Leadership Meeting, the Holy Spirit's Power In Personal Ministry

May we be a delight to you today, Lord. We pray that as leaders, help us to recognize that. Down at your feet, O Lord, is the most high place. In the presence, Lord, I seek your face. I seek your face. Down at your feet, O Lord, I seek your face. There is no with my head, spirit of God. Spirit of, spirit of God. Your choice of us. Lord, I thank you that you take pleasure in this bride today. Your life. O God, we worship you this day. We choose to bless you today, Lord. We appeal to you, Lord, to speak to us this morning. Sift through all the baggage, Lord, and the frustration, and Lord, even some of the busyness that is on our hearts. Let us hear a clear word from our hearts to you, Lord. Let's stand. I can almost see your glory as I look around and praise your love. Spirit of God, Spirit of God. Father, I would get somehow apart more than I know the Holy Spirit in our ministry and in our lives. And Father, I want to be the first in line today and say, I need to be renewed in that. I get going just sort of on my own track, Holy Spirit, and I leave you back in a quiet place for the morning. I pray and yearn, Lord, that even as the song said today, you would do sovereignly what you do. Teach us the grace of communion with you. Go ahead and be seated for a moment. I'll just flip-flop what I was going to do, and I'll talk first of all about the Holy Spirit in our lives. It's such a rich book. The last verse of that book, 2 Corinthians 13, 14. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The word grace gets batted around a lot. What does it mean? God's riches are Christ's undeserved riches. But the word also in the original has the force of captivating beauty. One of the usages was when something was so beautiful that you were gripped by it. The beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. That ability in you to be attractive to people. May that kind of grace be on our lives. Then the love of God. Obviously, with our recent focus on Saturdays and Sundays of love, I think that's kind of where we're all learning to live a little bit. By the way, I want to say thanks that I only got two letters this week saying, now that you gave me permission to write and tell you how I really feel. A little tough love there. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. The word fellowship, how many Greek scholars there? I'm going to make you a real Christian general editor today. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the word koinonia or communion. And I want to talk about that for just a second. The word was used in the original language of the Greek culture to communicate the idea of communicating with or traveling together or transporting with another. I started thinking about all the possibilities of transporting with the Holy Spirit. Traveling along with him. I don't know if I see that the way I believe the Lord. You know, you ride that hour and 15 minutes to the work team. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know you're transporting with the Holy Spirit. When we go into the places where we feel like we're the only living Christians. Does any of you work in a place like that? We'll be receiving applications for a new receptionist. But to travel along with the Holy Spirit. To sense that he's right there along with us. It's something I don't know very many people. I don't think too much. For most of us we know what it means to be filled because we've had that experience. But the daily reawakening of that in our heart. It's the toughest part for me. I tend to find myself reflected in a lot of you. So I figure it's a tough one. Think for a minute about what would happen if transportation was stopped in Pittsburgh. What would be some of the immediate implications? You'd be out of business, can't you? That would be the first thing. What would happen? It would be chaotic. How would we get food? How would we get to North Park to run? Our lives flood really. It's very commonly understood that you can gauge the effectiveness of a whole civilization by its communication and transportation network. What made Rome such a famous and such a powerful state was its roads. All roads lead to Rome. Well, take the Holy Spirit. The transportation system of God's grace and love. The first two parts of that verse. Out of our lives. And what do we have? See, for me to stand here tonight and talk about personal ministry in the Holy Spirit, there is no other kind of ministry, actually. But I know that the drift of what's in my thinking about all this is that, well, we think that the personal ministry in the Holy Spirit is when I come up to a person and I see through their skin. I know exactly what's happening in their head. Thus saith God. Isn't it really? When someone talks to you about personal ministry in the Holy Spirit, don't you think of the power of gifts? That's what I think of. I think of the ability to come in and have a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, a word of prophecy, healing, deliverance. All those things. And it may be that, but primarily personal ministry in the Holy Spirit is traveling along with the Holy Spirit and just being sent. Hearing him say, put aside the newspaper and do this. Or give so and so a call. You may not have some agenda in your mind. Thursday evening, I kind of spontaneously called a brother in the church. He's going through a pretty difficult time related to his career. He lives fairly near my home. So I asked if I could just stop down for a little bit. I had my running gear on and had the dog and everything for just a quick little 15 minutes. Thus saith God to your life, brother. And I'm going to go. But I sat down with him and we just started going on. It was only about an hour and 15 minutes. Just poured out. I never once said, Thus saith the Lord. I just shared my heart with him. I said, this is how I've discovered the Holy Spirit leads. He listened and asked questions. We talked back and forth. Last night, Friday night, he came by the house with his wife. Stopped just to say, Thanks for listening to the Holy Spirit. The last 24 hours have radically changed my perspective. This is a guy that every one of you would know if I told you about. We'll wait and see what the bottom line is going to be. Honestly, I didn't feel like Joe anointed. I didn't I didn't let go of the steering wheel of the car. It just drifted. I listened to that prompting. I'm just like you. I've probably heard it before and didn't do it. Folks, if there's a reason why some of us aren't bearing the fruit we want to, it's because the farther you get from listening to those promptings and doing them, the fainter they become. If you've slipped into that kind of a mode where all you're hearing is just really faint sounds and you don't know what the Holy Spirit is saying, just repent. You'll find he'll draw very near to you again. I need to hear what you're saying. Personal ministry in the Holy Spirit is a whole issue. Listening to his voice, that still small voice, and responding to it. The word koinonia also has the idea of partnership to it. A book I can recommend, I don't know if we have this in our bookstore, but it's a good book called The Holy Spirit, My Senior Partner. Not senior pastor. Hopefully he's your senior pastor too, but anyhow. This is a good little book giving you some practical ideas, especially related to the baptism of the Spirit and who the Holy Spirit as a person is. Paul Yonggi Cho, who wrote this book, says unreservedly that the entire reason for the incredible success of his ministry is communion with the Holy Spirit. In fact, when a Baptist magazine author, rather, wanted to do an article, the first thing Cho said to him was I'll only do the article if you make it clear that everything that's happened here is because of the power of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. Now, understand, in Cho's whole frame of reference that isn't because they have some little thing going on where a few people go and knock down other people with the power. It's because he spends hours and his leaders, although that's you, leaders spend hours in prayer communing with the Holy Spirit, bearing his promise. Of course, you read that and you feel like a miserable slob when you read that book. But it does encourage you to say that, hey, God has more for us. But the Holy Spirit, we fellowship with Him and we partner with Him. What do we partner with Him in doing? Well, it should be about everything, I guess, but primarily as you read the book of Acts and you listen to what's been happening Acts 5, Acts 8, Ethiopian eunuch and Philip, Acts 10, Peter, House of Cornelius and so on. What's really happening in partnership with the Holy Spirit? It's evangelism. The Holy Spirit is giving specific direction in terms of Now, the Holy Spirit does, and I, you know, when I was preparing today, I had a whole long list of things we could talk about. I could talk about the Holy Spirit in teaching you. I could talk about the Holy Spirit in your prayer life. I could talk about the Holy Spirit in holiness. I could talk about the Holy Spirit in comfort. I talked about the Holy Spirit leading you into all truth and all these things. But I just want to underscore I believe that the most essential role of the Holy Spirit in our ministries is in evangelism. And you all know the difference between dropping a brick and being anointed when you share the gospel, don't you? If you have your Bible, turn to Acts chapter 8 for just a second. And I'm not going to be long here because I want to go over many other things related to the ministry. We're talking about partnership. Verse 26 And the angel of the Lord said to Philip, Go south to the road the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. 826 And so he started out and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. The man had gone to Jerusalem to worship and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading a book of Isaiah the prophet. Look at verse 29 The spirit told Philip, Go to that chariot and stay near it. Now he didn't tell him everything else. He just told him to do that and the rest was up to him. And folks, much of your personal ministry in the Holy Spirit will be just a simple leading that will get the door open and then it's up to you to kind of just you know let me, permit me to go back to my personal illustration. All I knew was the Lord had prompted me. I made room in my schedule to go down and visit this brother. He didn't give me an outline. Like there's six ways you're going to know God's will for your career. He didn't have that. But you have to believe the Holy Spirit is resident in you. So when you just obey that prompting and take that step, he's going to give you what you need. Home group leaders It's so important that you believe that. You've been spending some time with the Lord. What comes out of you is from God. It's not everything. No, not everything. But the Lord can use what little we present to him. So Philip did what he was told. He had this incredible insight. Verse 34 Tell me please who is the prophet talking about? Himself or someone else? And Philip began with that very passage of scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water in the inn and he said look, here's some water. Why shouldn't I be baptized? And he gave orders to stop the chariot and then both Philip and Eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. Now look at this next verse. This can happen to you. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away. I know sometimes you wonder where I go right after a preach. I go back to my office. I'm sorry. I can't say that he's ever really taken me away. But anyhow. Maybe one day. And the Eunuch did not see him again and went on his way rejoicing. However, Philip appeared at Isaias and traveled about preaching the gospel in all the town until he reached Caesarea. Once again, I just want to underscore that the primary partnership of the Holy Spirit in our lives the primary one is in evangelism. It's in building those bridges to the lost and to the unchurched and nominally saved. Now I have let's show them what we have I've got three separate outlines as I sat back feverishly working. I just want to I'm not going to do them because of time but I want to give them one of them that I think you need to have and it's the one eight reasons why we don't see more of the gifts of the Spirit in operation if about five of you gentlemen could please pass the blue sheets out I'd appreciate that here are my eight reasons why we don't see more of the Holy Spirit operating now why would I show you this to make you feel bad no so if you can identify where you're coming from it might help you to turn the tide in your mind Bonnie I thought we had a meeting today you're doing both oh okay there are a number of our ladies are at a prayer retreat today including my wife and a junior hire's at a car wash well that's what you call missing the Holy Spirit's will alright eight reasons number one are you ready ignorance just don't know what's going on one of the things we're really hopeful to be able to do when the Lord supplies our future facilities is to have more Sunday morning kinds of training times because that's when most of you can get here with the least grief ignorance is so prevailing some are ignorant because they've learned it one way and that's the only way they think it will ever happen and that's not true and some are ignorant because they've just never been taught how the gifts of the Spirit operate in personal ministry 1 Corinthians 12 1 says don't be ignorant don't be ignorant study if you are sincere about studying I want to say our book store has enough good material for anyone of you to become an ace minister in the Holy Spirit I want to encourage you don't hesitate to go in and use that and we have some tapes on this subject number two failure to see their existence in our lives in other words you may not recognize that that was the Holy Spirit that just had you do that it was the Spirit of God because again if we're not seeing the big time miracles we sometimes folks trust me the Holy Spirit generally operates in very subtle ways in our lives most all the time and every once in a while there will be a dramatic that's the way it's been in our church anyone here found that the opposite he does more dramatic and he does tuning in to what he's doing number three we're unaware when the gifts do manifest we're just not aware we haven't learned as Hebrews 5 14 says to discern when the Spirit has moved before fear and unbelief you don't think the Lord the Holy Spirit will manifest Himself through you so you don't do it by the way I would say to you that the more time you spend just allowing the Holy Spirit in the mornings to fill your heart that's going to banish unbelief more than anything else number five lack of the presence of God your life is filled up with so much stuff that you don't really know the Lord's presence on a regular basis you're not going to hear those promises you're not going to be sensitive number six lack of appreciating the value of the gifts once that anointing begins to be recognizable to you in your life you really you almost can't minister any other way and I'm you know one of the things I've learned I guess recently more so recently is that the secret folks to your fulfillment no matter what your role is here is to discover what it is that the Holy Spirit has uniquely created you to do and then just do it let me use an obvious illustration or two for you alright let's take how many of you remember Malcolm Smith remember him Malcolm Smith has a unique ability to be able to take passage of scripture and fill that one verse with all kinds of meaning that he extracts from its you know the history behind it the cultural setting the etymology of the words and all those kinds of things and he's very good at that and some of you have been very helped by his ministry but how many know that Malcolm Smith bombed as a pastor did you know that I didn't know that I thought he'd be a great pastor no he's not why because he just wasn't that wasn't the niche you see that the Holy Spirit had created him to be that's why he's so compassionate to yokels like me you see because he knows what it's like now I don't think I could do what he's doing I don't think I could get out in the circuit and go into a place and see everyone smile and clap and then leave but see you're created find what that is know what it is you know go to Charlie Beck right after service and say I want you to tell me where I fit or Mack McCabe I'm not exaggerating this really I think it's so important it can change as years go by it really can and I'm not saying that once you find it it's what you're always going to do or be however if you don't know what it is and you never find it you're going to just end up sort of limping along one thing I have to say in our church if you're serious about it you can find it you really are Malcolm don't get mad at me he told me that by the way but now look how the Lord's using him big time all over the country because he's found his niche okay next improper motives I don't guess I have to say I'll just hold it we have lots of people using these things right now one of the little kids was tied up with this back there okay improper motives what does the Bible say is the purpose of the gifts of the Spirit 1 Corinthians 12 7 right to edify the church if you think the purpose is to give you a big name here so you can get on the staff or better than that you can get the civic arena or something forget it edify the church that sounds so obvious but I'm afraid it's a little bit more of a problem than most of us like to admit number 8 not recognizing God's sovereignty in the dispensation of the gifts just real quickly I want to say there that the Bible says that the Holy Spirit manifests himself as you will right no as he wills so I know there's been lots of times that I've so wanted something to happen in a personal setting I just wanted to know okay Lord now's the time to just tell me that darkest sin so I can just level this person or whatever this greatest promise so I can and it didn't happen because it says the Lord wills it says he wills and so if you miss that you know you start to get discouraged and you start to say well I guess it's not going to happen to me I have discovered that God delights in surprising showing up when I least expect it like right now he just shows up because that's his sovereign right to do those things so what should you do let me just conclude on this what should you do well I would say number 1 for the balance of June the next 21 days 3 weeks 21 day experiment see if you can give your Holy Spirit friend a little bit of your time to fill you each day and to commune with him and talk to him as your transporting partner give him a little bit of time each day to fellowship with him you say well doesn't it count just to talk to Jesus well how many of you know there's 3 persons in the Trinity you know we probably know that doctrine and I'm serious when I say specifically Holy Spirit I want to know you and I'm going to do this myself these next 3 weeks up until the first Sunday in July and if I haven't changed then we'll re-evaluate I have a feeling if all of us did that we'd be dramatically touched that's what I'm going to do number 2 then once I'm doing that then I'm going to be very careful to listen to those little promptings and folks the more you listen to them and obey them guess what strange thing the more you hear number 3 as I hear and obey I'm going to consistently share with someone else because it cements it just like what I just shared with you cemented that experience in my life you'll find it will do a great deal to cement Lord I want to pray right now for the Holy Spirit to be upon this church and these leaders stand together with me Lord I want to pray for that right now I want to pray for the Holy Spirit to brood over this leadership that we would not slip into a ministry of our own effort if you are here today and have had a drought Holy Spirit prompted activity I'm hearing the Lord nudge me to have you come forward right now whether you're an elder or a home group leader or a ministry leader and you've had a drought and you've just been kind of chucking along in your own flesh power and you're saying I don't want that anymore in my life I want you to come up now and just confess it and be prayed for and expect the Holy Spirit to do something new in your life today we're going to sing a spirit song together you come up we're going to pray with you Oh let the Son of God enfold you with His Spirit and His love let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh let Him have the things that hold you and His Spirit like a dove will descend upon your life and make you whole Jesus oh Jesus come and fill your life Oh come and sing this song refill and refuel and refire them the beginning of the meeting time was really impressing me with a word He would say to us that there is a time and a season for all things under the sun there's a time for seeking wisdom and there's a time for using that wisdom for His namesake and He would say to us that we have been filled with His understanding that He has given us His truth and that we are to go out to make disciples to all nations this is the season for giving that wisdom to another this is a season for reaching out a season for opening doors of opportunity for us and that we are to seek after Him and how to apply that wisdom this is a time and season for giving away what we have gained through these years here and God is opening a new way for us and it's in His anointing it's in those times as Jay has said when there is an unction to do and to reach out beyond your own desires beyond your own feelings to be obedient to God as He touches you as He puts it upon your heart to reach out to another that that is God do not deny that don't reason it away don't let your feelings interfere with it that is the unction of the Holy Spirit in you that this is the season for this church to reach out in new ways Lord most of all I pray that as each of these leave these steps right now Father that they would not in any way Lord lose that that sense that unique drawing that's in their hearts right now that they'd travel with you they'd be transported along with you they'd become partners with you from this day forward in a special way in Jesus name amen alright if you're ok you can be seated if you're not you can stay up here for a while for those who don't know you I do the overheads ministry and I wanted to give a quick testimony about what happened this week even as he's saying with the Holy Spirit leading we have a neighbor in our neighborhood he's a rather husky black man first time I ever saw him he scared me to death and I would just I saw him one day and I just waved down and smiled as we drove by and he waved back and I thought wow that's cool so I kept waving at him and then the other day I was walking down the street and he was standing in his front lawn and I said hi how are you and I just started to talk to him for a little bit and I came back home and thought wow he talked to me and I was still scared but I thought I better have him on my side because he's in my neighborhood so I was walking back down the street later that night and he had come in and before I was talking to him I had said the first thing I said to him was what are you thinking and so he started to talk to me and so I said to him what are you thinking now and he said oh I'm not thinking something very good I'm thinking about going out and getting drunk and I said well that's not too good and then he stopped me and he said you know I want to tell you something he said I really don't want you to take this the wrong way and I don't want you to think this is like any sexual connotation he said but you have something about you that just radiates from you and he said do you know that and I said really and I said wow and I thought okay god this is cool people always told me I would you know be different and I mean he just said what Jay said you know you just radiate this different glow it wasn't like he was saying I was beautiful or anything he was just saying there's something very different about you and I said really and he said yes and he said I just can't explain it and I said well I heard about that at my church where I go to when I got saved five years ago they told me that I would do that and I said and I when I found Jesus and had a personal relationship with him they said I would show up and he looked at me and I said and so that's why and he just kind of like you know he didn't know what to say you know this guy was going to go get drunk and then he's been saying look Jesus is going to give you this one so it was just neat that somebody actually just said it right out and they were in the world and he's like I think it's going to touch his life and he'll probably end up coming to church because I'll drag him here someday but I just continued to pray for him but that was a really neat testimony they all start that way you know a little fear and a little trepidation okay thank you let's let's look here quickly in the overhead I'm going to tell you about the next two and a half months number one by the way John what I had said in my notes was I see this summer as an opportunity for aggressive evangelism alright here's what I said number one this is sort of not really evangelistic as much as it's just edified but our worship life no this is a summer outlook that Sherry just gave me June 19th through 22nd may I say folks that because we do a lot of different seminar and conference type things we don't all most of us don't always tune in when the music staff decided this is when they wanted to do this I know they were taking a chance because it's summer we had it at the end of the summer the last time and that didn't go too well because everyone's getting ready for school everyone was home but they were all getting ready for school this one doesn't seem to have hit the right chord in terms of timing either so the numbers are way down and either there's going to need to be more grassroots kind of registrations from the church and by the way we've decided that if people like for example any of your people want to go and be part of this apart from the dinner theater where you're going to get a meal we're going to waive all the costs so you can just come if you're a North Way member you can just come and be part of it but we need to know that very quickly so that we can plan appropriately so that's only about two weeks away and there is a kids ministry during that time also next July 1st a man who I think is a real his niche is evangelism is Francis Infuso he's going to be here on just a few days he will be preaching on Sunday morning and it's going to be with an eye towards sort of encouraging us evangelistically I'm sure and also be training the Harvesters I think Ken and a few others on Monday if you haven't heard from that Lifesavers League and all the different things around number three the Freedom Festival it's a day like this God will be praised somewhere else we're believing actually Henry's doing a great job this thing is really coming together it'll be a wonderful evangelistic thing to bring people to just to play softball to hear an excellent concert or two we've got some celebrity type folks are going to be there there's going to be athletic competitions there's going to be just a lot of people just hanging around having barbecues and just enjoying fellowship and by the way for those people that I know some of you are probably among them we just get mad when you think we're spending God's money on fireworks we're not so you don't have to be mad anymore you can be glad someone donated the fireworks this year so that's nice you can just be happy about that the fourth thing before we go to that Henry do you need any more specific help that you'd like the leaders to know about in terms of well you better get real specific about that I'm sure you'll get the help this thing has lots of things going for it it's a midweek thing people won't be taking their four day weekends Pittsburgh has their own stuff on Tuesday night so it's going to be the Lord's timing and it's going to work great Jim Morrison on July 15th will be coming in Jim's a good friend of mine and he's a a real positive brother in terms of his ministry of evangelism so that'll be on that one Sunday then in August the Lord's already directed me what my series of teachings will be you say well how can that possibly be God it's too far in advance actually it's late for everyone else but I'm really convinced that we're going to return back to that subject of how the suddenlies come into our lives and we're going to have a real prayer focus that month it's going to be a very vertical focus for the church and those of us who know we need to get in tune with what the Spirit is saying and then on the 6th the ministry fair August 22nd folks we had 26 people at a Discovering the Way banquet this last week now these are people that came to the banquet I think there was more like 32 in the class we have 54 in these Sunday evening classes so right now just in these last 3 months 2 months there's been 80 people through Discovering the Way with all the people that are coming in we need to do some things to get them plugged into ministry so on that night in August a Wednesday night we're going to scrap the service format and have an all out and this is important to you to plan to be here because you'll be representing your ministry so rather than just a general announcement well find me and I'll talk about we'll be able to say go right over there and you'll see Char Subert and he'll tell you what to do about tape ministry boom we've discovered that the only way people get involved is when you come and you take them by the hand and you take them over and say this is Jim Wright and he would love to show you how to be an usher on Sunday morning that's the only way it happens so if you know someone that says I'd like to do this don't just say well gee I think you know if you see Steve Selleck he'll tell you how to teach you've got to go right to their face put them face to face you know this is the way to do it it's the only way it happens so be aggressive about it it's Don Martin and the children's ministry you walk back and say here's Don Martin here's what he's doing and you introduce them and you help build that bridge we had for example two couples this last time Tom Mangold who said I want to be a greeter well I know if I just make a phone call it won't happen if I say on a Sunday morning two couples names the Casey's and Milovec's here's Tom Mangold he's the head greeter or whatever plugs him in and that's the way it's going to work ministry fair is going to do that for everybody finally a big focus coming is Reiner Bonke we're talking major league evangelism here and Mack McCabe is kind of our in church coordinator of this thing and I know he would love to spell out for you the opportunities but I know we need specifically a group of counselors we didn't say how many we're praying for is it 50 we said alright we need a group of counselors a group to help as marshals and ushers and so on and then some prayer warriors out of our church we need those three groups of people and if you're interested in being part of that crusade in any way what I want you to do is find a piece of paper right now and put your name on it and pass it in to me if it's one of those three areas prayer, counseling and it's just a two night thing so you won't be up all night doing it for six weeks or serving as an usher we would like your support in that they're praying for 17,000 people a night and that won't be a problem if we all get tuned in and can I tell you this I've not heard anybody I felt was going to be any fresher than this brother I think he's going to be just a different voice to us so you'll want to be there yourself but it would help the whole effort if you could serve and make yourself available at the Civic Arena don't you dare just show up and get blessed I'll get mad if you do that I'm serious about it don't you dare just show up oh let's go get blessed that's 1971 charismania don't do it okay oka