Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I've had a week earlier this week I was sitting down with a friend of mine and co worker and it's a meeting that we have every week. Everything was normal.
[00:00:11] He made a very simple request of me and I just got so frustrated, so frustrated and angry. And I could tell like right away I was like, what is going on inside of me? And I started to think like, I need to apologize. I was trying to apologize because I knew that when I drove away I was going to be embarrassed and I was going to need to call him or text him.
[00:00:35] But as I was driving away I was just feeling like, ah, what is going on inside of me?
[00:00:42] Next day I'm having a conversation with the person that means the most to me in this world, my wife.
[00:00:49] And you know when you start having those conversations and you're just starting to miss and it's a topic that has some intensity to it and I just found myself getting frustrated and I could just tell right then it's like, no, no, no, abort mission. Abort mission backup. This is not going to go well.
[00:01:05] But I did and I was frustrated, ended up, there were tears.
[00:01:11] Driving to work, I'm just like, ah, what is going on with me? I hate the broken things that are happening inside of me.
[00:01:22] I have what I think is going to be a routine physical and I go in and it's always just been routine. But there's some things that surface that just cause me to realize like I'm getting older, my body just doesn't work the way that it should and there are things that are inside me that are broken. And I was just like, ah, I hate the fact that I'm just deteriorating as I get older. Older.
[00:01:47] Then I get a text from my son. He and his girlfriend are traveling over in Europe and he's there with a bunch of his friends and co workers. They're doing some work while they're over there in Italy. He's over there with all of his camera equipment and computer equipment.
[00:02:02] He gets his car broken into and it all gets stolen along with his passport and he just sends me this text. It's like, pray for me. I feel really scared and I'm just like, ah, I hate this world.
[00:02:18] You know, it's one thing when things are happening to you, but when it's happening to someone that you love, you just get angry.
[00:02:26] Then I sit down at my desk and it's time to turn to Romans chapter 8 and write a sermon on the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life that can Help us to live the kind of life that Jesus and it gives us this hope of eternity.
[00:02:46] But I'm looking at my life and I'm just like, I hate what I see in me. I hate what I see in the world.
[00:02:53] I need help.
[00:02:55] Romans chapter 8 gives us the promise of help because it is true if you are a follower of Jesus here today.
[00:03:05] The promise of Scripture is that God pours out his Holy Spirit into your life to help you become the kind of person that Jesus was.
[00:03:16] But here's the reality.
[00:03:18] Even with these promises, the promise of heaven, the promise of the Holy Spirit, we still struggle, we live in this incredible tension in this life between the promises of heaven and the problems of this earth.
[00:03:38] I want to remind you of a picture that we looked at this last week.
[00:03:45] This is the idea of the good news of the gospel. When Jesus proclaimed the good news, he didn't say that heaven is this place that you're going to go to when you die. He said, the good news of the Gospel is that heaven has come now near God's presence. His rule and reign is coming here to this earth. That's the promise. That's this picture.
[00:04:09] Heaven is coming to earth.
[00:04:13] But here's the reality, friends.
[00:04:16] We live in the in between.
[00:04:18] We live in those in between places.
[00:04:22] And that's why last week I kept saying over and over, the goal, the goal of your faith is not to go to heaven when you die, as if it's some location out there. Your goal, the goal of your faith is to bring heaven to earth while you live.
[00:04:41] But when we live in that in between place, we've got to acknowledge there is tension in that there are the promises of heaven, but there are just as much the problems of this earth, sin, evil, suffering, pain, brokenness out there in the world.
[00:05:05] And if we're honest with ourselves, broken in here too. It's not just the world. The brokenness is in us.
[00:05:14] And that's where Romans chapter 8, in my opinion, friends, is so helpful because the Apostle Paul, he acknowledges in Romans chapter 8 that there are these beautiful things that we experience in this life, but that we live in the in between. Romans chapter 8 starts with this incredible, incredible promise of God. Romans 8:1. It says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
[00:05:46] What Paul's saying is that even though there is sin and brokenness and shame and regret in our life, when we place our faith and our trust and what Christ accomplished for us on the cross, we get a new life, we get a clean slate.
[00:06:02] Paul Says you are as if you are holy, as holy as Jesus in God's sight. You've got nothing to prove.
[00:06:11] You've got this incredibly secure identity as the child of God, this beautiful truth.
[00:06:18] And then at the very end of Romans chapter 8, Paul ends it with this crescendo of this beautiful promise of heaven. Romans chapter 8, in verse 38, he says, For I am convinced, meaning I know that. I know that I know. I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[00:06:56] But in the middle of Romans chapter 8, Paul gets real honest.
[00:07:02] He gets real honest about this tension, this struggle that we live in. And he talks about why it is there are things in our life that make us go, ah, I hate that.
[00:07:15] Romans chapter 8. Starting in verse 22, he says this. We know.
[00:07:20] We know that the whole creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time.
[00:07:29] What's Paul saying?
[00:07:32] He's saying that we understand. We just look at the world that we live in. And I don't have to try to convince you that this world is broken.
[00:07:39] There is evil and pain and suffering in this world. And if you don't see it, just read the news.
[00:07:45] It's there every day. This world is broken. But it's not just the world out there that's broken. Paul says in verse 23, not only so, but we ourselves, we.
[00:07:59] We are broken on the inside.
[00:08:02] Those of us who have the first fruits of the spirit, meaning that God's spirit is poured out in our life as a follower of Jesus, and we've had the first fruits of it, kind of that early harvest of it, but we don't experience it completely fully. And here's the result is that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
[00:08:32] That was the message last week.
[00:08:34] Heaven is coming to earth. It is moving to Earth. And there will be a day, there will be a day that we long for when heaven and earth are the same place again, like it was in the beginning.
[00:08:47] Everything will be restored.
[00:08:49] Our relationship with him, our relationships with each other, even our physical bodies, all of that will be restored.
[00:08:57] And I want you to think about this.
[00:09:00] Oh, when we started the Book of Romans, I reminded you that this is your life and that you need to understand that your personal life is like a little microcosm of what God is doing all throughout the world.
[00:09:25] There is in your life as a follower of Jesus, there is the Holy Spirit that lives in you, but there is also your flesh.
[00:09:38] And there is this battle between the Spirit.
[00:09:43] What is this flesh?
[00:09:45] When we talked about it earlier In Romans chapter 8, I tried to explain it to you. It's that propensity in us to want to live life independently of God.
[00:09:55] We want the world to revolve around us.
[00:09:58] We want to be the king of our life. We don't want God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. We don't want anybody else to be king of our life. We want. We want to be king.
[00:10:10] And what God is doing on a micro level in our lives is God's spirit wants to push that out of our life. As we learn to surrender our life to him. Whatever it is that the Holy Spirit wants to do in us to make him the king of our life, we simply say yes, and we respond to him and we start to change from the inside out.
[00:10:36] And then lastly, Paul says that there is going to be an ultimate hope that we have that that will be true of us on a microcosm level in our life, but in the world in general.
[00:10:46] Verse 24, he says, for in this hope we were saved.
[00:10:52] But hope that is seen is no hope at all.
[00:10:56] Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.
[00:11:07] The redemption of our life, the redemption of this world. Paul says we wait for it patiently in the in between.
[00:11:19] How do we do that?
[00:11:21] How do we do that? How do we try to understand what it is that God wants to do to bring heaven to earth and to do it through us.
[00:11:29] To help you get your mind around even biblical history in terms of how God has been doing this as he has been working through this world in all time, I want you to understand this. You need to think about biblically, the word temple.
[00:11:44] Because as the biblical history unfolds, the word temple is incredibly important.
[00:11:51] In the nation of Israel, the temple was the centerpiece of worship. It was that place where God Himself dwelt. There was a place in the temple or the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies. And only once a year, the high priest would enter into the Holy of Holies with the blood of goats and lambs. That blood, payment for sin, would cleanse the nation of Israel for a year so that there would be a holy space.
[00:12:25] But then, 2,000 years ago, there was a new advent of God, not us going to him, to the holy of Holies, but God coming to us.
[00:12:40] And we call that the incarnation. That's what we celebrate at Christmas.
[00:12:46] This is what John said when he talked about this idea that God became flesh.
[00:12:50] John 1:14, it says the word and that word there is Jesus. Jesus became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
[00:13:02] That phrase that John uses right there, made his dwelling among us, literally translated means he tabernacled with, with us.
[00:13:12] What is John trying to explain to this Jewish and gentile audience? Trying to explain the reality. God's presence, his holiness has come near and it's come in the form of a man named Jesus.
[00:13:28] But then when Jesus was here, he talked about another advent that was going to come when he died on the cross, when he was buried, when he was raised on the third day in order that our sin could be paid for, that we could actually become a holy place in us. Jesus took our sin upon himself and Jesus gave us his righteousness so that we could be the holiness of God. A place where God's presence could dwell.
[00:14:06] And that's the promise that we've been talking about in Romans chapter 8, that for the follower, for a genuine follower, an all in follower of Jesus, God's spirit takes up residence in us.
[00:14:25] Let that sink in for just a second.
[00:14:29] Paul said it so clearly.
[00:14:31] First Corinthians 6:19.
[00:14:35] He says, do you not know that your bodies, your physical bodies, your flesh and blood are temples?
[00:14:47] There's that word again. Temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God.
[00:14:57] So when we think about biblical history, what God is doing right now is that the way that heaven breaks in to earth is through his people, through his children, through his followers. We are the agents.
[00:15:16] We are God's agents to bring heaven to earth.
[00:15:20] Moving heaven to earth, that is our job. We are God's plan. Plan A and there is no plan B.
[00:15:32] We're it.
[00:15:34] God made us to be temples, tabernacles, so that the very presence and power of God could come to this earth.
[00:15:44] As Jesus lives his life through us in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can actually do kinds of things that Jesus did when he was here.
[00:15:56] In fact, Jesus said something that was. Oftentimes when we read it, it sounds a little bit like crazy talk.
[00:16:02] He said that we would do greater things.
[00:16:07] We would do greater things when God's spirit indwells us. This is how he said it. Specifically John 14:12, he said, very truly, I tell you, whoever, whoever, anyone that believes in me, puts their faith in me, puts their trust in me.
[00:16:25] Will do the works that I have been doing. We will live the kind of life that Jesus lived, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
[00:16:39] That verse, friends, if you are paying attention at all, it provokes a question.
[00:16:46] What are these greater things that we would do?
[00:16:51] I mean, Jesus life was pretty spectacular, was it not?
[00:16:56] What are these greater things?
[00:16:59] Here's the problem. Oftentimes in cultural Christianity, we take these greater things to mean that we'll do more spectacular things, more astonishing miracles than even Jesus did.
[00:17:12] That would be what we would do. It would all be about signs and wonders in this world.
[00:17:18] But a plain reading of the text, an understanding of biblical history, these greater things simply mean that we collectively would do things that are greater in quantity, greater in scale, and greater in influence than even the life of Jesus. Here's how you need to think about it. Think about the life of Jesus. His ministry was only about three years of time, and he did it in this tiny little piece of geography about the size of New Jersey.
[00:17:54] But what he was trying to help us understand, that when the Spirit comes and dwells our life and we become his agents in the world, bringing heaven to earth, that means that every life that has the Spirit in it has the potential to do the kinds of things that Jesus did. So think about, think about just today.
[00:18:18] Think about the number of millions, maybe billions of people in this world that are followers of Jesus. What if.
[00:18:26] What if they decided to walk into this day saying, holy Spirit, I am available to you to change anything that you want to change in me, and I will do anything that you want me to do to bring heaven to earth. If everyone did that, it would be a sweeping.
[00:18:44] A sweeping change in this world. That's why Jesus is saying, when we get about the things of his kingdom, we actually have the potential to do greater things than even Jesus did himself in quantity. Because there's so many of us that have the spirit of God in us.
[00:19:03] So oftentimes when we. We think about these greater things, we think that it's about spectacular.
[00:19:10] You know, what are the things that are going to bring headlines? And there are spectacular things that God does through his people in this world. I'm not minimizing that, but here's the truth.
[00:19:21] Most of the things that God does through his people, it's not spectacular.
[00:19:28] It's actually subtle.
[00:19:32] It's subtle.
[00:19:34] Sometimes we may not even see it. I mean, what is a miracle?
[00:19:40] Is a miracle just changing water into wine?
[00:19:45] Or could a miracle also be changing the heart of A person that is hoarding their life and their resources and giving them a different heart, where they don't have a scarcity mentality, but they actually have an abundance mentality, and they're thinking about, I want to be generous with my life and my time and my money because the kingdom matters. That's a miracle.
[00:20:10] It's not just changing water into wine. It's changing the hearts of people.
[00:20:15] It's not just about healing a blind man so that he can see. It's about healing the eyes of us as followers so that they would be opened so that we can see the needs of the world around us and we can be thinking about Holy Spirit. How do you want me to step in to meet that need of the world around us?
[00:20:36] How can you use me?
[00:20:38] We think about someone being raised from the dead physically, but what about people that are raised from the dead spiritually?
[00:20:50] If you were around here last weekend at our baptisms, hearing the stories that people share about moving from darkness into light, it was so powerful.
[00:21:01] So powerful.
[00:21:03] I love preaching on baptism Sundays because it can be the worst sermon ever.
[00:21:13] And people are going to leave excited because they saw the kingdom of heaven come to earth.
[00:21:21] Those are miracles.
[00:21:23] Those are miracles, and we all get to be a part of it.
[00:21:28] So when we think about this heaven coming to earth, how do we do this?
[00:21:34] How does Jesus want us to be involved in bringing heaven to earth?
[00:21:40] The first thing that I would tell you is you need to make it personal.
[00:21:46] You need to make it personal when you think about bringing heaven to earth. Don't start with thinking about what I want to do out there in the world.
[00:21:53] Start with this.
[00:21:56] What does it look like to grow that in between part of your life where the Spirit, because you're responding to his prompts and his voice that are telling you what does it look like to let go of ways that you want to be the center of the universe and grabbing a hold of what he wants to do in your life? That's the kingdom of heaven coming to this earth. And I say personal.
[00:22:23] Start there. Because God is way more concerned about who you are and who you're becoming than he is about what you do. In fact, I think some of the greatest problems that we have in this world is that there are people out there trying to do things in the name of Jesus, but they don't have the character of Jesus to carry those things out. He cares more about who you are and not just what you do, because he's wanting to see your life transformed from the inside out. That's why the apostle Paul, in Romans 8:29, he talks about what God's ultimate goal for you is. He says for those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.
[00:23:10] God's goal for you is that you would be like Jesus.
[00:23:17] And when we become like Jesus, we would actually do the things that Jesus did.
[00:23:26] That's God's plan for you.
[00:23:29] He wants you to change the world, but he wants you to do that by changing you first.
[00:23:37] That's the picture when I think about my life.
[00:23:41] This is the kingdom of God.
[00:23:43] This is the kingdom of Bob.
[00:23:46] And I need, I need desperately for the kingdom of God to cover and to change the Kingdom of Bob. And so do you.
[00:23:58] I hear people say all the time, I love that idea. I just want more of the Holy Spirit in my life.
[00:24:05] And I think I understand what people say or what they mean when they say, I want more of the Holy Spirit. But let me just get technical with you for a second. It is theologically incorrect.
[00:24:17] The Holy Spirit is a person.
[00:24:20] If you are a follower of Jesus, you either have the Holy Spirit or you do not. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit. Let me say that really clearly. If you are not a follower of Jesus, you do not have the Holy Spirit. You can't have more of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit can have more of you.
[00:24:44] And that's the question.
[00:24:46] It's not whether we have more of the Holy Spirit, it's does the Holy Spirit have more of us? And that only comes through surrender.
[00:24:54] As we open our lives wide open and we say, Holy Spirit, whatever you want to say, whatever you want to do, the answer is yes, get rid of my flesh, take the kingdom of God and replace the kingdom of Bob. That's what I pray.
[00:25:11] Because the truth is, God wants to do something in us.
[00:25:15] He wants to do something in us before he wants to do something through us.
[00:25:22] Allow your life to be changed by him.
[00:25:26] What does this path look like if we, if we truly embrace this idea that we would be about bringing heaven to earth?
[00:25:35] We need to look at. How does Jesus talk about bringing heaven to earth?
[00:25:41] I want to look at.
[00:25:43] If you wanted to study this From John chapter 13 to John chapter 17 is this account of the final night before when Jesus, final night before Jesus was arrested. And he's talking a lot throughout 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. He's talking about the Holy Spirit and the things that were to come.
[00:26:02] And at the beginning of verse 14, Jesus said this. He talked about returning to the Father, preparing a place for them, and then ultimately, at the end of time, he's going to return and take them with him. That place when heaven and earth once again are like it was in Eden. God's space and our space is one space.
[00:26:20] But then Jesus said this in verse four, he said to his disciples, you know, you know the way to the place where I'm going.
[00:26:32] He's like, you know the way.
[00:26:35] Sometimes when we read that, it can be confusing to us.
[00:26:39] And the truth is, it was actually confusing to his first followers, his first disciples.
[00:26:45] That's why Thomas, he gets his hand in the air.
[00:26:49] Jesus, I got a question.
[00:26:51] He says this in verse five. Thomas said to him, lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?
[00:27:02] See, Thomas, he had that mental map that we were talking about last week that says, heaven is a place that I go when I die.
[00:27:12] But Jesus mental map was always, no, no, no. Heaven is a place that is coming to earth while you live. See, Thomas is like, this a place out there. Give me some directions, give me a Google, Google Maps, something.
[00:27:25] I need to know how to get there.
[00:27:29] But Jesus was not talking about geography.
[00:27:32] He was talking about the path.
[00:27:36] What are the things that you're going to experience on the path? If, if indeed you are on the path, where with Jesus?
[00:27:44] Because Jesus saying, guys, gals, you've watched my life, you've seen all the things. You've seen how I have been bringing heaven to this earth. And you need to remember that path is a path of humility.
[00:28:00] That path is a path of suffering.
[00:28:04] That path is a path of pain.
[00:28:08] And ultimately that path is a path of death.
[00:28:13] All the things in our life that cause us to groan, ah, I want something different. But Jesus said it, I am the way.
[00:28:22] I am the way and the truth and the life.
[00:28:27] If you want to walk with me, if you want to be all in with me, you have to walk the path that I walked.
[00:28:35] And here's the deal. When we hear that the path is full of suffering and pain and even death, we get reluctant.
[00:28:44] But you know what? So did the first disciples.
[00:28:47] They were reluctant as well.
[00:28:50] We want to claim, just like the first disciples, we want to claim the promises of Jesus, but we don't want to walk the path that he walked.
[00:29:00] We want the road.
[00:29:02] We want the road of bringing heaven to earth, but we want that road to be comfortable.
[00:29:08] We want that road to be pain free.
[00:29:12] We want it to be free of cost. We want it to be free of sacrifice.
[00:29:16] Of course we want that.
[00:29:19] But Jesus told his disciples and he tells us, that's not the road.
[00:29:23] That's not the road.
[00:29:26] If we want to do the works of Jesus, we have to do it the way of Jesus.
[00:29:31] And what we oftentimes want to do is that we want to use the tactics of the kingdom of this world, not the tactics of the kingdom of heaven. We want to use power, we want to use money, we want to use influence.
[00:29:49] And in a twisted side, sometimes we're even willing to use fear and coercion to try to get people to think the way that we think, that they should think. We want to fight.
[00:29:58] But Jesus is saying over and over, that's not the way you bring heaven to earth. In my kingdom, it's not about power, it's about surrendering power.
[00:30:11] I want to just read this really quickly. Here's Jesus speaking truth to power. This is at the end of his life. He is standing before one of the most powerful, powerful men on the planet.
[00:30:22] Pilate, the Roman governor. The person who in himself has the capacity to take Jesus life from him.
[00:30:32] And here's what Jesus said. This is how he speaks truth to power.
[00:30:36] John 18:36. Jesus said, My kingdom, my kingdom is not of this world.
[00:30:44] The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of world, they operate on two completely different operating systems.
[00:30:50] If it were, if my kingdom was of this world, he's saying, if it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders.
[00:31:00] But now my kingdom is from another place.
[00:31:06] If we're going to bring heaven to earth, if we're going to fight the good fight that Jesus asks us to fight, it's not like the world fights.
[00:31:17] It's not top down.
[00:31:19] It's not about power and money and influence.
[00:31:22] In fact, it's completely turned upside down.
[00:31:25] God's kingdom from the bottom up.
[00:31:29] God's kingdom is established through humility, through pain and suffering.
[00:31:37] That's the way of Jesus.
[00:31:41] But I'll say it, it's so tempting, isn't it, to want to separate the work that Jesus has called us to do from the way that Jesus has called us to do it.
[00:31:53] We can't separate the work from the way that he's called us to.
[00:31:57] Because the reason I think sometimes is that the scope of what he's asked us to do to bring heaven to earth, it just feels overwhelming. It's like we want to bring, we want to use shortcuts, we want to use the weapons of this world. But Jesus said that, not that is not my way.
[00:32:14] I want to do something in you, your little small life.
[00:32:23] I mean, I don't mean this in a demeaning way, but your life is small and so is mine in light of the whole of this world.
[00:32:33] But Jesus wants to use you even in our small life. Our small life and my small life matter to him.
[00:32:42] He wants to do something in you.
[00:32:44] And when he does something in you, he can change the world, even if it's really small.
[00:32:49] That's why when Jesus, when he was telling the parables of the kingdom, and I'd encourage you just to go back through the book of Matthew and maybe reread some of these parables of the kingdom of God and read those with this lens in mind. Here's what Jesus had to say. Matthew, chapter 13. He talked about the kingdom being like a mustard seed and being like yeast.
[00:33:14] Says he told them another parable.
[00:33:17] The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field.
[00:33:23] Though it is the smallest, all the seeds, it's tiny, almost imperceptible, he says, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds come and perch on its branches.
[00:33:45] Do you hear what he's saying?
[00:33:47] Your life, even though it's small. And the things that he's doing in your life maybe feel really small. These little changes, these tiny little ways when you've got your hands open to the Holy Spirit saying, yes, whatever it is that you're asking me to do, whatever you want to change in me, however you want to use me in this world, all those little decisions have huge implications.
[00:34:13] That's what Jesus wants us to know. Even though your life is small, your influence can be large because he's involved, because he's involved in changing us. And then he said another parable in verse 33. The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about 60 pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.
[00:34:39] I think you get the picture.
[00:34:42] Here's your assignment.
[00:34:45] I like to give assignments. I was really grateful that this week the assignment was given to me by somebody else. Every once in a while, God will just drop something in my lap. And I was grateful that he did it. This week I got a text.
[00:34:57] I got a text from a friend about last week's sermon.
[00:35:02] And he was sharing with me just a little bit about what that was doing in the life of his kids.
[00:35:08] He said, it's interesting when they're getting ready for school now they're talking with each other.
[00:35:14] And they're talking with us asking the question, how are we gonna bring heaven to earth today?
[00:35:22] They're thinking about it. Then he sent me a screenshot of a text of him and one of his kids that was like, did you bring the kingdom of heaven to earth today? And the answer was like, yes. And I can't wait to tell you about it.
[00:35:36] That's your assignment.
[00:35:39] If kids can do it, we can all do it.
[00:35:43] That's what it takes.
[00:35:45] Little small decisions every day, moment by moment, where we've got our hands wide open, saying, holy Spirit, what do you want to do in my life?
[00:35:58] What do you want to say to me?
[00:36:01] How do you want to change me?
[00:36:03] You tell me the answers. Yes.
[00:36:06] And as we walk into this world, we're continually asking the Holy Spirit, how do you want to use me in the lives of other people? How do you want to use me in this world to bring heaven to earth?
[00:36:16] And whatever comes to our heart and mind, we just say, the answer is yes.
[00:36:21] Holy Spirit, what do you want to do in me?
[00:36:24] Holy Spirit, what do you want to do through me?
[00:36:29] Because that's what's true.
[00:36:31] God always wants to do something in you before he ever does something through you.
[00:36:38] Let's pray.
[00:36:45] Jesus, when you were here, when you were teaching your disciples how to pray, there were some things that you wanted them to have on the forefront of their minds.
[00:37:00] And I pray that the Holy Spirit would move in this place and those things that were on the forefront of what you were teaching would be on the forefront of our minds as well.
[00:37:10] You taught them this to pray like our Father who is in heaven, Holy is your name.
[00:37:22] Father, we just acknowledge right here, right now that you are holy.
[00:37:30] But we also acknowledge, God, that the good news of the gospel is that the reality that you are in heaven doesn't mean that you are a long ways off. The reality of the gospel is that heaven is right here.
[00:37:44] Heaven is breaking into earth.
[00:37:47] And Jesus, you taught us to pray. Then after that, your kingdom come, your will be done here on earth just like it is in heaven.
[00:38:04] Jesus, we surrender to you.
[00:38:07] We bow before you and we say, whatever it is, whatever your will is, we say, yes, we want to bring your kingdom of heaven to this earth. Use us to do that.
[00:38:22] Whatever you want to say, Jesus, the answer is yes.
[00:38:27] And it's in your powerful and resurrected name that we pray.
[00:38:32] And all God's people said, amen.
