Good morning. I’m glad you are here. As most of you have probably figured out by now, it is Pentecost – the day we celebrate the birthday of the Church of Jesus Christ. We celebrate the birth of that very first church recorded for us in the Book of Acts that Luke wrote a long, long time ago. It’s an amazing birth, and the Bible tells this story in some detail. There’s a pretty long story involved in it.

 

Max Lucado, a wonderful Christian gentleman, paraphrased this story powerfully. His version goes something like this.

 

The door is locked, dead-bolted, with maybe evena chair under the doorknob. Inside this room sits a knee-knocking group of folks who knew Jesus back when he was alive, but now they are sitting on the fence between faith and fear. As you look around that room, you wouldn’t take it to be a bunch that’s about to turn the western world on it’s ear. Uneducated, confused, callused hands, heavy accents, no social graces, no money, undefined leadership. You begin to get the picture.

 

As you look at that motley crew back then, you probably would not bet too many of your paychecks on the future of such a group, but something happens to a people when they witness someone who has been raised from the dead. Something happens to the souls of a people when they yield themselves to the presence, the power, the influence of the Creator of all that is. That power, that presence is hotter than gold fever. It’s more permanent than passion, and it all started when a group – a small group of stammering, stuttering people – heard what sounded like the blowing of a violent wind and saw what seemed to be tongues of fire, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit – the loving, living Spirit of God.

 

According to 1 John 20, that Spirit took that group of people and put them to work, sent them out, gave them the power they needed to accomplish what God wanted accomplished. Out they went to ports, courtyards, boats, to friends, families, neighbors, to villages and cities and synagogues, to plazas and prisons and palaces. They went everywhere. Their message was very clear. Their message was of God’s love and Christ Jesus, and that dominated and just dominoed across the western world. It was like an infectious fever. It was like a moving, multiplying organism. They refused to be stopped, and they literally shook history like a rug. Because of what happened to them and what they did, you and I sit here today.

 

That was then, and this is now. I don’t know about you, but I observe there are a ton of folks today, many of them in the Church and many of them outside the Church – who are like the guy who gets up in the morning and gets ready to go to work. He goes out, gets in the car, turns the key, andnothing happens. Ever been there? Yes. The battery is deader than a doornail. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the cell phone, calls the auto repair place. The receptionist answers. He tells her the problem. She says, “I’ll get back to you in just a minute.” She goes and talks to the mechanic. In a moment or two she comes back. She gets on the phone, and she offers this helpful thought, “Sure,” she says, “we can take care of it. Just bring it on in.”

 

Great idea. Like the thought. Good advice, but no power. Folks, good advice without power is bad news. Did you know that? Good advice without power is bad news. The Scripture is full of good advice. The Scripture is full of moral instruction. The Scripture is full of vision about a better life and a better way. Read the Ten Commandments. Take a look at the Book of Proverbs. Check out the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus cures people who are sick. He restores the sight of the blind. He helps people who are down and out get back up on their feet, and then he turns to his followers and says, “Go and do even greater works than these.” Good news? No! Bad news! It’s never good news to tell somebody to perform the impossible, to achieve the unattainable, to climb out of the insurmountable if you don’t give him or her the power to perform.

 

The point? Jesus made it very clear. If you want real power, here’s how you get it. Here’s where it comes from. “When the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” he said in Acts 1, “you will be filled with power.” Underline the word “Spirit.” Underline the word “power.”

 

Folks, we’re all meant to be filled with something, and you and I have lots of choices about what we’re going to fill our lives with. You and I know folks who fill their lives with work. They just work, work, work, work. We know people who fill their lives with hobbies of travel, or things, or people who fill their lives with their families and sports, their toys, their TV. You know people and I know people who have filled their lives with anger, and hostility, and despair, and self-absorption. There are lots of things that you and I can choose. Everybody gets to choose what they’re going to fill their life with. The truth of the matter is, you can have a plate full to overflowing and still have a very empty life.

 

The Christian, I would suggest to you today, is the person who chooses to let the Spirit fill her life because, according to Scripture, we are filled with God’s power when we’re filled with the Spirit. If the words “Holy Spirit” bother you, just substitute the word “power.”

 

The question today: How do you get filled with that kind of power? It sounds a little weird, I know. It sounds a little strange. Pentecost, for me, for years and years and years was my least favorite Christian holiday. I like Christmas. I like Easter. I could even handle Lent, but Pentecost… that’s just a little spooky. It’s just a little strange. It’s a little weird. People hear the words “being filled by the Holy Spirit,” and all kinds of images come into their minds like Casper the friendly ghost – spooky stuff. They think of a bunch of holy rollers in a tent revival. That’s the way I grew up. That’s what I grew up with. That’s who had the Holy Spirit – Pentecostal people.

 

The truth of the matter is, folks, it is not a great mystery. It’s not all that hard, and it’s not weird at all. You want to be filled with God’s Spirit? If you want to be filled with the power, the influence, the presence of the Living God, here, according to Scripture, is the way it can happen.

 

There are three things.

 

Number One: It starts with desire. You have to want it. God is not going to force anything on anyone. That’s the way God made us. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened.” That’s desire. That’s desiring. When you start to want what God wants, things start to happen. Did you know that? It’s just that simple. It all starts with desire.

 

Number Two: If you or somebody you know is running on empty (and I know a bunch and I see it all the time) and if you want some real power, then biblically, the word I want to offer to you for this second ingredient is repent. Now, if that word doesn’t work for you, substitute the word turn, because that’s what the word “repent” means, as you know. It means to turn, to do a 180°, to decide that there’s a better way than the way that I’m going right now, that God has a new way, a better way, and you’re prepared to do what you need to do to take that new way. God says, “Turn to me – get connected with me – and I will give you the strength. I will give you the power to begin to live the way I made you to live.” Folks, there’s nothing spooky about that. There’s nothing strange about that. It’s a decision we make.

 

Jeremiah 2 puts it this way. Jeremiah hears God’s voice say these words: “My people have done two things. They have turned from me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own wells, wells that cannot hold water.”

 

Some of us, and others we know and care about, have walked through this entire life trying to live on good advice, trying to live on moral instruction, trying to live on some vision and perception about what life is about without ever encountering the Spirit of the Living God. Or worse, they may have tried to get a little taste of God or what they thought was God somewhere along the line. They asked God for what they wanted. They didn’t get what the wanted, and so they turned away. They just walked right on by the spring of living water. Somewhere along the line, we sort of decided that, “Well, I guess what this life is all about is digging your own well.   I can figure this thing out on my own. I can do it all myself.” So you start digging, and you dig hard, and you dig fast, and you get tired, but you keep digging, because you believe if you just dig hard enough and dig deep enough and fast enough, you’re going to hit water some day. Guess what? The living water is not down here where most people are living. The living water is right here. God has the water.

 

I talked to a man in another state this past week. He’s been through three marriages, and a host of live-ins. The last one was 21 years younger than him. She left. Surprise? He’s lonely. Sure, he’s lonely. He told me about the nights that he was down on his knees praying to God, begging God, kissing the cross he carried on a chain around his neck for a woman to love. He wants God to bless the well he’s digging. Do you see that? When God doesn’t bless the well that he’s digging, he gets sidetracked. He gets mad. He forgets all of that. “Hey! The water’s not down here where you’re digging. The water is over here. Right here.”

 

God has the water. God has the power, the real power that lasts. First, you have to want it. You have to have some desire for it, and then secondly, you have to turn away from the well that’s broken and toward the spring of living water.

 

Number Three: The word yield. I looked up the word “yield” this week. It means you’re willingness to give somebody else the right of way. We’ve all done it. We’ve come to that yield sign, and we’ve decided whether we were going to yield or whether we were just going to go right on through it. Right?

 

The Bible says God’s power is available to those who yield, to people who are willing to say “no” to the things that are wrong, to people who are willing to say “no” to the things that make us self-centered, self-absorbed, to people who say “no” to the things that are broken, to the things that aren’t working, and saying “yes” to God. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let that person deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That’s yielding, folks. That’s what yielding means. Not just one time. It means day in and day out, every moment of every day, every occasion, yielding. That’s not spooky. That’s not strange. That’s not weird. That’s really amazingly normal.

 

Let me give you a picture. Let’s say that a big tub of water is God’s Spirit. You are a dry sponge that has never been in the water. According to Scripture, the minute you say and the minute you desire in your heart of hearts, “Lord Jesus, I want you in my life. I want to turn. I want to yield to your leadership,” like a dry sponge in a tub of water, immediately God’s Living Spirit starts to penetrate. It starts to come in. It starts to fill your life.

 

Have you ever been here when we’ve done baptisms? Many of you have. Kim or Jacob will call those folks up. They’ll ask them if they believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Do they accept him as Lord and Savior, not only of the world, but also of their life personally? Will they accept him as their leader? Will they accept him as their Savior, meaning “healer.” And then, if they say “yes,” they usually have that little piece of paper they bring. It has those little sins they’ve scribbled on it, and it’s sort of symbolic of all those things we want God to forget. They’ll burn it in front of God and everybody right here. Then they get in the water with somebody, maybe me, in this big tub. We have a big tub down here. I ask them a simple question. Do you remember the question I ask every single one of them? I ask every single one, “Do you wish to receive the Holy Spirit?” And they look at me like, “Sure. Why not?” And if the answer is “yes,” God’s Spirit immediately starts to come into their lives. They are immersed in it. They begin to open themselves up to it, you see.

 

Some people say, “If that’s the case, how come I don’t feel any different? How come I still struggle with the same old stuff?” Because all of us do. We all struggle. I do all the time. All the old stuff. That’s because we still have our hand gripped around the sponge. We want to do it our way. We want to decide how much of that living water we want to let in. Some of us, quite frankly, are squeezing really, really hard. We have such a grip there’s hardly any spiritual life left in us. It’s so human. It’s so like us. We just love to be in control.

 

Now, let me tell you about control. Did you ever ride a roller coaster? How many of you have done the bungee thing? How many of you have ever been up on a mountain, and you’ve been there on the edge. You look down 500 feet to the floor, and the only thing that’s holding you onto that mountain is a rope, not very big around, that’s hooked to the harness around your waist. Folks, in every thrill ride in existence, there comes that moment when you have to release, when you have to let go, when you have to yield. I don’t care what it is. It doesn’t matter how much you scream on the way down. You have to get on the ride. You have to jump out of the plane. You have to repel off that backside of the cliff, and there’s nothing between you and 500 feet down except air.

 

What I’m trying to tell you today is that being filled with God’s Spirit, being filled with God’s power and influence in your everyday life, in your everyday decisions is the greatest thrill in your life. It only happens if you’re willing to release. God has a life, I believe, that is beyond your greatest imagination waiting for you and me. But you have to get on the ride. You have to lean back. You have to just hold on to the rope and lay back and drop off. Every day, every hour, every decision. This is not just baptism. This is not just a one-time occurrence. This is something Scripture says is available to us constantly.

 

1.      You have to desire it.

2.      You have to turn.

3.      You have to yield.

 

It’s nothing spooky. It’s not strange. It’s not weird. In fact, it’s about as normal and natural as breathing. In fact, the biblical word for “spirit,” as you all know, is the same word that translates “breath.” It’s just as natural as breathing.

 

She’s 38-years-old, the mother of three, single, and works every day for a real estate agency in another state. She’s grown up like millions and millions of people in this country and elsewhere. She’s never been to a church in her life. That wasn’t part of her family experience unless she went to visit her grandmother. Everybody say, “Thank you, Grandmother!” Anybody have one of those grandmothers? You go to Grandma’s house. Where do you go on Sunday? You go to church.

 

This is what she writes. I received this e-mail this week. She says, “I used to joke with my grandmother that if God wanted me to believe in God, God was really going to have to send me a big sign. I truly believe,” she said, “that the loss of my health was my sign. It’s not everybody’s sign, but it was mine. It literally pulled the rug out from under me and made me stop to consider everything. I was so exhausted all the time, just trying to keep up. I remember driving to work in the morning and sometimes just praying to God that something would give. Guess what? It did. I know that sounds crazy,” she said, “but the illness has turned out to be a blessing in my life, because it forced me to look at my life and to open myself to finding something I never knew existed. I’m thankful today, every single second, that I have found my way to my spiritual home. I got baptized six months ago. The boys and I go every Sunday to church. They’ve become our family, and it’s the most amazing thing in the world to realize that God is my life.”

 

The question today: Do you wish to receive the Holy Spirit? God bless you in that desire. The Bible says that it’s available for the asking. Nothing spooky. Nothing weird. Nothing strange. In fact, you know that it’s actually working, and it’s actually happening in your life if you start to see an increase in things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and yes, self-control. If you start seeing those things in your life, you start seeing those things increase… guess what? You’re getting filled up.

 

Welcome to Broadway where people can encounter the Spirit of the Living God in Christ Jesus and where lives can be and are being transformed and changed.

 

And we all say together… “Amen.”

 

Wind of the Spirit, blow through our lives. Be at our back, be facing us, and be throughout our very being. Be all around and within us, catching us up into your powerful presence. Amen.