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I bet some of you haven't sung that song for a while, huh?

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In fact, how many of you have never sung it before as far as you can remember?

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I suspected that was the case.

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How many of you have sung it before?

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Would you lift your hands?

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Well, now look at that.

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See, that's sometimes when we lift the hands we think that's everybody, but when we do

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the other side of the coin, why we find out that's not quite everybody.

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In fact, I would guess that more of you have sung it before than found it new.

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Well we're talking this evening about the church that people were afraid to join.

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Can anybody give me the text for the message tonight?

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I have about 14 fans buzzing in my ears up here, so if you have that text, let me know

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loudly.

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What is it?

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Thank you, Acts chapter 5, now what am I going to say about it, Mark?

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But you are correct, that's right, thank you.

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Acts chapter 5, would you turn there with me please?

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Every now and then I'll hear a sincere believer say, what we need is to get back to Pentecost.

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What I'd like to say to you tonight, that is not our need.

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We don't need to go back to Pentecost any more than we need to go back to Calvary.

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We only needed one Calvary when the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself, and there's only one

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Pentecost that's needed too, the coming of the Holy Spirit.

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Our need is not to get back to Pentecost, but I would like to suggest that perhaps what

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we do need is for some of us, indeed all of us, to tap afresh and anew the power of Pentecost,

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the dynamic of the Holy Spirit.

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I would like for you to look at Acts chapter 4 with me, and we'll begin reading in verse

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23, and then conclude with chapter 5 verse 16.

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The church has suffered a persecution earlier here in this chapter as two of the apostles

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were arrested for their preaching and then released.

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It says in verse 23, and when they had been released, they went to their own companions

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and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.

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And when they heard this, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord and said, O

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Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is

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in them, who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our Father David thy servant did

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say, just time out for a moment, isn't that a marvelous way to describe the miracle of

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inspiration and how the Holy Spirit said the words by the mouth of David?

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This is what David said in Psalm 2.

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Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples devise futile things?

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The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against

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the Lord and against his Christ.

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For truly in this city they were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom

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thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples

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of Israel, to do whatever thy hand and thy purpose predestined to occur.

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And now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that thy bond-servants may speak

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thy word with all confidence, while thou dost extend thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders

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take place through the name of thy holy servant Jesus.

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When they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they

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were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.

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And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and not one of

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them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own.

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But all things were common property to them, and with great power the apostles were giving

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witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.

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For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of lands or houses

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would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet,

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and they would be distributed to each as any had need.

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And Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles,

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which translated means son of encouragement, and who owned a tract of land, sold it, and

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brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

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But a certain man named Ananias with his wife, Sapphira, sold a piece of property and kept

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back some of the price for himself.

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With his wife's full knowledge and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles'

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feet.

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But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to

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keep back some of the price of the land?

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While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?

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And after it was sold, was it not under your control?

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Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart?

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You have not lied to men, but to God.

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As he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last.

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And great fear came upon all who heard of it.

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And the young men arose and covered him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him.

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Now there elapsed an interval of about three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what

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had happened.

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Then Peter responded to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price?

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And she said, Yes, that was the price.

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Then Peter said to her, Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of

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the Lord to the test?

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Behold the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they shall carry

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you out as well.

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And she fell immediately at his feet and breathed her last.

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The young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside

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her husband.

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And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.

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And at the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people,

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and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico.

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But none of the rest dared to associate with them.

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However, the people held them in high esteem.

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And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to

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their number to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and

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laid them on cots and pallets so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall

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on any one of them.

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And also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together,

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bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being

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healed.

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We certainly see a great deal of power in the early church, don't we?

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God has done some amazing things in our midst in the last year and a half.

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As we have witnessed Him begin something new in our midst, we have witnessed the Lord to

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be pleased to do a work that none of us had anticipated and which none of us could have

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created.

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I am sure that God might have done more if all of us were completely yielded to Him.

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But what He has chosen to do is certainly above all that we could have asked or thought.

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I must confess to you though as your pastor tonight that I am concerned.

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I am concerned lest we think that we will continue as we have by the power of the momentum

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that we have going for us.

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In other words, I am concerned that we will think that what we have seen happen thus far

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will continue to happen no matter what.

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I would like to say to you tonight that that is not the case.

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What we have seen happen has been of God.

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Unless God is pleased to continue it, then we will be stopped dead in our tracks.

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The momentum that we have at the present time is not sufficient in and of itself to see

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great and mighty things done for the glory of God here.

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God alone can see those things accomplished as He is pleased through us.

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I am also concerned that Grace Church Roseville should become a popular place to be.

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Oh, it is not that I do not enjoy hearing people say that they like to come here.

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I feel that way.

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I enjoy coming here.

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When I go on vacation, I can hardly wait to get back.

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There is something about what God is doing here that my heart rejoices in and I hunger

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for just the atmosphere of your fellowship.

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It is very, very special.

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But I fear lest we should ever become the popular place to be and that that popularity

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should then become an end or a goal in itself to us so that we lessen our standards or we

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weaken our preaching so that it will continue to be popular to more and more people.

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I believe God would be displeased with that.

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I believe that any time you and I are living godly in Christ or any time we as a church

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are being effective, we can expect some persecution.

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Maybe not in terms of bricks being thrown through the windows or shots being taken at

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the building, but we can expect people to take pot shots at us with their tongues.

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That's all right.

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As long as we are obeying the word of God and taking the stand we ought to in the word

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of God, that's all right.

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Jesus said, beware when all men shall speak well of you.

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I don't want this to ever become the society church in this area or the place to go because

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everybody else is going there.

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I want our church to continue to be what it is, a place where people want to come to worship

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God and to be taught his word.

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I pray that that will ever be the motive and the reason for our assembling together.

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As I have been thinking about these things and pondering over them with some other burdens

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that I will share as the message proceeds, I thought regarding the early Jerusalem church.

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I think I would like to have been a part of it, but what was taking place there was so

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unusual.

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You see the early church was absolutely alive and dynamic with the very presence of the

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Lord, so much so that some of the people on the fringes were afraid to join themselves

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with the apostles and the other believers.

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They were afraid of what might happen there.

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There was an atmosphere, as G. Campbell Morgan put it, of fiery fervor and irresistible dynamic.

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It's true that this text that we read tonight was not long after Pentecost, and there are

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some things that are in the text that are there because of the timing of the whole event.

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But, folks, does your heart like mine long to see something of the power of God in our

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ministry as God was pleased to display his power then?

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I believe that many of you would agree with me on that.

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What kind of a church was it, this church, that people were afraid to join?

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Well, in looking through the text, there are several characteristics that we see.

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In the first place, it was a praying church.

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After that persecution had ended with the release of the apostles, they came back to

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their own companions, their own company, and reported what had happened, a very natural

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thing.

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And their immediate response after they heard was that they lifted up their voice in prayer.

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These people knew how to get a hold of God.

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I am very frankly burdened in my own life that I grow in that.

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That in my praying I may know how to truly get a hold of the throne of grace and talk

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to the Lord.

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Do you feel that way, too?

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So often we say prayers instead of praying.

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We use phrases and words that are familiar to us because we hear other people say them.

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We repeat them by rote and they have no deep root in our spirit.

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The Apostle commands us in Ephesians 6 that all of our praying should be done in the Holy

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Spirit.

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Now, what does that mean?

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That means that our praying should be done with the Holy Spirit being the source of the

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power involved in our praying.

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Not ourselves, but the Holy Spirit.

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I believe that is the kind of praying that we see here in chapter 4.

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I see several things about their praying.

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First of all, it was characterized by fervency.

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It says in verse 24, they lifted up their voice to God.

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This was not a quiet little prayer meeting where everybody got in their corner and prayed

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silently.

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They lifted up their voice to God.

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I notice it says their voice.

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However it was, it wasn't confused and everybody praying at the same time.

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But apparently their hearts were so united in this that as one of them, whoever it was,

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lifted his heart to God in speaking the prayer, the rest of them joined right with him.

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That's the way our praying ought to be whenever anybody leads us in a group.

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We should not use that time to think what we're going to say to impress upon others

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that we are spiritual or know how to pray.

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But as another person is praying in any group, whether it's two or three or in a congregation,

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we need to be listening to every word and lifting every word with our hearts to God.

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There was a fervency about their praying.

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There was an urgency in it.

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I judge myself for the lack of urgency in so much of my praying.

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I don't see too much urgency in praying in our church either.

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That's a great burden to me.

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That is one reason that we are giving Wednesday nights to intercession in prayer.

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We have been having a Bible study and some singing as well as a prayer time.

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The folks, I am so burdened about the need for prayer in our church and for our church

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that we are setting aside that time on Wednesday nights and I want to encourage you to come

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and join us in prayer if you can at seven o'clock.

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That is an important time to me during the week.

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Now I realize that some of you are in growth groups or have other commitments so that you

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cannot be there to join with us, but if you can be, I hope you will join with us.

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We need to learn something fresh about urgency and fervency in praying.

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Then I noticed that there was unity in their praying.

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They lifted their voice to God with one accord.

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Their hearts beat together.

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There weren't the petty kinds of things that so often dull the cutting edge of our unity.

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That is often true in persecution hits.

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It seems to take away the differences among believers.

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Why does it have to take persecution or some affliction or some deep trouble for those

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differences to be melted away?

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Why don't we just allow our hearts to be unified with our brothers and sisters in Christ so

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that in praying there is a unity, there is a oneness of spirit and of mind about our

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praying?

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That's the kind of praying that gets a hold of God.

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Notice too that their praying was word centered.

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You notice that?

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As they're praying along they don't mind quoting from the Old Testament or maybe they got out

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of scroll, I don't know, and they began to read.

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But the word of God was a part of their praying.

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That is a good discipline for us.

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It's a good example for us to follow.

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In our praying we allow the word of God to stimulate our mind and to lead us in the direction

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of how to pray regarding certain things.

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Now the Holy Spirit was leading them here very obviously as they brought this passage

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from the book of Psalms to bear upon the situation.

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What a great discipline it would be for us as we consider those requests and burdens

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if we would first go to the word and allow the Spirit of God to give us a promise or

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some word from God about our burdens and then lift our burden to Him and pray as the word

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tells us to pray.

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Their praying was word centered.

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I don't know of a better way to get a hold of God in our praying than to make our praying

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Bible oriented.

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And then I noticed they recognized the sovereignty of God.

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They weren't wringing their hands for fear of persecutors as they prayed.

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The first place when they started out they said, oh Lord, that is not the typical word

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for Lord in the New Testament.

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This is a word that we would translate literally into the English despot.

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Now we don't think of the Lord with that term, but that's what it means.

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It means one who is absolutely totally sovereign.

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He is the master.

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That's how they address Him.

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And then notice as they recount how prophecy had been fulfilled in verse 27, they go on

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to say in verse 28 that these people did whatever the hand of God and the purpose of God had

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predestined to occur.

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You see these people are aware that they are a part of something a lot bigger than themselves.

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God is at work here.

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And oh my, how that will orient our praying, how it will open the windows of heaven.

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As you and I get our eyes off of our little concerns and begin to see that we are a part

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of something big, something that stretches from eternity to eternity, something that

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involves the very purpose and the will of God as He has predetermined it to occur.

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As you and I recognize the sovereignty of God, we'll get a hold of God.

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And then it says in verse 29, they prayed this, now Lord take note of their threats.

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I kind of like that.

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I'm sure God had taken note of the threats, but they mentioned them anyway.

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But notice then they don't say, and cause them to stop threatening us.

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Nor do they say, and Lord deliver us from their threats.

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What do they say?

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They say, Lord grant that thy servants may speak thy word with all confidence.

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Lord just help us to keep on keeping on doing what we're supposed to do despite the threats.

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You see their praying was specific and it was right.

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That kind of praying gets a hold of God too.

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I see so much in the praying of this church that instructs me as to how as a pastor and

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as to how we as a church can know something afresh of the Pentecostal power of God.

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We're not going to know that folks unless we get under the burden of prayer.

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In verse 31, it says when they had prayed, the place they had gathered together was shaken

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and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.

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The second thing I see about this church which characterized it is that it was a power-filled

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church.

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So much so that when they had finished praying, the place where they were literally shook.

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Have you ever been in that kind of a prayer meeting?

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I haven't.

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It would probably frighten me a little bit.

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I don't know how they took it.

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But so powerful did God hear them and answer them that the very room, the very building

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perhaps in which they were located literally shook.

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They had their own localized earthquake.

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I have a friend who pastored in the Midwest for a number of years.

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They got a call to a church in California.

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When the call came, he was reluctant to go.

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It was about a year in fact that they kept in contact with him saying they were praying

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and they felt he was God's man.

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As he and his wife talked about California and the ministry out there, they recognized

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the obvious differences between here and there.

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One of the things they knew that was different was the possibility of earthquakes in Southern

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California.

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So one day as they were talking about it, finally his wife came up with this statement.

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She said, you know, the thing that really keeps me from considering that ministry out

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there very seriously is the earthquakes.

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I would not believe this if I had not heard it from him, I mean her husband.

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He told me himself, I got this first hand.

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No sooner had she said the thing that keeps me from considering the ministry out there

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as earthquakes than they had an earthquake in that little Midwestern town where they

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had an earthquake in years.

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And their whole house shook.

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She said, Lord, that's enough.

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We're going to California.

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And that's where they are today.

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God shook that place they were in.

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But the real power was not in the earthquake.

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The real power was in their witness.

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God answered prayer and they began to speak the word of God with boldness.

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And why?

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Because they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

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It doesn't say that they spoke in tongues.

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It says they spoke the word of God with boldness.

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That's the real proof of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

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Time and time again you will find that as the apostles and as the early church came

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up to a new opportunity of witness or preaching, the Holy Spirit filled them afresh.

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It doesn't say they were baptized with the Holy Spirit.

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It says they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

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There is a difference.

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The baptism of the Holy Spirit occurred on the day of Pentecost.

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Never are we commanded in the New Testament to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

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Did you know that?

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Not once.

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The baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs at the moment we're saved.

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It's not something we sense.

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It is the work of the Holy Spirit placing us into the body of Christ.

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That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

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But there is such a thing as the filling of the Holy Spirit.

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And so often when we see that word, we get the picture of a glass that's empty that

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needs to be filled up with water.

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And that really is not the thrust of this word.

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This word has to do with empowering.

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It is filling in the sense of a sail on a boat that is put up and the wind fills it.

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Now the result of that filling is that the boat has power.

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It's moved.

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And you see, that's the thought here.

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The Holy Spirit, as it were, filled their sails and they were made bold.

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They were empowered by that Spirit.

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There is no genuine spiritual fruit apart from a ministry that is empowered by the Holy

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Spirit, period.

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You can have statistics.

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You can add numbers.

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You can multiply numbers.

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You'll usually end up dividing in numbers.

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You can do anything you want to with numbers.

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But there is no genuine spiritual fruit apart from the empowering of the Spirit of God in

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the ministry.

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Dear people, we need that here more than ever before.

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If we have known a certain empowering of the Spirit of God in Grace Church, Roseville,

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and so forth, I want to say to you tonight that I believe God is trying to tell us that

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what we have known thus far is only the tip of the iceberg that is available.

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And not only that, what we have known thus far is insufficient to carry us on.

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I believe that God is challenging us.

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God is telling us that we need to trust Him for a fresh and deeper infilling than we have

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ever known in our ministry.

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And dear people, unless we know that, we are going to finish our ministry.

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It's just going to stop.

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It's going to level off.

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And we're just going to go through the routine of things, unless we know a fresh and a deeper

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empowering of the Spirit of God in our midst.

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Now, how does that happen?

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Do you have to work up a lather of emotion?

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No, the filling of the Holy Spirit occurs very naturally when sin is confessed and gotten

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out of the way.

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You see, it is the natural thing for the Holy Spirit to be in control.

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It is unnatural when He's not in control in the Christian's life.

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God's plan is that the Holy Spirit is just there and He's flowing through us, bringing

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the life of Christ to others.

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When sin comes into our lives, then the Spirit of God is quenched, and He's grieved, and

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He draws back, and His power is not evidenced.

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To the extent that there is sin in my life, the Spirit of God is not in control.

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He is not empowering me.

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To the extent that I confess sin and I am honest before God and humble myself before

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Him, the Spirit of God is in control and is empowering me.

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The same is true of you, and the same is true of us collectively.

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The more sin there is in our church, the less the Spirit of God is going to do.

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God will not pour the pure water of life through a dirty vessel.

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He will not use this church to glorify Jesus Christ and to bring others to a saving knowledge

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of Christ unless we are clean and pure.

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This was a power-filled church, and we need to know something more about what that means.

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I notice also that it was a loving church, and I see that in the way that they shared

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with one another.

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This love was not the syrupy, goopy kind of love that seems to be so common in some circles

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of Christianity.

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This was a kind of love that was not in word only, but in deed and in truth, and involved

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their helping each other.

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I don't have time to go into it at length, but I would like to emphasize that this is

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not Christian Communism, as though those two words were somehow compatible.

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What is seen here is the early church simply loving each other and caring for each other.

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There's no coercion.

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What each person had was his own until he willingly gave it.

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It says that some of them gave everything, and Barnabas was an example of one who owned

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a piece of land and sold it and brought all of the money and laid it at the apostles'

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feet.

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He did not do that, obviously, in a showy way, or God would not have been pleased.

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God is never pleased when we show our money.

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He did this in a way that was sincere and humble, and it encouraged the church, undoubtedly,

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as they saw the generosity of this man.

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They rejoiced in the way that God was providing for the needs in the church.

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I tell you, it cost them to do this.

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Love always costs.

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It costs time, it costs money, it costs energy, and it's great.

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We need to know something more about this, too.

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I overheard a statement that Pastor Dave Busby made some time ago.

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Some of you know him.

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Pastor Dave is the youth director at the Edina Church, a godly young man.

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He's going to come over here and preach one of these days on a Sunday night, and you'll

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get to meet him.

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Someone was asking him about evangelism in the youth group when he first came back in

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the winter.

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He said, how can these people lead anybody to the Lord?

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They don't even like one another.

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He was talking about the youth group.

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You know something?

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That's the truth.

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He didn't begin with evangelism.

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He began to try to get those young people to like one another.

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And folks, evangelism does not occur where people are not loving each other sincerely,

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deeply, sacrificially.

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It means giving food when a staff member comes.

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Maybe it means cleaning a house, helping to do that.

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Maybe it means going to the hospital and seeing somebody or ordering a flower for another

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or just sending a note of encouragement.

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Perhaps it means coming up beside and just putting your arm around somebody and saying,

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you know, I know you've been going through the battle.

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I love you.

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I'm praying for you.

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Maybe it means slipping a gift in their pocket.

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Love.

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And love is something you don't organize.

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It's just something that happens.

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It's spontaneous.

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The fruit of the Spirit is coming out of lives, being produced, affecting the church.

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And I tell you, when people sense that kind of love, you can't keep them away from church.

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And then to close, I'm kind of like Paul.

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I say, finally, brethren.

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I see another characteristic in the church.

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It was a pure church.

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This kind of ties together with what I was saying a while ago.

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You'll notice that Satan could not get to them from the outside.

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He tried to persecute the church.

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It was repelled as they responded to that persecution in the power of God.

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And so he got into the church through a couple of the members.

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And you know, it's amazing how often Satan will go back and forth on something like that.

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If it's not persecution from outside, then it will be something within the church.

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Some member will fall into his trap and be used of Satan.

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That's what happened to Ananias, the Sapphira.

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Their sin here was not that they did not want to give all the money.

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It was their choice as to whether they gave all the money they got from the land or just

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part of it.

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But their sin was that they were deceitful about it.

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They gave only a part of it, but pretended that it was a whole thing, that that was the

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whole amount.

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And it was that hypocrisy that God judged.

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It was that deceit that God found so harmful to that fellowship.

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Peter had awareness of it.

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God apparently gave him understanding to see what was happening.

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I notice that he says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?

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You see, it was the work of Satan.

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He yielded the temptation and he sinned.

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And that sin could affect the church.

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As he says over in 1 Corinthians, a little leaven leavens the what?

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The whole lump.

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So he says, purge out that leaven.

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Get it out of the dough.

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What he's really saying there is, that member in 1 Corinthians 5 who's living in open sin

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and who will not repent, remove him from your fellowship so that the church is not affected.

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You see, if this had gone undetected and unpunished, the early church would have been weakened

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by it.

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Charles Ryre said, nothing will seep the power of a church's testimony more quickly than

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pews filled with sinning Christians.

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It saps the power of a church when our pews are filled with sinning Christians.

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God doesn't always judge sin like this by death.

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If He did, maybe a lot of us wouldn't be here tonight.

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Why He did it in this way at this time I think can be explained if you know a little bit

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about the book of Acts and the fact that we're on really Jewish territory in this part of

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the book of Acts.

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As you move through the book, it increasingly becomes Israel and increasingly becomes church.

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And at this point, it's still heavily into the Jewish thing.

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And I believe that what God did here was to strike these people in the kind of immediate

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judgment that will take place during the kingdom when Israel will again be restored.

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Without having said that, let us take note that it is not unknown that God judges sin

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in the church by death.

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There is such a thing as the sin unto death.

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That is not a particular sin.

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The sin unto death is a persistent sinning in a Christian's life when he refuses to

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repent of it and goes on a stubborn, self-directed way.

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00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:03,960
And after a period of time as God tries to bring that child of His back into line if

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He refuses, then that sin becomes the sin unto death and He is taken home to heaven.

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That happened in the Corinthian church.

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Some of them slept because of sin in their midst.

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And I believe that that happens occasionally still today.

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I think I've shared this with some of you, but I remember so well an incident that was

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related to me of a woman in the state of New York probably 20 years ago now, a woman who

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was well known in her church as a gossip.

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Whenever a pastor came into the church, she saw to it that he was miserable and humbled.

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And there came a new pastor to the church and she started her old routine again of gossip

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and tail-bearing.

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And as he ought to have done, he went to her and pled with her in private in her home that

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she would cease this.

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She denied that she was ever guilty of such a thing.

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Why that was far below her dignity to be a tail-bearer in a gossip.

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The pastor knew that he had the proof on her that she was lying and deceiving him or trying

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to deceive him.

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So he knelt down right there in her living room and said, Lord, I've tried.

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She's yours.

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The next Sunday in church, he went into the adult class where all the adults were.

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As he came in, he saw this lady sitting there and he saw her nod around the room to all

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00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:36,400
the people, obviously she had been talking to about his coming to her house and praying

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such a prayer and hermits.

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00:39:39,240 --> 00:39:45,280
And about the time she finished her last nod, she fell out of the chair dead on the floor.

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00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,560
It does happen occasionally.

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God is merciful and gracious with us.

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Dear people, the thing I want to emphasize tonight is the fact that when we sin, it not

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only impacts us, it affects the church.

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If you're here tonight as a Christian, you're living a life of sin and you're out in the

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world living for the devil.

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When God is not being pleased and Jesus Christ is not the Lord of your life, then you are

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impacting the ministry of this church.

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And I plead with you on the basis of that alone to repent and to get your life straightened

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out with God.

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If a church is going to be the kind of a church that knows something of Pentecostal power,

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then it has to be a pure church.

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A church where sin is judged by every member in the life.

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Not that he judges others, but he judges himself and keeps his account short with God.

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I tell you, I'm burdened tonight to see our church be more of that kind of a church.

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With all the great things that have happened this year, we have much to be grateful for,

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but I am not the least bit content in my spirit.

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I do not think for the moment that we have somehow arrived and attained some kind of

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a plateau of success.

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God forbid that any of us should ever have that kind of a haughty, arrogant attitude.

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00:41:19,580 --> 00:41:23,660
God has only begun to do what he wants to do.

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If he's going to do what he wants to do, it depends upon me and upon you, for we are

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the church.

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God help us to be the kind of people that we need to be so that the Spirit of God can

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fall upon us in a new way.

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Back in 1978, I got burdened for this same thing in the church I was pastoring in Kentucky,

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and we invited a revival team, Life Action Ministries, to come in.

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We scheduled them for about a week and a half just around Thanksgiving.

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You never have a meeting around Thanksgiving, but that was the only time that they could

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00:41:58,560 --> 00:41:59,560
come.

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We had the best time on our calendar that fall, so we scheduled it.

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We canceled everything in the church.

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00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:10,480
We started those meetings at seven o'clock at night, and we didn't get through some

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nights until midnight.

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I've never seen in my ministry anything like it, as the Spirit of God began to work.

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00:42:18,460 --> 00:42:25,200
We had all night prayer meetings as we asked God to do something new in our midst.

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I witnessed before you tonight that God saved people that we thought were impossible.

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He broke through their hearts as we began to pray for them, urgently and fervently.

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We saw Christians restored.

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00:42:41,720 --> 00:42:51,200
I'll never forget the night that the daughter of our minister of music came forward.

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00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:55,640
Several years before that, when I first became the pastor of the church, we had to put her

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out of the church publicly because of sin.

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You can imagine what a difficult thing that was for her parents and for all of us in the

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church.

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We had prayed for her.

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She had gone out into the world.

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During that meeting, she came back to the Lord, and we saw her two weeks ago, and she's

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still walking with the Lord, going on for Christ.

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We saw God do amazing things.

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00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,360
The meeting went for the week and a half and for another week and another week, and we

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00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,400
had to stop just before Christmas.

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00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:29,000
For nearly a month, we went every night except Saturday night from 7 to 10 or 11 or 12, and

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then prayed hours after that, and God did something.

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00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:37,480
I don't know that we're going to do that here.

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We may, but I can tell you this.

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I'm hungry for the same thing, and I know that many of you join me in this kind of discontent

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00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:51,160
with just going on doing the same thing in the same way, counting the numbers, counting

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00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:53,160
the offering.

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There is so much more to it that God wants to do.

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Let's let Him do it.

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Oh Lord, I've just tried to share tonight what you've been placing on my heart and what

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you've been wanting to do in my life, and I sense that there are many of us here tonight

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who share something of the same burden.

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00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:24,920
God help us to put away pride.

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Help us to put away playthings.

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Give us to discard sins that so easily beset us.

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When Lord God do a work in our lives and in our church, we may see something of a deeper

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00:44:52,880 --> 00:45:00,320
moving of the Spirit of God in our midst.

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I pray this in Jesus' name.

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Amen.