You need to come clean before you are endued with power.

Welcome to episode 178.

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 178. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am starting a new lesson and we're going to go to the middle of the mountain. We're going to jump from step 1 to step 5, big step, but we're going to go to endued with power. And the reason that I want to go here is because personally I think this is the place where the church needs the most help. I believe if I could put my finger on one spot that the church needs help, I think we have a power shortage in the church. And I believe it is just through, mostly through deception. And I want to open up the Bible and I want to kind of point out some of the things that Jesus said and some of the things that we are doing. You and I are the church. The church is not a building. The church are the people that are in the building. So I want to point to the power shortage that is in us. We have the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead living on the inside of us. That is not the shortage. The shortage is— and why I kind of tweaked with, do you see yourself as a sinner or a saint? It's very important how you see yourself in the body of Christ. If you see yourself as a sinner, then what you're going to do is you're going to justify why you sin. But if you see yourself as a saint then when you sin, you know that's out of character, that's not normal. So we have to start seeing ourselves as a powerful being. Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. So we have the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead living on the inside of us. It is our job as followers, as the church, to figure out what's inside of us and how to get it into this world. Okay, before I get to giving you the scriptures that I have for the endued with power, I've got to ask you to do a little visualization training. I need you to picture— I'm looking at right now, I'm looking at a glass. It's actually half full, and if you're optimistic, it's half full. If you're a pessimist, it's half empty. But I'm looking at a glass of water. It's clear water. It's a clear glass. So I'm looking at— it looks like crystal clear water. And it's my drinking water. And so I want you to picture a glass full of water, but then I want you to take some motor oil that you've been driving— it needs to be changed. I need you to take it out of your car and I need you to pour it into this crystal clear water. I need you to picture it murked. I need you to see just how nasty and gnarly this crystal clear water went when you dump in a pollutant. And then I want you to put— rub some of that stuff on your hands, and I want you to put it all over this clear glass on the outside. So now we got motor oil in our water on the inside, and we got motor oil on our hands and our glass, and we're touching it, and it's all nasty inside and out. Okay, when we're looking at this glass, I need you to now start picturing yourself before you've had Christ. We were dirty inside and out. We did not have the Holy Spirit inside. When we're born again We then can dump out all of that nasty water, and then we're put in clear, pure water. There's still some residue on the glass inside. There's still stuff stuck on the inside that needs to come out. That is the renewing of your mind. That's Romans 12:2. We've got to continually rinse out that inside. And you remember what I told you in a previous episode, that Christianity is from the inside out and from the bottom up. So we don't try to clean the the glass. And Jesus— and we're going to go to that real quick with the glass analogy in your mind— I want to go to Matthew 23:25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees! First cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, and the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. So Jesus is calling them out. Jesus was not saying, hey, you need it, you don't need to look good. God's kingdom is from the inside out and from the bottom up. And to get a picture of that, I want to take you to Mark 7:6. He answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men. The washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.' He said to them, 'All too well you reject the commandments of God that you may keep your tradition.' And then move to 13: 'Making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down, and many such things you do.' Well, if you've been here before, you know I have superior reading skills. And if this is your first time, you have just been put on notice about the wonderful skills that I have at reading the Bible. But I do have to read the Bible because this is a Bible study, and in order for us to know the truth, we've got to hear it. We've got faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Jesus was saying, look, y'all are starting to make up stuff and you're putting that ahead of what the word of God says. And this is a problem, I think, in the body of Christ today is because we listen. We're not reading the Word of God. We're listening to people like myself or like pastors or other teachers or evangelists. We're listening to them. And let's just assume that maybe I've got 60, 70% to where I have a 70% knowledge or understanding of the Word of God. Well, that's still, there's still a 30, that's like a C. If it's 70%, that's like a C knowledge of the material. And the Holy Spirit is an A++. I mean, he is 100% all the time. And the only thing, and the only reason that I read so much Word is so that you can hear the Word of God, and so that you have the ability to have the Holy Spirit start leading you into all truth. The point I'm trying to make is we've got this cup. If you can picture yourself as this cup, and we were messed up on the inside and then the outside, and if we can just dump some of this teaching, the traditions and doctrines of men, because we don't want to be like the Pharisees and we don't want to be like the Sadducees, that the word of God has no effect. We want fresh water, we want living water dumped into our container, into our cup. And so when we get the opportunity to learn from the Holy Spirit, that's what we want, and we want to do it with a clean and open cup. And I don't want you to just nod and agree with everything I say. I want you to go to the word of God, and I want you to figure this thing out for yourself. And I want you to ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, what are you trying to tell me with this? And the point that, again, that I want to make with this glass is that the Pharisees and most people, they dial up the outside. They make the outside and the front porch of the house look really good, the curb appeal. And so everyone driving by thinking, man, they've got it going on, look how good that house looks. But what's on the inside, the inside is just jacked up and messed up. What God wants you to do, the Holy Spirit is on the inside and he's cleaning house in there if you will let him. He's a gentleman, he's not gonna just take control, but if you start asking him, take it from me, I mean from someone for 29 and a half years that had sin all over, didn't know God from a billy goat and didn't know any better, it took a long time for God to clean this mess up that I had. So it's gonna take time. And if, if you don't know that your cup is a little bit contaminated, if you think everybody is teaching perfectly and they're perfectly teaching the Bible, I've just got to clue you in on a little secret. Maybe the best teacher in the world might have 80% understanding. We are just fallen beings. We maybe have our own agenda. I'm trying to build God's kingdom, but I know I'm flawed. I know that I'm not going to perfectly bring this word, but what I want to do for 10 or 15 minutes a day is just get you thinking about the word of God and getting you talking to the Holy Spirit and getting you kind of tweaking. Yeah, I think we need to do that. And the scripture that I really wanted to read, it starts in Mark 7:14. And when he called the multitude to himself, he said to them, hear me, everyone, and understand. There is nothing that enters a man from the outside which can defile him, but the things which come out of him Those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.' And then when the crowd left, his disciples— we're going to keep reading— they asked him, 'When he had entered a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he said to them, 'Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive whatever enters a man from the outside cannot defile him because it does not enter his heart but his stomach?' and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods. And he said, what comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man. So this is what Jesus is saying. Hey, we need to clean up the inside of the cup. We don't need to concern ourselves totally with the outside. And everybody is worried about what someone's going to think about them, or what, what I'm wearing, or how do I look. You know, that's why we have mirrors. And I'm not against looking good, and I'm not against you cleaning out the exterior of the cup, but if your inside of your cup is nasty then your, your whole being is nasty. This is just an introduction on endued with power, but before we start, you know, there's so many negative teachings on the power or being baptized in the Holy Spirit, and when I start talking about this, I just don't want you to come into this lesson with any preconceived ideas or notions. I don't want you coming into this lesson, into this important stop on the mountain, with thinking that went away in the apostolic period. I want to challenge you, you find— when is the apostolic period? Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If you are his disciple, Jesus told his disciples to wait and tarry until you are endued with power. He wasn't just telling those 12 or those 120 people in the upper room. This is a lesson from God that we all need. And I think that's one of the reasons the church is weak as a kitten. They're begging God to do what he's commanded us to do, and I'm jumping off and chasing 27 other rabbits that I'm not going to run after. But we are going to go into this power of God. We're going to go pretty hard and we're going to go pretty deep. And I just want you to buckle your seat belts because we're going to talk about the Bible. We're going to talk about what Jesus said, what Paul has taught, all of these things that are in the Word of God. And it may mess up some of your theology that you think, or you have got in your mind. I want you just to dump the cup out, and I want you to listen what the Word of God says. I want you to listen to what the Holy Spirit has to say about it, and I want you just to trust the Word of God. Don't trust me, but trust the Holy Spirit. Trust that we don't have all this figured out. Jesus being the same yesterday, today, and forever, I think we need the Holy Spirit and his power today more than the disciples needed it back in the day. And I— maybe not more, but as much, if not more. So that's enough for this episode. God, I thank you so much for everything you've done in my life. God, I thank you for this listener And I pray in Jesus' name that they would just start filling up their cup with living water, Lord, that has come straight from your word. Holy Spirit, I pray that if there's anything that I said that was not correct, Lord, help the person, help make it right in this person's walk. I thank you for everything. We love you. We thank 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.

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