- Well good morning. My name is Seth Fagerland and I'm a, joy and privilege serving as the high school and family pastor. I'm getting waved at down here, that's great. Here at Rockpoint, it's so good to see you. Our friends in the warehouse, special greeting to you as well. I'm glad you are here this morning as we worship our Lord together. Well as not only the youth guy, but a guy who believe in relational ministry, I believe very much in getting to know people well. Playing different games that do that. So a game like hot seat, and long car rides, getting to know people, but there's also this game called Two Truths and a Lie. All right, I'm not advocating lying in church, but this is a fun way to get to know people sometimes. Seeing the random things about people you don't normally know, but also how good of liars other people are. Or bad liars, I'm a bad liar. Okay? But one of the things that I share when I play this game, I'm kind of showing my cards here a little bit so if I ever play with you I'm at a disadvantage. But one of the things that I share that most people don't know about me is that I was a card carrying member of the University of North Dakota Skydiving Team. All right? Now don't be too impressed, I only made one jump. Because then I realized how much it was gonna cost me to get fully licensed. I'm like, "I can't do this, I'm a poor college kid." But, I did do what's called a static line skydiving jump. And what that is, is you go up in typically a high wing plane, you don't go up as high as tandem, you go up to like 4,000 feet, but there is a cord, or a static line that's attached to the pin on your parachute to the plane. So all you have to do is let go correctly, fall correctly, which you think would be no problem with gravity, but falling correctly is important. And it pulls the pin and the parachute comes out and you fly down by yourself, okay? So I want to show you actually what this kind of looks like. All right? So, once you get through all the training and everything and lets just fast forward where you're actually in the plane ready to get out. There's a little step right here, where they're like, "Go sit, go stand on that." At 4,000 feet that step is really, really tiny, okay. But eventually, then your instructor says, and then there's a support arm, I forgot to say this, that goes form about the wheel up to the bottom of the plane. And then at some point, you're supposed to shimmy your arms up there, and you get to this point where you're dangling underneath the plane. You've stepped off the thing, right. And still, you're just like okay, I got this. And then there's that moment where the instructor says now let go. Okay. Let go. And this is not me. These are just pictures I find online, okay, so don't, you're like is that Seth? Is that really Seth? All right. But that moment where you have to let go is one of the most terrifying, but also exhilarating moments because in that moment, you are placing 100% of your life, regardless of your own self-reliance, your own previous victories, previous failures, nothing else matters in that moment except for that chute fulfilling it's purpose in your life, and that is to catch you. And that moment when that chute does open up, oh, and you get caught, and even though it hurts, but you're like thank you God, that hurts that you're caught, but then you get to ride this thing all the way down. It's an unbelievable, mesmerizing experience. Now I want you to think about that parachute with me for a moment, okay. Weeks of training on the ground before we would ever get in the plane, repetitiveness over and over and over again, what to do, what to do, what to do, that parachute is still there. And even that moment where you get in the plane, and it's taxiing, and that's where it got really real, like oh, there's no turning back now, right. That parachute is there. When I get out of the plane, and I'm standing on that little step, that parachute is still there. When I am dangling underneath the wing, that parachute is still there. But when did I experience the power of the parachute in my life was when I let go. You see, to simplify it, there's three things that are required for me to experience the power of a parachute. One is I have to say yes to it, right. I had to be ludicrous enough to sign up for it, right. My family thought I was a little, wasn't doing well in the moment, right. You okay, right? But I had to say yes to it. I had to put myself in the right environment, or the right surroundings to experience it, right. Riding in a car, a bicycle, a tractor, lawnmower, whatever, I'm not gonna experience the power of a parachute until I get in a plane, and I put myself in the right place. But even then, even after saying yes, even after even getting in the plane, the only way that I was gonna experience the power of that parachute was to what? Let go. I had to let go. Well we've been going through a series as a church called unshakable truths. And we've been walking through major foundational truths upon which believers in Jesus have affirmed for centuries. This is not new stuff. So if you're newer to Rockpoint, I'd encourage you, go back and check out the journey we've been on since the fall, and the key truths that we've been hitting along the way. Well this morning, we'll in Ephesians chapter five. So you can start turning there in your Bibles or in your electronic version. It's on page 970 in the chair rack ahead of you. But as you're turning there, I want us to remember last week where Roy took us, okay. Pastor Roy hit on the foundational truth of the trinity that we believe that God is, that there's one God who's eternally co-existing as father, son, and holy spirit. And in a perfect relationship of oneness. And Roy went even further into more specifically the role that the Holy Spirit plays in our lives. Okay, I'm not gonna repeat all that content today, so you'll need to go back, it's good for your memory to go back and review it again, to remember it again, of if you missed it, go check it out from last week. But today, we get to ask this question how. How do we experience the power of the Spirit in our lives? If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus, He's there. That moment you trust Jesus, your Lord and Savior, He is there. You have been adopted as sons and daughters. You have been sealed. You have the power of the, the Holy Spirit is in dwelling in you. We've been worshiping it all morning. But just like that parachute, who is there, when did we fully experience the power of that? When do we experience the Spirit filled life? That's what we're gonna talk about together this morning, okay. But before we do that, can you pray with me? I'd appreciate that. Jesus, thank you for this morning. The freedom and the opportunity to gather, and Lord, for just a moment to remember that we join in your church that is gathering all over the world. From mega arenas to grass huts, to underground basements under cover, God, your people are gathering everywhere this morning to open your word to remember who you are, and to remember who we are in you. Holy Spirit, fill us this morning, open up our hearts and our minds to receive and comprehend your Spirit filled life in us. In your name we pray, amen. Ephesians chapter five, starting in verse 15. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns in spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything that God the father, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is the word of the Lord. So the question we're asking, what does the Spirit filled life look like. At the bottom of your sermon guide, there's a resource that we wanted to point your attention to. It's written by this guy named Dr. Bill Bright. He is the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International, now called CRU, and this resource called the Spirit filled life, has literally been used all over the globe to help believers understand and how to go after the Spirit filled life. So just hold on to that reference, check that out later. A lot of good stuff in there, and I'll be using parts of it. But in there, he describes that there are really three different types of people. Okay. It helps us to understand as we approach this. First is the natural person. Okay, the natural person is someone who is not trusted Jesus. So Jesus is outside of their life, though very much a self-directed life. They try to handle life and circumstances and decisions oftentimes in frustration. But then he says there is a Spirit filled life. The Christ centered life empowered by the Holy Spirit, where Jesus is on the throne and self is in a position of surrender and yielding and saying God, I want what you want, and experiencing what that life is like that. But there's a third person that we don't often talk about, but I think will help us in our journey in following Jesus together. And that is a person called the carnal person. The Bible refers to the carnal person, and this is a person who has trusted Jesus, but is trying to live the Christian life on their own strength. Jesus is in their life, but self has been still placed on the throne trying to control, direct, and even you know, empower their own life to do it on their own ability. This also is a self directed life and also experiences extreme amounts of frustration. All right. So God has promised the abundant life. Okay, John 10:10, Jesus said I have come that he may have life and have it abundantly, Acts 1:8, before he ascends victoriously, Jesus promises, Acts 1:8, that you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes on you. You will be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. And the verses that a lot of us might be familiar with, Galatians chapter five, what is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Then why is it that most Christians struggle to experience this abundant life? Right? Why is there a gap between what we know is true and what we do, right? So often we can say the right answers of what we know is true, but our behaviors and our actions, and even our desires don't always line up with what we know is true. You see, the carnal Christian, as we mentioned earlier, cannot experience the abundant life that Jesus is referring to because they're still trusting in their own efforts to live it out from here on out. Hunter mentioned it. Doug mentioned it. Right. We get self-reliant. I got this God, thanks for the forgiveness. I'll take it from here. Self centeredness, we, we are naturally born this way, but we naturally want life our way. We like when things revolve around us, even in our Christianity. And then even, this is one that we often miss, even our self condemnation of dealing with when we know our, we cannot live this out. So some of these traits that Dr. Bright in that resource mentioned, the Christian does not fully trust God. Before I share this list, I want to put my name at the very top, because I have struggled with each and every one of these things. And we are a community of broken and imperfect people. But we have found hope in Christ. But we've all struggled with unbelief, disobedience, poor or even just absent prayer life, no desire for the Bible, a legalistic attitude, or a judgemental, critical spirit of others, impure thoughts, jealousy, guilt, frustration, aimlessness, worry, discouragement, loss of love for God and even others. With experience a gap between what we know is true and what we do. Now look at how our passage begins this morning. It says now "look carefully how you walk, "not as unwise but as wise, "redeeming the time, "because the days are evil. "Therefore do not be foolish, "but understand what the will of the Lord is." Well, what is the will of the Lord? Right, so often we get caught up in that as some mysterious thing that we'll never fully understand. God has made it very clear for them beginning what his design, his intent was. He made Adam in Eve in their image, and then he breathed his life, his spirit into them. So the will of the Lord is not only that we reflect, and we are made in the image of God, is that we carry the Spirit of God within us. Okay, we've been walking through this in this series, Unshakable Truth, and I'm not gonna rehash all of this, but you know where the story goes, right. That good news didn't last long. Adam and Eve ultimately said thanks but no thanks, God. We wanna take it from here. We wanna decide for ourselves what is good or not good. We want to be on the throne. And you and I were born into the struggle with sin ever since of who's on the throne. Now when we described earlier of what a carnal person was, it's the understanding that a believer in Jesus, when you trust God as your Lord and your savior, you receive the Holy Spirit, and yet even though our sin nature has been crucified, it is dead, the Bible describes it in multiple places that we still experience the residual effects of sin. And it'll be that way until we are fully glorified. So there is this sliding scale that we experience as followers of Jesus in this life. We have these moments where we experience the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace and on, which we cannot describe any other reason other than God is real in our life. Many of you are in this room, and at some point in your life, you can say I remember what that is like. Yet we can all agree that we still have that other experience on the other scale of the struggle of what it's like to try to live this life out. And we have all those worries and those doubts and those fears, and the anxieties, right. So even then, even when we struggle, there is a, a assurance of the presence of the Holy Spirit because we experience that conviction, right, that we even are aware of it, all right. I work with young people. I love what I get to do. But it's a tough season of life, okay. They're all, I'm trying not to look at them so they don't feel like I'm staring at any of them, right. This season of your life where you are becoming its differentiation. You are growing in your understanding of who you are, your identity of where you belong in your community, and what is my purpose, what am I doing here. But that is also a season where they struggle with their faith. Because when they come to realize that man, the black and white is gone, there's a lot of gray, and man, I'm usually on the wrong side of that. They interpret the struggle as either well, Christianity must not be true, or I must not be good enough to belong to it. And that is where you see a lot of young people have a crisis of faith moment. And my friends, let me assure you, even if you are here and that's where you're at, I want you to know even that process where you are struggling, or you're aware of the struggle, it is a, it an assurance that the Holy Spirit is doing something in your life. You showed up today. And there are no coincidences. And I wanna pause for just a moment because I am very aware every Sunday morning that we are a gathering of many who show up, who the struggle is real. And my friend, if that is you, I want you to know that God sees you. He knows you. And he loves you more than you'll ever know. And I want you to have the assurance that the Holy Spirit is doing something in you that is real. It's a journey, but he's doing something really cool. Well, look carefully then how you walk, not as wise but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil, therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Verse 18, "do not get drunk with wine, "for that is debauchery", but what? "Be filled with the Spirit." Be filled with the Spirit. Well he says first, do not get drunk. Yes, Paul is addressing an issue that is probably going on in the church at Ephesus. All right. I find that great comfort that most of the New Testament is written because the church was messed up, right. Find comfort in that today because we're still messed up, right. And we can find hope that God is doing a work that is in us. So yes, he is addressing probably a situation that's going on, but there's nothing new under the sun, as you all can probably attest and approve of that, right. So he says not only don't get drunk, but literally says do not be one who drinks with the expectation or the intention of becoming drunk. He says don't let anything else control you beyond what your natural ability is able to do, right. Cause he says the evidence of that is true, the brokenness of that as many have experienced sadly. But he says instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Or literally, he says get yourself carried away with the Holy Spirit. Now for you grammatical people out there, which I'm not naturally that way. I have to work hard at it. It's in the tense of present passive imperative. Now imperative means there's an urgency to it, or almost a command. Do this. Do this now. Don't put this off. Don't say I'll consider that later. This is something you need to take note of right now. But then it's also in the passive form, which means this isn't something you can do. This is the feeling of the Holy Spirit is only something the Holy Spirit can do. So it's not something you can make happen. It's something you allow to happen in your life. Now some of you may be like wait, wait, wait, Seth, you just said it's an imperative that I'm supposed to do something, and then you said I can't do anything. What is it? What am I, what are we supposed to do? Well, I appreciate the way Josh McDowell said it in his book, he said the power for living the Christian life doesn't depend as much on what we do as it does on what we don't do. This is why I shared the parachute illustration at the beginning, and yes, please don't misunderstand me. There are certain efforts that are needed by us, and there is definitely a role for spiritual formation in the journey of being a follower of Jesus. But the formula for living the Spirit filled life is not what we can do. So remember what we said with the parachute thing. Number one, we have to say yes to it. We have to say yet. We actually have to want it, right. When we receive the Holy Spirit, and we trust Jesus as Lord and savior, that is yes a moment of faith, but that is an ongoing moment, faith as saying God, I want your power, your rule and reign in my life. But then not only do we have to say yes to it, we have to put ourselves in situations, in environments where that is encouraged, right. 'Cause we do have control over the environments we play ourselves in, of is it encouraging or discouraging God at work in our lives. And again, I work with young people, and if they often said man, God just doesn't seem very real in my life. I don't sense God's love in my life. I'm just starting to question if I even belong to him. I'll start asking, tell me about your life recently. What have you been doing? Where've you been hanging out? What have you been, who have you been surrounding yourself with? What have you allowed yourself to focus on? Because all of that effects what we experience, those environments, the places we put ourselves. But ultimately, ultimately, even after saying yes, and the right environments, we have to what? We have to let go. You see faith is not just a one time decision of trusting Jesus as your Lord and savior. Faith is an ongoing act of trust every day of placing your life in God's hands. You know, the classic Jesus take the wheel, it's a little different you know, 'cause you could always take that wheel back. When you jump out of a plane, you can't take that back. That's saying God, if you don't show up, I got nothing. I got nothing. Which is why the Bible says he's not only our savior, but he's our Lord, and he rules and reigns because he lives. You see, we are naturally self reliant, and our sin nature obviously wants to make life about us. We still like life revolving around us. And in this brokenness we've inherited, but it's also our self condemnation. All right, I see a lot of believers struggle with that false humility. And they think it's righteous. You see humility is not, it's still, false humility is still a form of pride. See humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's not tearing yourself down. It's thinking of yourself less, which means you're thinking about someone else more. So what are we supposed to do? Okay, the McDowell say this in their book. He says we are to bring all of our ambitions, our desires, our hopes and dreams, however noble they may be, and sacrifice them to God. It's an offering to God. This means that we give up our own abilities, our talents, our goodness, and our self-help efforts and we consider them useless. And we are then to place our trust in his goodness, in his strength. And when we let God know that we wanna see Him honored and not us, He sees and He responds powerfully. It is when we are yielding to Him that He can unleash his Holy Spirit in and through our lives. So what are we supposed to do? It's the only thing we can do. It's a choice. It's not about trying harder. Think about it. You could try as hard as you want, you will never make yourself a more loving person. You'll never make yourself a more joyful person. There is nothing you can do to make peace come into your life. It's a choice to surrender and yield. It is that letting go, letting go of that self-reliance, letting go of that self-centeredness, letting go of that self-condemnation. And it's only then do we experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit's power and feeling in our lives. Now when that happens, there are certain evidences, or even signs that show the Spirit filling in our lives as we get to experience it. And Paul goes on to explain that here in Ephesians five. He says first there is a heart that is longing for Jesus. Verse 19, a heart that is longing for Jesus. He says that addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in the Lord to your heart, with your heart. You see this is not instructions for how to do worship ministry. I'm sorry, Pastor Doug, it's not, all right. Okay, but he's talking about singing, making melody to the Lord with your heart. Why does he say it that way? Because that same phrase that he uses in verse 18, to be filled with the Holy Spirit is the phrase he uses earlier in Ephesians chapter three in the beautiful prayer that hey prayers for the believers there. Check it out, Ephesians three. Let me just start in verse 14. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named that according to the riches of His glory, He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His spirit in your inner being. Verse 17. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled, there it is, with all the fullness of God. What did he pray for them? He prayed that they would know the love of God. That's what he prayed for them. Sounds really simple, doesn't it? But so, so incredibly complex. You see, the sign of the Spirit filling your life is when you're overflowing and you're overwhelmed by God's love for you. You're heart will long for him. No one will ever love you like this. This is the way you are made to be loved. And it is the most natural thing in the world to love God back when you experience his love for you first. And it's knowing up here. It's not knowing up here. He says it's beyond knowledge. It's knowing it here. It's an experience. It is a truth that you place your soul and your spirit into as we try to even comprehend it up here. God wants our obedience, of course, but he wants us. He wants you. He wants me. And singing is that natural response that you just can't take anymore. Look at what God has done. Look at who we are in Him. And even if you're not musical whatsoever, we can all agree that there's a way that music describes things that even words can't even be put into place, right. So to experience the power of the Holy Spirit filling your life, we have to say yes to it. We love because he first loved us. For God so loved you, that he sent his son for you, that if you believe, you will not perish, but you will have everlasting life with Him 'cause he wants to be in that relationship with you. So you have to say yes to that. But then you also have to put yourself in the right environment, the right situations to experience that. That is why we gather. You see, church on a Sunday morning is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end. It's a means to gather to remember who God is, and who we are in Him, and we go off from this place living that truth out. It's why we gather in life groups during the week. But we not only say yes to it, we not only put ourselves in the right environments for it, we have to what, we have the let go. And as simple as this sounds, you need to let God love you. I know that sounds simple. But it's incredibly hard sometimes isn't it. Because it gets down to that core of who you are. It gets down to that place where we are holding on to something else. Let go of that self-reliance, that self-centeredness, that self-condemnation. That is what grace is. It is undeserved. It's not based upon any quality or condition which means you cannot earn it, which means there's nothing you can do to ever make God love you any more. And if that is true, then there's nothing you could ever do to make God love you any less. Let God love you and you will experience that heart longing for Jesus. Well the second sign, and I need to keep cruising here, of the evidence of the Holy Spirit filling your life is the continual thanks in the name of Jesus, a continual thanks. Verse 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And we see the trinity right there filled with the Spirit, to God the Father, in the name of Jesus the son. But he says give thanks always and for everything. And giving thanks is a choice. It's not dependent on having or not having, which means it's not based upon a feeling. And again, I work with young people. And we now live more than ever in a day in the age where truth is based upon your feelings. What you feel must be true, therefore truth must become subjective. It's your truth, not my truth, and whatever. And glad that works for you. And as much as I can clearly see that in the lives of young people who deal with some pretty strong emotions now more than ever, I see this in my own life, and I see this in other adults. See, this is where Dr. Bright gives another helpful illustration to understand fact and faith and feelings. He says do not depend on feelings, but the promise of God's word, not our feelings is our authority. As Christians, we live by faith in the trustworthiness of God himself and his word. So the engine of the train is the facts of the truth of who God is. God is, by definition, that's who he is. And he has revealed himself through his word. And the connector for us to Him is our faith. It's not our ability to earn, it's literally us connecting saying I trust you. And then the caboose is our feelings, that we do experience when we live out our faith and our obedience, okay. So the engine can run by itself. God does not need us to be God. And it is foolish to think that the caboose could pull the engine the opposite way. We don't let our feelings define who God is. God has revealed who he is. And we attach ourselves to him. And it is in that moment when we trust in him first, and we see what he has done for us that we discover and we experience who we are and right, true feelings will follow. May take some time, but it will come. So to experience the power of the Holy Spirit filling your life, we have to say yes to it. To pray in the name of Jesus, as it says, it means to pray in faith trusting in him as the mediator between us and God. That throne of grace. And then we have to put ourselves in the right environments, the right surroundings, which means we have to do the hard work of emotional awareness of anything or any one else that we are trusting in for our sense of significance or security. We have to be aware. We have to do that hard work. We have to peel back the layers. We have to look past the outside and say deep down where am I placing the throne of my heart in. But then we have to let go. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, for I have been crucified with Christ, that it is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in this body, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and he gave himself for me. It is that place, my friends, that you will experience a continual thanks in the name of Jesus. The third sign of the Spirit filling our lives is elevating others out of reverence for Jesus, elevating others. Verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. This could be a whole message in and of itself. Okay, the word submit is a loaded word and it has been misunderstood, misapplied in many places. But what he's talking about here, he's not talking about abuse situations. He's not talking about not having healthy boundaries. He's not talking about confronting and dealing with sin and brokenness in other people's lives. But what he is saying is when it comes to submitting to one another, it is elevating someone else as more significant than yourself. But why out of reverence for Jesus? Now notice it again, it is not based upon the other people deserving it. Right. We default to conditional life because it's cleaner, we think. At least we think we can control it. But there's no peace in it. That is what is so wild about this Christian life that we enter into this reality of God's great love for us knowing that we did not deserve it. We are now empowered to live a life where we can love others when they don't deserve it either. Philippians two, he writes, "do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, "but in humility count others "as more significant than yourselves. "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, "but also to the interests of others. "Have this mind among you." And in this verse is a transition verse, verse 21, as then he goes into examples of what does it look like to actually elevate others for their sake out of reverence for Jesus. And he talks about the husband wife relationship. He talks about the parent child relationship. He even talks about the employer employee relationship. But we don't have time to unpack that this morning. But to experience this power of the Holy Spirit filling your life, we have to say yes to it. And this one's hard because there's a lot of times I don't want to. Even when I know I'm doing it, I wanna hold on to my, to my, my bitterness. I wanna hold on to my jealousy. I wanna hold on to my pity party, my self-righteousness, my deceit, my gossip, my unforgiveness, and the list can go on and on and on. I don't naturally let go of that, especially when dealing with another person. So it's hard to say yes to this. It's hard to release and let go, and the first step in any healing is admitting to what you have a problem. I have to first and foremost admit God if I hold on to this, this is a bad life for me and for others. But to release it and say God, first and foremost, I want what you want. We have to put ourselves in the right place, which means, which may mean repentance. It may mean you acknowledging where you messed up. You own up your side of the road. It may mean an apology. It may mean you going to that other person saying I have wronged you, and would you please forgive me. And even if the tables are turned, and the person has not repented, or apologized, you still have the choice to forgive. Forgiveness is not based upon that other person. Forgiveness is your choice to release that person without any payment in return. And that is hard to do, which means you can't do it in your own strength. But there's a power that is available for you to do it. And we let go, as it says in Second Timothy one, for God gave us not a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and of love, of self control. You will experience this power to elevate, and lift up others out of reverence for Jesus, which is so powerful because Jesus himself loved the people who were crucifying him. Jesus loved Judas who betrayed him. There is no one in your life that you cannot, with his power, elevate above yourself. So what are we supposed to do to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It's the only thing we can do. We have to say yes to it. It's a choice. We need to put ourselves in the right environments for it to happen, right. But ultimately, we have to let go of our self-reliance, of our self-centeredness, and even our self-condemnation, and then and only then will we experience the power of the Holy Spirit filling our lives. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the freedom again to gather. Thank you for everyone who showed up today. God, there is no coincidences in your world. And for those where the struggle is real, again Jesus I pray that they take hold of your truth that you are doing a work in them because of your great love for them. Jesus, by your help, help us to say yes to you today. Help us to put ourselves in their right place, God, for us to have our focus on you, but hen Jesus, only with your help can you help us let go and experience your filling of your spirit in our lives. It's in the powerful name of Jesus we pray, amen.