywhere, don't do anything.

You stay right here until you receive power. And power comes from one source, the Holy Spirit. Verse 8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Who is the Holy Spirit?

Let's start with making sure we know who He is. The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity. There's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The Bible says there's only one God, but it says that the one God is composed of three co-equal persons. God sent Jesus into the world to give a physical manifestation of who God is and what God is like. But Jesus, when He left, sent the Holy Spirit into the world to carry on His work during His absence.

He taught them, it says in verse 3, things concerning the Kingdom of God, how the rule of God was supposed to work on earth through His people. But He says the power to pull off the rule will come through somebody else that I'm going to send. In John 14 and John 16, He says, I'm sending you another enabler, one of the same kind. He will be just like me, have the same abilities I have, have the same powers that I have, but He will represent me.

Just as I represented the Father physically during my 33 years of life, He will represent me. In other words, the way you experience Jesus today is through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You do not experience Jesus apart from the Spirit of Christ, who is the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit means that you're full of a spiritual perspective on things. That is, God's way of thinking dominates you. So you're full of it. You're full of God's way of thinking, acting, and reacting.

You're full of bringing God's perspective to bear, the spiritual perspective on everything. Most Christians visit the Spirit. They're not full of the Spirit. They sift the Spirit.

Okay? They're social drinkers. They'll get a glass of Holy Ghost every now and then, but what they're not going to do is get intoxicated with the Spirit.

They're not going to drink so much of Him that they get drunk. He says, be full of the Spirit. And that is where the victory is. Another analogy, it says, walk in the Spirit.

That is, roll that way. And the problem is, we are so non-spiritual that when spiritual people show up, we get upset. We get upset when somebody makes all of their decisions based on a Biblical way of thinking, and they will. They think they're something. They think they're better than me. Always bringing up the Bible, always bringing up Jesus, always bringing up the Holy Ghost.

I don't need all that. I go to church just like you do. We are so carnal, spiritual people take us off.

When those are the folks that's got the power, and we're the ones who don't have the power because we are part-time fillers. He says that the Spirit filled the place. He owned it.

He controlled it. You're not full of the Spirit until it's normal for you to have God's point of view on everything you do. That has to be normal. If it's not normal, you're not full of the Spirit. If you're not full of the Spirit, there's no power. You won't see changes. You won't see the supernatural breakthrough in your life. You won't see God overcome things for you. You'll be adding programs to overcome it yourself because you're not full of what God uses. He only uses the Spirit to express His power based on His kingdom umbrella of authority.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And so what we wind up doing is depending on the flesh, the flesh, our human ability. Since we're not full of the Spirit, but we need to solve this problem, deal with this issue, fix this scenario, we do the best we can.

We call our friends and ask them to help us do the best they can to help me do the best I can so we doing the best we can can all together fix this thing. We pay out a lot of money to get flesh helping flesh. It's like the man with the chainsaw, the man with the chainsaw. And he used to use an axe to chop down trees. He said, boy, he heard these chainsaws can chop down trees a lot faster, you know, and more of them. So he went and bought him a chainsaw. He came back ten hours later. He told the guy who sold it to him, take this piece of junk.

This thing is junk. He said, what do you mean? He said, I was out there ten hours with this thing. And I couldn't even get one tree chopped down.

Ten hours. Couldn't get one tree chopped down. This thing does not work. He said, I don't understand that. The guy sold it to him, took the cord and pulled it.

The guy who bought it said, what's that noise? He'd been out there using the chainsaw like an axe. Just, just, just doing that. He was using his own human ability, not realizing the power he had at his disposal. And a lot of us are doing the best we can. We just chopping and sweating and chopping and sweating and chopping and sweating and wondering why this Christianity is not working. That's because you're not using the power God has provided. You're using your own human ability that's called flesh. The Bible says you overcome the flesh with the Spirit, not by adding more flesh.

And that's why you can study and read and study and read and study and memorize and nothing changes. Because there is no power. Here's how this works. He told them, go to Jerusalem and wait for the Spirit to kick in. Okay? We don't want to do that. We don't want to wait for the Spirit to kick in.

We want to go out there on our own. Look, you go to the gas station and you say, fill her up. Well, you used to say, fill her up. Now you get out and fill it up.

Not too many full service stations around anymore. So, but the principle is the same. You go and you get the nozzle, you put it in, fill it up. So you stand there and wait and wait and wait and wait. Now, how long you wait is determined by how empty you are. Okay? See, because if you're on fumes, you wait longer. Okay? I confess, I drive on fumes. I wait till the last possible second to go to the gas station. Okay? Sister Evans, a quarter tank gone, she going to the gas station, fill it up. All right? So I have to wait longer, because I've let it get that low.

Then click, pull. Get in the car, drive off. As soon as I drive off, I'm burning the filling.

Okay, I don't think you hear me. Once I start moving, having been filled, the burning of the filling now is occurring. I'm burning up gas. Some of you are going to leave church today and say, I got so full at church, the music, the sermon, I am full. Soon as you walk out that door and get to that car and those noisy kids and an attitude from the maid, if somebody cuts you off wrong, you're burning the filling. So what a lot are going to do, are they going to wait till next week and pull into Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and say, Pastor, put the nozzle in my tank, because I'm running on empty.

Fill us up again. A lot of folks today are going to go home or go out and you're going to eat to your full. But what you're not going to do is wait till next Sunday to eat again. You're not going to say, I got so full this Sunday, I'm going to wait till next Sunday to get full back up again, because as soon as you get filled today and begin moving, you're going to burn up the filling and you're going to need to eat tomorrow. That's why Paul says in Luke 9, I die daily. Every day I go to the filling station to get filled up with the fullness of God so that I'm not burning up the filling I got the day before. In other words, your relationship with the Holy Spirit has to be ongoing regular and daily, not a weekly visit to the filling station.

Dr. Evans will tell us more about how to get the right kind of filling at the filling station when he continues our message in just a moment. First though, today's the last day to take advantage of our special offer on Tony's current teaching series, The Kingdom Life. It'll give you a fresh vision and change the way you think about the impact you can make and the blessings you experience when you put God's power to work in your life. For just a few more hours, we're offering The Kingdom Life series as our gift when you make a contribution to help support Tony's ministry here on the radio and around the world. Along with it, we'll include his popular booklet, The Grace of God, which will help you understand the Lord's greatest gift and why we literally can't live without it. Visit us right away at tonyevans.org or give us a call day or night at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our resource team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that information for you later on after part two of today's lesson.

Here's Tony. When you pull up to the filling station, you can only give it what your car will accept. You can't just give it anything you want. Most of the cars driven in this room today don't take regular anymore. They take unleaded. Some demand super unleaded. Nobody in here is going to pull up the diesel.

Talking about, well, it's gas, because your engine won't receive that. You see, we give God what God can't receive and then one power, and then don't understand why we bumping along. We're bumping along because we have given the Holy Spirit something the Holy Spirit can't use. That's why when you go before God, you have to go before God and allow Him to tell you what He will accept, not you tell Him what you want, if He can't accept it.

Okay, let me make this real easy. This is a great verse. This is a great verse. It's Luke chapter 11, verse 13, and here's what it says. It says, if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, if you as sinners still can be kind and nice and give good gifts to your children, how much more will not your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask for it?

If evil people can give good things to their kids, how much more you have a father, will he not give, he says, the Holy Spirit to those who ask for it? Now, here's the good news about this. In other words, this is not hard. You don't have to go beating your head against the wall. You don't have to go cutting yourself.

You don't have to go jumping and flipping and twicking. No, he says, if you ask, I will give you the Holy Spirit. He's talking to his disciples. This is not complicated.

In Acts chapter 2, in Acts chapter 2, all they were is standing in God's presence and they got filled. Now, but you can only give the car what the car will accept. A couple days ago, I was at the airport. And I'm going through the magnetometer. I'm waiting for my bag. And one of the gentlemen came and said, sir, we need to look in your bag.

I said, okay. So he took the bag and opened my bag, dug around in my bag. That's an irritating thing. Just digging all around your bag. He pulled out a small scissor that I had. I mean, it was a real tiny thing I forgot to take out.

Somebody gave it to me. A little tiny scissor. He said, you can't travel with this. We cannot allow you to go further with this.

You're going to have to throw this away if you expect to catch your flight. Wait a minute, but I'm dealing with the fact it ain't but this big. It's like a tiny, little tiny scissors. It had nothing to do with the size. It had to do with what it was made of. It was metal. And they said, you can't carry this through. You see, what the X-ray machine did was look down through all my externals. It looked down through all the stuff that didn't matter and went down and zeroed in on the one little thing that was unacceptable.

But the one little thing that was unacceptable was going to mess up my whole trip if I didn't deal with the one thing that the X-ray machine revealed that could not go on the trip. See, many of us want to go somewhere with God. We want God to fly us through the friendly skies of life. We want God to give us victory.

We want God to take us this way. But in order for God to take you somewhere, you've got to give Him freedom to expose anything in your life that should not be there that needs to be addressed and taken out or you're going to be pulled off to the side and not be able to take flight. So when you go and ask the Holy Spirit, He's not just saying ask for the Spirit. He's saying ask for the Holy Spirit. So you've got to ask for God to expose you to you to show you anything about you that needs to be addressed by the Spirit so that there's nothing blocking Him giving you the power that you're needing for the victory you're asking for. But all you have to do is ask, He's saying. And He says, if you ask, leading on My power under My Kingdom and willing to experience My exposure, then I would be delighted to give you the power to everyone who asks.

And what happened? Verse 8 in closing, He says, And you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses. And you shall be My witnesses. He didn't say, and you shall do witnessing.

He said you're going to be witnesses. That's going to be how you roll. You don't have to tell people to talk about the cowboys.

You don't have to push them. If they're a sports fan and they live in Dallas, that's what they're going to talk about. They're going to talk about it when you don't want to hear it. You know why? Because they've been baptized in them. They've been baptized that they've been immersed in it. And so it just comes out because that's what they're thinking about. That's what they're talking about. You don't have to come up with a—you don't have to schedule a cowboy talking time. You don't have to make an appointment to talk about them, because that's how you roll.

If you're a sports fan and you live in this area, that's how it's just going to come out. He says, you will be My witnesses. Now watch this, watch this. In Acts 2 it says that they begin to speak in other languages. And it says everybody spoke a different language that they had not learned. Other people heard it in their own language and came to Christ. So in this case, tongues is a language that somebody can speak. It's not this thing that only you and God knows. If you have a private prayer language that you and God use, God bless you.

If God speaks to you that way and you speak to Him that way, God bless you. That's just not for public consumption, because when it was public consumption, it was something folk understood, not just something you understood, all right? So the point is, though, not about the languages. That's not the point. The point is they could do something they couldn't do before.

See, that's the point. Peter was scared to death a few days earlier. Now he breaks out of there and says, we are not drunk as you men suppose, being only 12 o'clock noon. But this is that which Joe the prophet spoke when he declared that God would send His Spirit. And you who killed Jesus, who three days later arose from the dead, you must now accept Him as Lord in Christ in order for you to be forgiven for your sins and experience eternal life. What happened to that man? He denied Christ three times a few days earlier. Now he boldly stands up against the same people who killed Jesus who are going to threaten him.

Where did he get that from? He had gotten filled with something. He had gotten filled with God. You know that the filling has occurred because you will now take your stand with God. Things that used to mess you up won't mess you up. You'll have power that you didn't have before to do things you couldn't do before because you now are filled in a way you were never filled before. He could do things he couldn't do before, even a foreign language, because he was now filled.

He was under the control of another. Dr. Evans will be right back with a final word for those who might be a little skeptical about what he had to say today. Be sure to stay with us for that. Today's message, The Power of the Kingdom, was the final installment in our current series, The Kingdom Life. Remember, if you contact us by the end of the day and make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station, we'll send you all six full-length lessons in The Kingdom Life audio collection on CD or digital download, along with his booklet, The Grace of God.

All is our way of saying thanks. Again, the details are online at tonyevans.org, or give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 before time runs out. Our resource center never closes, so there's no need to wait.

Again, dial 1-800-800-3222. You know, when you're reading a mystery, you don't want anyone telling you in advance how the story comes out. But when you're living through tough times, knowing there's a happy ending ahead can make all the difference. So be sure to join Dr. Evans tomorrow as he kicks off a powerful series on prophecy.

Right now, though, he's back with his final thought for today. Now, you don't have to take my word for this. Try it. Don't take my word for it.

I'm not asking you to believe me just because it's me. Believe Jesus because it's Jesus, but he wants you to try it. And that means a simple step of daily asking God to fill you. Go to the filling station daily. Fill me with your Holy Spirit today. Give me your perspective on every decision I make today. Reveal to me when it's not you, when there's something in me that's blocking you so that I can respond to it so that I don't burn up the juice. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.