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[0:00] Hey, welcome back to Gospel Growth. This is our Life on Life discipleship course, and we're in the fourth module.

[0:13] We're looking at going with the gospel. We're looking at mission, looking at all kinds of things like that. So far, we've seen that every Christian is a missionary, and we've really looked at the missio dei, the mission of God and how broad it is.

[0:25] It's neighbors, it's nations, it's local, it's global. And so that's what we've been looking at. We're really excited about this. We've been talking about how in the Great Commission, we're commanded to go.

[0:36] But a lot of us don't know that we're, the first thing we're doing is told is we're commanded to stay, right? Let me look at that quick. We're not just commanded to go, we're commanded to stay. In Acts 1, verse 4, Jesus is with them, and he says he ordered them, right?

[0:52] Same language as commanding and commissioning. He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait. To wait for the promise of the Father.

[1:03] To wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me. See, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now, okay?

[1:14] So this is a big deal. A lot of us Christians, we obey the first command, or the first command we looked at, which is go into all the world, but we totally ignore this one, this command to wait, to wait for the empowerment of the Spirit to go.

[1:29] And I think that's because we don't recognize that we're told to wait because we can't do this alone. We can't vote about this. This is an order, just like the first commission was an order, this is an order too.

[1:43] We don't vote, but we don't understand the potency of this command because we think we can do this in our own strength. It'd be like trying to go offshore without an engine.

[1:56] It'd be like trying to fly a plane without an engine. I mean, sure, you could try, but you're gonna die. Like that's just, and you're gonna do a lot of damage. You're gonna fail miserably.

[2:06] If all we needed was good theology, man, I reckon that the disciples could have gone without the power of the Spirit. If all we needed was a relationship with Jesus, I reckon the disciples could have just gone without the empowerment of the Spirit.

[2:21] But you and I have to reckon with, if Jesus told them, he spent every day, every waking moment for three years with them, if he told them, they had seen miracles, they had heard the Sermon on the Mount firsthand, if he told them to wait, man, we need this too, right?

[2:38] We need the power of the Spirit too. We're dead in the water without the power of the Spirit. You and I can't save. If we got all together, every Christian on the planet, and we tried really hard, we couldn't even save one person.

[2:49] We couldn't even change one heart. We're hopeless to do this in our own strength. And think back to Zechariah 4, 6, where God says to Zerubbabel, this really competent man, really competent leader, God says, hey, it's not by might.

[3:06] It's not by power. It's by my Spirit. This is what God, God does things by the power of His Spirit, not by our strength, not by our might, right? But we're prone to thinking we got this.

[3:18] It's just a good reminder for us when we come to a subject like mission, we don't got this, right? We don't got this, right? So what does the Holy Spirit do? Well, He equips us, and He empowers us for mission.

[3:31] He empowers us, and He equips us for mission. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He saves us. He opens our eyes to see Jesus. He reminds us of Jesus. He keeps us living lives of repentance by kindness, leading us with conviction.

[3:47] He does all those things, but He also empowers us, and He also equips us. There's two camps on this normally. There's the camp that thinks that, you know, the Holy Spirit doesn't do much by way of helping us with mission anymore.

[3:59] That's a terrifying thought. And then there's the other camp who thinks, well, yeah, the Holy Spirit does a lot, but it's for our enjoyment. It's for our entertainment. And I think that's just cruel, and it's really stupid.

[4:12] So I want to just try to address these things I think the Holy Spirit does to help us with mission. The first one, the Holy Spirit gives us power for mission. I don't know if you've ever seen this before, but there are adults who like to get dressed up and take swords.

[4:28] And if you're one of these guys, God bless you. I don't understand. Maybe invite me sometime, but they're called LARPers. This is live action role play. It's where they get in parks, and they pretend to be in a battle, and they take these pretend swords, and they pretend fight.

[4:43] And these guys take it really serious, right? I think a lot of Christians are like that. Christians who may tend to be more in the charismatic camp, but they've missed the purpose of the power and the gifts.

[4:58] They love the power, but it's for their entertainment. They miss the fact that we actually are caught up in a battle where we need this power. We need the power of the Spirit, right? The power of God is not there to entertain us.

[5:10] It's there to empower us for real mission, right? Right? This we see again in Acts 1.8. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.

[5:23] Look how Jesus connects these two things. The power is going to fuel you for the mission, right? You get power, you go on mission. How do we even begin to reach the whole world, Jesus? The Holy Spirit's gonna come.

[5:34] He's gonna give you power, and that power is gonna lead you and empower you to go on mission, which leads us to ask, you know, if people really are being empowered by the Spirit, and they're loving the gifts of the Spirit, but they're not going on mission, where's the disconnect here?

[5:50] Because what we see, the very start here is this power was for the sake of mission. Too many of us, we keep it to ourselves, or we use it for our own entertainment and enjoyment.

[6:01] We don't realize it's for the mission. There's a movie that's out now called Black Panther, and it's about this fictional nation of Wakanda, and these people have all this power.

[6:14] They have all this technology, but they keep it all to themselves, and it's a secret to them, and the rest of the world is dying, and they're suffering, but these people have kept the very thing that could lead to change, they keep to themselves.

[6:27] Man, how many of us Christians are like that, right? The whole world needs what we've got, and we keep it to ourselves. We're meant to take this power of God and to use it to get involved, to be empowered for mission.

[6:39] The next thing the Holy Spirit does is he gives us gifts for the mission. He empowers us, and he gives us unique gifts for the mission. We've been given gifts that aren't primarily for our experience and our own enjoyment, but for the sake of the mission.

[6:54] 1 Corinthians 12, 4, we see this. There's a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. Again, in verse 11, we see all these are empowered by one and the same Spirit who proportions to each one individually as he wills.

[7:07] And so what we see, and this is talked about in Ephesians 4 and all over the place, Romans 12, but what we see here is that there's a variety of gifts, but it's from this one Spirit, the Spirit of God, who comes and empowers us and equips us for the mission.

[7:21] And it just goes without saying, but I can't tell you how long I lived not thinking about this. We are meant to use these gifts. We're meant to use them. You know, a lot of Christians, they'll take, you know, some kind of gift assessment test or something.

[7:34] They'll try to figure out what they're good at and then they don't do anything with it. Or we'll know that somebody's good at something, but we don't do anything with it. Man, Romans 12, 6 says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

[7:49] If God's made you good at something, if God's made me good at something, it's not so that we can take credit for that. It's not so that we can just, you know, neglect that. It's so that we can use it for the mission. We've been empowered by the Spirit and we're equipped through gifts of the Spirit to be on mission.

[8:04] As you jump into your group discussions, man, I want to just encourage you that the best way, the Bible tells us if we want more of the Holy Spirit to equip us and empower us, all we have to do is pray. That we have this heavenly Father who loves to give good gifts and Jesus said he loves to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask, right?

[8:21] And we see in the book of Acts, we see people who were filled with the Spirit and then they get filled with the Spirit again and then they get filled with the Spirit again. These are people coming and saying, God, this mission is huge. Help us.

[8:31] Help us by the power of your Spirit. Fill us again with your Spirit. So pray for each other. Pray that God would help you, that God would empower you more, that God would equip you more and encourage one another, encourage each other.

[8:42] And I see this gift in you. Man, I really want to say, I think that God's made you like this and encourage each other and then pray together that God would give you just phenomenal opportunities to love and serve the people all around you.

[8:55] God bless you guys. God bless you.