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We are on our third week of a series that is just called Trinity.

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We've talked about the Father and we have talked about the Son.

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If you missed either of those messages,

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you can listen to that sermon anywhere that you get podcasts.

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But if you'd like to see the whole service,

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those are available on Facebook and YouTube.

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We serve them to both of those places every single week.

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If we've never met before, my name is Greg.

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I would love to meet you.

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Maybe I'll buy you a coffee sometime,

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get to know you, hear your story,

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maybe even talk about something that you heard in a sermon

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or just something that's going on in your life.

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I would love to get to know you.

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So like I said, the last couple of weeks,

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we talked about the Father and Son.

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But as we talked about those things the last couple of weeks,

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we got into the weeds a little bit about the doctrines

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and the history and the people that had ideas about how the Trinity worked.

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We talked about how the Father and Son fit into that.

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That isn't really how I want to approach the Spirit today.

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I don't want to talk about church dogma

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and the dates that human beings finally accepted

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that the Holy Spirit was co-equal part of the triune God.

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I want to talk about the voice and character of the Spirit.

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Because whether you believe that the Spirit is just an expression of God

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or if you think that the Spirit is God,

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I think that the practical question is, what is the Spirit like?

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And what does the Spirit sound like?

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So if you will please grab your Bible.

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If you don't have a Bible, there's blue ones on the table.

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Please grab one of those or download a Bible from any one of the digital app stores.

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We're going to open up to John 14.

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It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans.

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.

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So if you see any of those other books around,

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you know that you're in the right neighborhood.

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We're going to go to John chapter 14.

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Now we have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention

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when they're read in the context of a sermon.

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You can do that any number of ways.

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You can sit or you can stand with me as I read.

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Excuse me.

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John 14, verse 16.

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Jesus says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate

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to help you and be with you forever.

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And then verse 26, but when the Father sends the advocate as my representative,

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that is the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything

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and will remind you of everything I have told you.

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Let us pray.

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God of every tribe, of every tongue, every color, every nation,

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we thank you for the scriptures.

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We thank you that they have persisted throughout the millennia,

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that we still have them to read, to consider, to learn from.

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And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today,

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I pray that it would stick.

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I pray that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

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that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus.

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Amen.

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You can all have a seat.

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Thank you.

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I've always said that the Holy Spirit sounds like the Bible.

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The Holy Spirit sounds like the Bible.

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I've also said that the Holy Spirit sounds suspiciously like my wife.

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More specifically, Jesus says that the Spirit sounds like an advocate.

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That word means one called or sent to assist another.

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It means one who pleads the cause of another.

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It means one present to render beneficial service.

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That is what the Spirit sounds like, a voice that is assisting,

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pleading the cause or case, looking to serve.

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Let that ruminate for a second.

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That's what the Spirit sounds like.

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If what you have heard or felt from inside your own heart or from someone else,

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or even maybe as you've read the scripture,

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if it doesn't sound like one of those three things, like an advocate,

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it is wise to slow down.

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It is wise to slow down.

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It is wise to slow down because that voice that you are hearing,

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that idea, that word may not, may need to go through more filters before you accept

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that it is for sure the Spirit of God.

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I show of hands.

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How many of us have been on the phone with customer service and thought,

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it just doesn't feel like this person is actually trying to help me?

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Yeah?

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Sometimes it feels like they are specifically and specially trained

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to actively make things more difficult.

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I actually think that if there is some kind of white-throated judgment,

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it will be us standing there and God going through the Rolodex

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of all of our customer service phone calls.

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All right, Greg.

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On September 13th of 2002, you called Verizon to talk about your texting plan.

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Let's listen to that.

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Now, how many of us have been on the phone with customer support

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and the person just gets it?

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They don't fix every aspect of the problem, but they get it.

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They do everything that they can on their end, and then they tell us

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exactly what we need to do on our end to move forward

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and to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

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That is what the Spirit sounds like.

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An advocate sent to assist, to plead your case,

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to offer beneficial service.

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Then we should remember that Jesus tells us pretty specifically

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the kinds of things that the Spirit will say.

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At least initially, he says, I'm sending the Spirit to teach

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and remind you everything that I taught you.

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That's why I say that the Spirit sounds like the Bible,

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because if you spend enough time with the words of Jesus,

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then the voice of the Spirit will be pretty familiar to you.

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Now, it doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit never says or does anything new.

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It's not what I'm saying.

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The Holy Spirit, there's plenty of things that are new,

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but even something new that the Spirit might say or do

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can sound like something old that Jesus said or did.

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I'll give you an example.

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In the book of Matthew, Jesus is teaching his disciples

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about how to watch out for bad teachers, bad prophets, right?

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And he says that you can tell them, and if you know it,

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just say it with me, you can tell them by their fruit.

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He says, a bad tree will not bear good fruit,

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and a good tree will not bear bad fruit,

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and therefore you will know them by their fruit,

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because a good tree bears good fruit.

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Later, Paul teaches something very similar.

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He's talking about how living by our own flesh

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can produce some terrible fruit in us.

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But living by the Spirit, he says, will produce something beautiful,

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and you will know that it is the Spirit by its fruit.

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He says the fruit of the Spirit is love, is joy, is peace, patience,

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kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

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Listen, Paul is teaching a brand new concept,

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but it sounds like something Jesus already taught.

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Do you hear that?

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He's teaching a brand new concept about this idea

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that if you live by the Spirit,

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there's going to be fruit that comes from you,

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and Jesus has already taught about how the good fruit shows you that it actually is real.

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Okay, so the Spirit sounds like the Scriptures,

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the Spirit sounds like Jesus,

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so I think that it's safe to say that our expression,

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any of us, that our expression of the Spirit should taste like the fruit

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that both Jesus and Paul tells us the Spirit will produce.

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Amen?

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Our expression of the Spirit should taste like the fruit of the Spirit.

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Like honey on your lips.

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Taste and see that the Lord is good.

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So we ask in your experience, each of us in your experience,

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is the Holy Spirit loving?

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Is the Holy Spirit joyful?

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Is the Holy Spirit peaceful?

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Is the Holy Spirit patient with you?

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Is the Holy Spirit kind?

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In the way that you have seen the Spirit move,

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has the Holy Spirit been good and faithful?

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Has the Holy Spirit been gentle with you?

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Has the Holy Spirit led you into self-control?

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Or in your experience, has it felt harsh?

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Has it felt judgmental, confrontational, cynical?

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Have the words of the Spirit felt biting or bitter?

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Have the words of the Spirit that people have shared with you

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or the way that you've been told that's the way the Spirit moves,

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has it actually produced anxiety in you?

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Have the movings of the Spirit been inconsiderate of your emotions?

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Have the words of the Spirit led you into self-control?

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I've been a pastor for a very long time.

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I'm officially getting old, y'all.

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I turned 47 last week, and my dad's waving his,

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no, no, he says I'm not old.

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My knees beg to differ.

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I've been a pastor for nearly 25 years, in one way or another,

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whether it's youth pastor, worship pastor,

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pastor, lead pastor.

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I've been a Christian since I was three.

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Since I was three years old, my mom says that I prayed the prayer

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and that I knew what I was talking about.

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I have been around the gifting and the working of the Spirit,

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the evidence of the Spirit since I was a small child.

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I grew up in a very straight-laced, conservative church,

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but I also went to charismatic prayer meetings.

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I have worked in charismatic churches.

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I heard tongues.

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I have prayed in tongues.

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I have been given prophecies.

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I have given prophecies.

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I am experienced in the gifts of the Spirit.

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I have tasted the fruit.

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That's why today I'm not talking about the dogma and the doctrine.

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I'm talking about the voice and the character of the Spirit

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instead of systematic theology,

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because in all of my years I have found there may be no part of God,

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no expression of God that, practically speaking,

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can be more easily confused or abused than the voice of the Spirit.

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I have tasted the fruit of the Spirit in a well-timed word of encouragement.

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One of my favorite examples of a well-timed word that was from the Lord

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is actually a word of correction I was given.

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It was years ago.

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The job that I was working at a church in Georgia

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looked like it was going to be ending, and I was talking to one of my mentors,

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and I said, I don't know, and I was just trying to think about

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what part of it might have been my fault,

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and he looked at me and he said with kindness,

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the Lord will deal with you.

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And I felt no condemnation.

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Even if something corrective might need to be said in a moment,

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if it is from the Spirit, it will taste sweet,

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because it will be good.

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But I've also tasted the bitterness of many misguided attempts to speak for God.

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It happens for a thousand reasons.

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Believers of all kinds struggle with what to do

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with what they think they've heard from God.

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But I think I can say this.

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When we feel that we have heard something,

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and we think it is from the Lord,

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especially if it involves insight into someone else,

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listen carefully, it is not very often that it's meant to be said out loud.

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It's not very often it's meant to be said out loud to someone else

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while saying, the Spirit told me.

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I'm not saying never.

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I've got to put that down there.

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My disclaimer.

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I'm not saying never.

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I'm not saying that it shouldn't be shared at all even.

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I'm saying how often we share what the Spirit has told us

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and say the Spirit told me to say it,

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those should be few and far between.

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Because if it is the Spirit,

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I can trust that when I say it,

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especially if there's a healthy relationship there already,

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that the Spirit will tell them that the Spirit had me say it.

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Some of you have not known me for very long, months, maybe weeks.

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Many of you have known me for years, maybe even decades.

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And for nearly all of you, I have either asked you a question

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or I have said something to you

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that I have felt the Spirit wanted me to ask or say.

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And almost none of you can tell me a moment where I said,

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the Spirit is saying.

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And yet many of you can say you felt comforted

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by the Spirit in that moment.

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This is the way that I have chosen to operate

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because I trust the Spirit,

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because I am not confused between the role of the Spirit

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and my role in the Spirit.

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I trust that the Holy Spirit is working in you

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just as much as I believe the Spirit is working in me.

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And at the very least,

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I don't need to say that the Lord said or the Spirit says

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in order for me to comfort you,

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in order for me to console, to support,

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to be an advocate, to serve.

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Some of us have come from very charismatic backgrounds.

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Some of us have come from backgrounds

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that don't think the Spirit does anything anymore.

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And yet somehow God has seen it fit

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that we are all in the same room together.

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And you're all sitting listening to a guy

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that will wake up some mornings praying in the Spirit

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that sometimes I don't know when it's the Spirit

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or when it's just me.

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Sometimes I need someone else to tell me it was the Spirit.

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It's the truth.

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A week before last,

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a church that I'm familiar with

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celebrated decades and decades of being a church.

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And I knew someone that had worked there

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and had worked there for more than half of the life of that church.

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And the church had put out a video for people to watch online

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about the story of the church.

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And I noticed that this person was only in one video clip

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for like half a second in the course of the whole video.

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And so I watched it before I went to bed.

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And then I woke up at 4 a.m. just feeling for my friend,

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feeling like he'd been erased from the story,

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from the life of that church.

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And so later in that day I texted him.

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I said, hey, just checking in on you.

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He said, oh, thanks.

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And I said, hey, saw the video.

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Between you and me, I was hoping to hear you narrate this.

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And he said, he said, thanks very much.

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It was actually difficult to see I wasn't in the video.

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And I said, I woke up before this morning praying for you about this

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because I was worried.

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And he said, you're in the spirit because I've been struggling all day.

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All those moments where you thought maybe I should text so-and-so,

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I haven't seen so-and-so, I wonder how they're doing.

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All those moments that we rush past and we go, well, I'm on my way somewhere.

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I'll text them when I get there.

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Man, you know how meaningful it would be for you to pull over

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and text that person the moment that you remembered?

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That time where you woke up in the middle of the night thinking about someone

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and you thought, oh, it's just something I ate.

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It's not.

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It's not.

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It's not the spicy food.

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It wasn't the curry.

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It is the spirit asking you to be connected to someone across the world even.

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This person lives on the West Coast.

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I've not seen them in person in six or seven years.

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All the moments that we rush past because it wasn't, man,

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I just didn't hang around long enough.

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It just wasn't a big enough of a thought.

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Oh, it wasn't, ah, how do I know that that was the spirit?

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You know why you know it's the spirit?

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Because it was a moment for you to serve them.

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It was a moment for you to assist them.

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It was a moment for you to advocate that their story still matters.

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And that's what I told them.

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I said, your pages will not be erased from the book of that church.

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You will be remembered.

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There's something that God is trying to tell each of you as well.

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That's not for someone else.

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That's just for you.

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I don't know what it is.

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I don't have a word of knowledge for you in the moment.

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But I hope that it feels like love as you hear it.

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I hope that it feels like kindness.

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I hope that you feel a sense of joy as that thought enters your heart.

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I pray that you feel like a gentle spirit of goodness and faithfulness is

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surrounding you and holding you as you receive from the Lord what He has been

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trying to tell you.

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Because He is love.

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He is joyful.

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He is patient and kind and good and faithful and gentle.

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So I just thought that we would end this time of preaching with a time of

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listening.

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There's journals on the table.

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If you want to open one of those up, you can write or if you wanted to sit with

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your hands on your knees, you close your eyes, however you want.

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I want us to take at least a moment, minute, whole 60 seconds everybody, for

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you to listen, for God to speak to your heart.

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Let it be sweet.

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Let it be sweet.

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Let it be sweet.

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Let's listen.

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Let it be sweet.

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Let it be sweet.

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Holy Spirit, thank you for being present.

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For reminding us and teaching us everything Jesus has taught.

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Thank you for creating fruit in us.

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Thank you for being active and moving in our hearts.

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We are open to you as we are open to the Son, as we are open to the Father.

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Amen.