Climbing Gods Mountain Stop Five Endued with Power Part 2

Welcome to episode 154.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 154. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm going to continue on our fifth stop on the mountain, and it is being plugged in and being endued with power. And I want to remind you that this is not the, the power of God that lives on the inside of you. And again, I've got to picture everything, so this is kind of the way I've got it pictured, is I've got Jesus— Father God is has become part of— we're one. God, a piece of God, or a piece of Jesus, or however— God and Jesus, Father God, Jesus, all the same. We're in— they're inside of us. They— we become a new creature. Our spirit man is totally alive. So we are saved, we are baptized into the body of Christ, we are now seated in heavenly places. Our spirit man is 100% just like Jesus. We don't have to worry about our spirit man ever falling into sin. He is sealed by the Holy Spirit. So I've got the spirit— I've got our spirit man being completely sealed from anything on the enemy. Now, our soul and our flesh, that's a different story. But what Jesus told his believers was to wait, and I want to talk about— and we're going to go to Luke 24:44. 44. Then he said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me. 45. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures. 46. Then he said to them, Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to raise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. But tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. And then he goes out to the city, and he— well, let me just keep reading. And then he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while he blessed them, that he was parted from them and carried into heaven. And they worship him and returned Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. Now I know you love my superior reading skills, and I'm almost done, but we have to go to Acts now. And remember, Acts was written by Luke. The physician wrote Luke, and he wrote Acts. And we're going to pick up this same story, same writer, in Acts 1:4. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, you have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Now when he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. Now this is the same account as the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts. They were assembled at the— outside of Bethany, and Jesus was taken up at the end of Luke, and then at the beginning of Acts, talking about the same thing. It goes into a little more detail of what Jesus said. Same guy that wrote it, but he just started the book of— he finished the book of Luke with this account. He started the book of Acts with this account. So I just want to go back and be clear that Luke mentioned in 24:45, "And he opened their understanding, that they may comprehend the scriptures." And I think maybe that's where the disciples got saved. I don't know where they declared him Lord, But they got saved. They were— the scriptures were open to them, and they understood, hey, this is the Christ, this is Jesus, he is the one. And so then they asked him the questions about when is he going to come back to rule and reign. And Jesus said, hey, don't worry about those times and seasons, you wait on the— to be endued with power. And that's the point, that's stop number 5, is being endued with power. When the Spirit comes upon you, then you will be witnesses. And if you've looked ahead to the map going up the mountain, the next stop is the proclamation, or proclaiming, becoming fishers of men. And that's when we have got the Holy Spirit power that Jesus gave to his disciples to then become witnesses. And if you've never been baptized with the Holy Spirit and you have witnessed to people, there is an added Power to Witness with the Holy Spirit. I, I didn't write the book. I'm not the guy. And all of the people that teach it ahead of me, the theological reasoning why there's an apostolic period and why none of this is happening anymore, are the same people that says God doesn't talk to anybody. But Jesus, the Word of God, says his sheep hear his voice. And to say that that God does not speak anymore. I don't understand. And I, I'm not saying that to make anybody feel guilty or to make anybody think, well, I, I've got more of God than you've got. That's— no, that's not anything that I'm saying. I read the Bible that says his sheep, God's sheep, hear his voice. And if you want to hear the voice of God, I think all you got to do is ask. And then listen. And then, you know, if I hear something, I don't go start a whole different Christian sect on listening and hearing the voice of God, and this is what God told me to do. It is something that's personal to me, and I've had him talk to me 3 or 4 times, probably 4 or 5, that I can point to and say specifically. But to say that God speaks to me all the time, I would be lying to you. I hear his voice, and I say it's kind of like, it kind of jumps off the page when I'm reading his Bible. When I read the Word of God, I would say 98.5, 99.5% of the time God speaks to me through his Word. Now he gives me different scriptures that I think about and they kind of come together, and I mean, I call that God speaking to me as well. So I'm not gonna say that God doesn't speak to me all the time, but it's— I'm reading his Bible and I get thoughts in my head based on the Word of God. So I, you know, I don't know, and I'm not trying to start the Jesus talking to me ministry or anything like that, but the Bible is clear that his sheep hear his voice. The Good Shepherd. And Jesus in John, one of the I AMs is I AM the Good Shepherd. And the— his sheep hear his voice. And if you've been told that God's not speaking anymore, I don't think that you're going to add to the Bible anymore. And if you claim God does not speak or doesn't talk to his people, how does a pastor ever get a calling? I mean, does somebody else call this guy? You know, the people that say that God doesn't speak anymore, but I got this calling on my life, or I've got this whatever. I mean, how do they know?

How?

I mean, they're just fumbling through life and they just happen to be in the pulpit? Or is it something— are they the only— I mean, I, I don't understand that. So I believe that Jesus is constantly trying to communicate with us through his word. And I got no idea why I started chasing that rabbit in this endued with power thing, but maybe the same people that fight the being endued with power are the same people that fight against the voice of God. I really honestly don't know and don't care. I told God a long time ago I wasn't going to argue with his kids. I'm going to fight the— his enemies. I am going to fight Satan. I'm going to fight the demons, the punk. I'm going to try to fight this world system. We need a biblical worldview. Non-biblical worldview, or a— I don't even know what kind of worldview you got if it's not biblical, because I've stayed in the Bible so much that I try to look at This— I look at through— I try to look at the world through the Bible, and I know it kind of probably janks people up, but it's— I try to see things biblically. The book of Acts is a very important book to learn and to study because that's the early church, and I think we're in the latter church, and it's the former and latter rain. I've talked about that on a previous episode, but I believe that we're in the latter rain that God is pouring out some more of his spirit, or I don't know about more of his spirit, but he is making the rain fall and his spirit is falling and making it more accessible. And I want to go to Acts 19:1. And it happened while Apollos was in Corinth that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus. And finding some disciples, he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? So they said to him, we have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, "In what then were you baptized?" So they said, "Into John's baptism." Then Paul said, "John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus." When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now the men were about 12 in all. Now I went to the 19th chapter of Acts just to make a point that it was later in, it wasn't at the beginning when the baptism fell. And we talked about it in the 2nd chapter of Acts where the, where the Holy Spirit fell, Pentecost. And that Pentecost, and it's just the number 50, and it's 50 days after the Passover. And that was after Jesus had been killed and was resurrected. So I don't want to get in all the weeds on all that, but Pentecost— and to be, quote, Pentecostal, if someone's getting all weirded out, that's just 50. That's the number 50. You're getting all weirded out about the number 50. Now I think what— if somebody's getting weirded out about it, it's because of this testimony that I talked about, where people— when you see somebody acting strange, I would 99.9% of the time would blame that on the person not on the Holy Spirit. I, I've never found the Holy Spirit to be strange or weird or make you do things you don't want to do. That's not my testimony, and that's not where I'm going to go. And I'm not here to beat up other people because everybody's different, and I'm going to let them worship God the way they want to, and I'm going to worship God and proclaim God's word the way I want to because I don't want to start doing it the way they're doing it. And I, I really don't want God to you know, if I start getting on to his kids, to then he gonna flip the switch and make me jump up and down and start running on top of pews and all that stuff. I'm not here to encourage that or deny that. I don't even care. That's not where I am. If you ever see me at a football game or at a soccer game or anything like that, I'm not the guy going crazy. Never have been the one. I mean, I every now and then I get— may get a little animated But my personality is a little more reserved, or maybe a lot more reserved. And so when the Holy Spirit comes upon me, I'm a little more reserved. So I don't, I don't go jumping. I'm not looking to go jump in pews or run around the whole service or anything like that. But if someone else is all animated and they want to do that, God bless them, let them, let them have it. But the person like me sitting there wondering what the heck's going on It's kind of a distraction just between you, me, and God. All of that said, I want to encourage you to not be scared of this Holy Spirit and this enduement with power. I want you to be encouraged. I want you to see this as a separate event. I, I probably haven't done a wonderful job. This is just, again, it's just a scratching of the surface. I'm just trying to do an introduction as we go up the mountain, and maybe I'll dive in deep on each one of these parts in each one of these stops. But for right now, I just want us to get us a feel for being endued with power, and then we're going to take the next step or the next stop up this mountain, and it's going to be proclaiming or being fishers of men. But let's pray. God, I thank you so much for everything you've done in my life. God, I thank you for baptizing me in your spirit. I thank you that I have the testimony, Lord, that it— I tried many times to do it, and it never happened. And it was not you, Lord, I was— it was all me. And I thank you that you remained faithful and that you finally was able to calm me down and get me baptized in your Spirit, where I get me in a place where I could accept your free gift. And God, I thank you for that. And I pray in Jesus' name that the person listening to this, if they've never been baptized in your Holy Spirit, Jesus, that you would have them quicken in their spirit, Lord, that they would get a hunger and that they would want to be endued with this power. That is your power, God. It is not my power. It's not their power. It is your power. And it, it is as a free gift for anyone who asks. And God, we thank you. We thank you for your word. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.