The Believer's Authority

SERMON: 2012-05-27--ac1291--the-believer-s-authority-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 01:00:07.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with exposition in segment [0]. The spoken content concludes with prayer and amen segments up to [751]. Segment [752] marks the beginning of sustained acoustic music, which is treated as an external boundary. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:53:02.080-00:53:09.320, 00:56:57.040-01:00:07.200 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- One of the primary reasons the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost was to equip God's people to carry on the ministry of Jesus. The book of Acts talks about that in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, where scripture tells us, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." As you've heard us talk about before, that verse talks about a series of concentric circles, bearing witness to Jesus starts in Jerusalem, it spreads to Judea, it spreads to Samaria, and then beyond there it spreads to the ends of the earth. And the structure of the book of Acts, as we have been looking at it together, is structured precisely in that fashion. The disciples start in Jerusalem, then persecution hits, and they go to Judea, and they go to Samaria, and eventually in Acts chapter 10 that we hope to come to at a future date, they go to the house of Cornelius, which is the beginning of ministry to Gentile nations. Last week we were looking at the story of Peter in the concluding verses of Acts chapter 9, where on his mission travels. He goes first of all to the city of Lydda, and there he discovers a man by the name of Aeneas, who has been paralyzed for eight years, and Peter speaks healing into his wife, and then he gets invited to Joppa, and he finds a woman by the name of Dorcas or Tabitha. Both names are applied to her, one is Aramaic, the other is Greek, and by God's grace he raises her from the dead. We won't re-read all of that passage, but for those of you who were missing last week, I have had Nancy print up that scripture passage on the back of your blue bulletin insert, so at some point you might want to take that out and look at it. I want to come back this morning then to the practical implications of all of that, as we look at the Believer's Authority Part 2, so as we get into that, let's first pray together. Father, we're so grateful for Your Word, a Word that always points to Jesus, and a Word that gives us examples in the lives of those who have gone before us, what it means to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, and what it means to share in the anointing and the power of Jesus. And so Lord, as we talk about that a little bit again this morning, I just pray that You help me to put into words what the implications of that are for our lives today, and that more than just being hearers of the Word, we may so experience the passion of Your Holy Spirit, that by faith we may step each of us into those areas of life where You call us to walk before Your face and to be the hands and the feet of Jesus. So Lord, just give me what I need and each of us here what we need, and may You be honored and glorified as we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit this day, in Jesus' name, Amen. Quick review then this morning for those of you who were not able to be with us last week. I pointed out last week that what really strikes me personally about these two miracles in Acts chapter 9 is not so much that they were amazing miracles, which of course they were, but rather what amazes me is the way in which those miracles happen. And Peter speaks into each situation with apostolic authority, and because he speaks with apostolic authority, God honors His command and miracles take place. And so in verse 34 we read, "Aneas, Peter speaking, Jesus Christ heals you, get up and tidy your mat, and immediately Aneas got up." And part of that passage that just really strikes me is that little comment about "tidy up your mat." I mean, really now, on the total scale of universal things, you know, how important you think Peter was a mother telling her kids to make sure your bed is made. But it's those kind of details that always give a very personal flavor to these stories. And then, of course, we have the same thing in verse 40 where Peter says, "Tabitha, get up," and she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. And then without spending too much time on it, I put it out last week, that at stake here are four principles that relate to the authority of the believers. A quick review. Number one, we were created before God to have authority. Genesis 1, 28, God says to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground." We were never intended to be slaves. We were intended to share God's glory. Sin messed it up, but we know from scripture that Jesus comes along and he regains authority. "All authority," he says, "in heaven and on earth has been given to me," and then he commands us to go out and make disciples. Number three, he delegates this authority to his disciples. He says to the 70 as they come back after their first mission trip, "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy and nothing will harm you." And then the fourth principle that we looked at together, that the purpose of all of this was never to make us feel good or superior, but rather to extend the kingdom of God. "All authority," says Jesus, "in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age." And of course it's in that context that we see the miracles happening in Acts chapter 9. They serve to bear witness to Jesus and they bring many people to faith. "All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him that is Aeneas and they turned to the Lord and in Joppa this became known all over Joppa the resurrection of Tabitha and many people believed in the Lord." All right, bringing that hope close to home. This has enormous practical implications for your life and mine and in the time that remains let's see if we can tease that out a little bit. And as I said last week, I do that not because I know this subject so well or because I have no questions about it, but because my hope is that by God's Word and through His Spirit, He'll find those places in our hearts where His fire has breathed life into us and where He is calling us to step out and in practical ways be the hands and the feet of Jesus in a world that is coming unglued ever more quickly. Three observations and then implications that I want to make in the time that we have this morning. Number one, in Christ we that is all believers have areas of authority that God assigns to us in life. And the way that I like to picture it is this way, Jesus in His exaltation and being seated at the right hand of God the Father being given the name that is above every name owns the whole pie. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus. His name is higher than any other. You and I, when we come to faith, we are joined to Him by the Holy Spirit. And what Jesus does now is He takes His authority and He imparts it to you and to me on His behalf. And while the size and the scope of that authority will vary from individual to individual, it seems to me that we all share authority in at least four significant areas. And I'll try to walk you through that very quickly. The first is in terms of our own personal lives. We were created so that body, soul and spirit in our relationship with God is we could obey Him and do His will. That was His vision with regard to His eternal kingdom, wasn't it? To build a human population in love with Him, obedient to Him. And our bodies, our minds, our hands, our feet were all intended to be used as a vehicle for His purposes. He knows what I do. That sin has messed that up. And one of the biggest obstacles in each of our lives to living obediently is not the enemy out there, but the struggles within our own soul. It's what the Bible calls flesh. We are prone to hate God and to hate our neighbor, says the Catechism. But when we come to Christ and we're joined to Him, we share in His crucifixion, which puts our old nature to death. We also share in His resurrection, which brings our new nature to life. And the result is that as we are joined to Jesus, His new life changes the fundamental direction of our loves and our lives and our passions. So that instead of just being given over to sin, we are to yield our bodies to Him as instruments of righteousness, so that we're no longer slaves to sin, but we're slaves to righteousness. Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans 6, 17, and 18. "Thanks be to God that you who are once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." Doesn't mean we never sin. Doesn't mean we never have struggles. But it does mean that if we are in Christ and abiding in Him, there ought to be a transformation that is happening, and God enables us to learn to exercise authority over our desires and over our passions. Self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit. So there is our own selves that we regain authority over, then there is the whole issue of our families. Our families were designed as the most basic unit of society, and our families were to honor God by being a reflection of Heaven's values. Husband-wife relationships in Scripture are a parallel of the relationship of Christ to the Church, which is why in the new creation marriage is no longer needed, because the imagery of marriage will have been fulfilled in the wedding of the Lamb and the Church. Sin breaks down our families and we lose control over our lives and over our children and over our marriages. But in Christ, God restores to us a measure of authority, and as we yield to Him, He helps us to manage those relationships in ways that honor Him. Still another area, of course, our daily work. We were created, as I said earlier, so that as we serve the Lord in our daily activity, we extend His Kingdom, subdue the earth, God says to Adam. And again, sin distorts that. Work becomes labor. We live by the sweat of our brow. Things fall apart, and the devil has a heyday very often in our lives and in our work. But as we come to Christ and we regain authority, what happens is that God's authority comes to expression in those areas of our work where we are called to serve the Lord. Whether we're bosses or whether we're employees, we have a certain area of responsibility, and in that area of responsibility, God gives us a measure of authority. And the more He gives us, the more we are accountable for or responsible. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 10.31, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." And then just a final example is that in terms of areas of ministry. We share in Christ's authority, as I said earlier, in the creation story. God gave authority to Adam and to Eve to be fruitful and to be multiplying and to subdue the whole earth. The New Testament equivalent of that is the Great Commission. And so when you and I become a Christian, God shares with us the Holy Spirit. He gives spiritual gifts to each of us which are His empowerment so that we can be about the business of the kingdom of God. And there isn't a one of us if we're in Christ who hasn't received some gifting, some anointing, some area of power and authority that we are to exercise on behalf of God. And so in Christ, we each have a measure of authority. We're not all called to be apostles. We don't all go around laying hands on the sick or raising the dead. But if you look closely at your life, and we'll talk more about that in just a moment, there will be a place in your heart where the fire burns, where God gives you a measure of faith, and where He calls you to step out and make a difference for Jesus. So that's the first practical implication that flows out of this whole story. The second one is that whatever authority that we receive from God in life, it flows, of course, out of our relationship with God. Why did Jesus receive the name that was above every name? Well, because He was obedient unto death. I said last week, God created us to have authority by virtue of being submitted to God's authority. Biblical reality is so simple. God owns the whole shooting match. He can give it to whoever He wills, and He gives it to those who are in relationship with Him. Adam and Eve forfeited that authority. That's why life is so hard in so many ways for so many of us. But Christ regains the authority because He was obedient unto death. God can trust Jesus with absolute power over everything in the universe because God knows that Jesus will never cling to power or use it for His own purposes. Do you understand how significant that is? Do you understand how God's struggle with you and me is that He has a hard time entrusting us with power and authority? Like some teenager who gets his father's Lamborghini, we go breaking the speed limit and showing off as if this thing is our own. One of the reasons God has to do so much purifying work in your life and in my life is He wants to bring us to a point where we know that whatever we have in life, it is by virtue of our relationship with God. Therefore, the most important thing in the world is not to try to get more money, it's not to try to get better friends, more influence, or all the things that the world strives for in order to make us more successful. No success in Scripture is having a relationship with God where God recognizes who we are and there is nothing between Him and us. Because if we seek Him first in His Kingdom, what happens? All these things which the Gentiles seek are all given as a free gift of God's grace to God's children. And so, because of that biblical reality, to really enter into God-given authority in our lives, it is so important that we be yielded to His authority so that God can trust us with what He gives. I mean, think of it in terms of a father with a son. You've got this big empire. It's very complicated. Many people depend on your well-being and on your rule. You want your son to run this empire, but you're not going to give it to him until you know that he can be trusted to manage it in a way that is not self-serving, but that honors the father's agenda and the well-being of all of the people who are part of that whole dominion. And so, for that reason, I've often said this, but if you really want to come into the place that God has for you in life, I believe there has to come a point where, as much as we know how, we're able to lay our lives on the line and we submit as best as we know how. And who knows the depths of a human heart? But I believe there has to come a time in your life and in mine where we lay it all on the altar and we say, "Lord, not my will, but Yours be done." Paul, in Romans 12 verse 1, is extremely instructive in that when he says, in these familiar words, "I urge you therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy," and he has just spent 11 chapters in the book of Romans spelling it out one after the other, "all the things that God has done for us in Christ, I urge you in view of all of that," he says, "to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord. This is your spiritual act of worship." Let me ask you this morning, I know you've come to Jesus. I know you've invited Him into your heart to forgive your sins, and that's a wonderful, wonderful gift of God's grace. But have you taken it the next step? Have you acknowledged that because He has bought you at a price with His own blood, for that reason now He owns you and He invites you to yield to His authority so that His agenda can be realized through you? What is there in your life? What is there in my life? Whereas John said earlier, "I may be afraid of God for what it is that He might want of me, but this is where I will clutch my own fig leaves as opposed to facing my nakedness and receiving the dress of righteousness that God has for me." If you've never struggled with the issue of Lordship, then ask the Lord to point out what it is in your life that you're clinging to that is more important than the will of God. And you've heard me tell the story of how I was in college, and I remember looking at some old, old radio equipment that I had when I was confronted by the issue of Lordship, and I remember bargaining with the Lord saying, "Am I really prepared to give up this junk if that's what you want of me?" And understand that when God works in you, He works both to will and to work for His good pleasure. None of us can make that kind of commitment, but we need to be honest with Him on that and say, "Lord, work in me until Your will for my life is my delight, and I trust You with everything that I know." As we do, as we say, "Lord, not my will, but Yours be done." I want to step into the authority that You have for me. I want to live my life the way Jesus lived His life before Your face. I believe there are three things that are going to happen, three things that God will birth in us by the power of His resurrection life and the power of His Holy Spirit. And the first is this. God quickens in us a dream, a longing, a vision. Something that stirs our passion. Some transcendent cause that grabs hold of our hearts. Something that we dream in the depths of our being, that all things being equal and there being no barriers in the way, this is what I want to give my life for. This is where I want to serve my God. And that dream and that passion will be different for different people. I told you a little bit last week about Roland and Heidi Baker and their iris ministries out of Mozambique. Their passion was to show that the sermon on the mount really works among the poorest of the poor. And so they took upon themselves this whole orphanage with eighty-some kids that had no visible means of support, and they said, "Lord, here is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are the God of the Bible." For George Mueller, and many of you know his story back in 1800 in England, similar kind of thing, ran a huge orphanage, ultimately 2,500 people, and he felt it his calling to be able to demonstrate to the world that God was his provision. And so he didn't resort to the usual means of fundraising for Christian organizations. He said, "God, you are the one who promises to provide for us." It was his passion to demonstrate the reality of God's kingdom. If you know the story of Bill Hybels in Willow Creek Church in Barrington, Illinois, then you know that his passion was to build, or to see God build, this two-community where people would truly love God and where they would truly love each other. And if you've been in this church for any length of time and you've heard the passion of my heart, and I take no credit for this whatsoever because I know it's the work of God and it gets me into enough trouble, but listen, my passion is to see the dead come to life, to see the broken healed, to see relationships restored, to see God build Christian community where we love God above all and where we love our neighbors, we love ourselves, and where each one of us can find our place, be filled with God's Holy Spirit, and be about the purposes of God's redemption in the world. Amen. [applause] That may not be your dream, but I'll bet you if you're united to Christ, that underneath it all there is a flicker of fire that you may deny that you might have tried to push away, that you have said this is unreasonable, but it keeps coming back. And for some of you, that's to be businessmen or businesswomen where you build a business. That honors God and shows the world that you can do business in a crooked and perverse generation in a way that truly gives glory to God. For some of you, that's to be a mother or a father or to raise a family of children that with all of their imperfections can show the world that you can do what God calls you to do in a world where so many families are falling upon. For some of you, that is a passion to evangelize. If you talk to Mary Caldway or to Mike and Mary Ann and to Kathy Vanderkloet, clearly their passion has been to go to the ends of the earth and to bring the good news of Jesus to bear. My point is you don't have to be a foreign missionary to know that there is a passion that God places in your heart. For some of you, it's to open up your homes and to invite your neighbors and to show that God cares about the practical realities of life. For some of you, it's just to be a Christian who can honor the presence of God in the middle of a crooked and a perverse generation and in your own little corner, you want to make your light shine. Do you hear what I'm saying? It doesn't have to be anything big, but I can guarantee you that if you're in Christ, there will be a flicker in there somewhere. Often these flickers go back all the way to childhood and they will need to be purified because they're often a mixture. Sometimes it comes to you later in life, but I can tell you that it will really flame to life when Jesus becomes real and you claim the anointing and the baptism and the power of God's Holy Spirit. And I say that because that is the promise of the Holy Spirit. Listen again to the words of Joel, with which we began our service today. In these last days, God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days and they will prophesy." Just keep that verse up for a moment. I want to point something out. Notice the emphasis is in those days and in the context of Joel, this is after the land has been devastated by locusts and God's people have been crying out for mercy. And God says, "I'm going to restore the years the locusts have eaten." And then follows this passage where God says, "I'll pour out my Spirit." Notice the emphasis is on all flesh or all people. And so you see sons and daughters. You see young men and old men. You will see servants. And you will see that God's Holy Spirit is without distinction. That is to say, this gift, this passion, this fire that God wants to place in your soul and in mine isn't just limited to the good people. It isn't just limited to the socially acceptable people. It isn't just limited to the rich people. It isn't just limited to the good people. It's available to everybody. All flesh will see the glory of God. And what that means is that you're just as good a candidate as anybody else. And some of you, you're sitting here this morning when I'm talking about this and you say, "I don't feel anything stirring in my soul. I have no dreams. I have no ambitions." And that may be true. They may have died. They have never come to life. But I can promise you that in Christ, God will breathe fire in you. And there will be this little flicker of flame that says, "If only I could be what I really want to be." Now, there's a woman, I don't have time to talk about this this morning, but she just wrote a book about the five regrets of the dying. And she's been a nurse, a palliative care nurse, end-of-life nurse, has heard so many stories from so many people. And do you know what is the number one regret of people who die? What they wish they could have done in life. And it's fascinating to me. It's they all wish they could have been true to themselves and be what their heart had stirred them to be instead of bowing and bending to the demands and the desires of the people around them. Isn't that interesting? Because that's precisely what the Gospel has come to do. One of the things we so emphasize in this community is that God wants to make us alive at the core of our being so that we can serve him authentically from the inside for his glory. And if you find there are dead spots there, then just go seek the Lord, ask somebody for prayer, ask somebody for help, ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify what that fire is deep in your soul. Understand it will need to be purified. It's often a mixture of human ambition and divine ambition, but underneath it all you will find what the Holy Spirit loosens in your heart, dreams. And that's why so many ministries take place through the most unlikely people. If you know the story of Andrew Murray in South Africa, a revival that hit the Reformed Church in Africa many years ago. After 25 years of prayer, it started with a black slave girl. And if you listen to the full story of the bakers in Mozambique, then many of the miracles are being done by children who have been orphaned because God is not a respecter of persons. And so if God can use the likes of them, can he not use the likes of you and me if we will lay it on the altar for his glory? All right, God will stir fire within our souls. More than that, he will give us a corresponding degree of faith. I love what Paul says again in Romans chapter 12, this time verse 3. "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment," and then these words, "in accordance with the measure of faith." What God has given you, measure of faith. Faith, the Bible says, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Faith sees the reality that God has for his people long before it is a reality. And with the gift of faith comes the ability to believe God that no matter how tough things are, how desperate they seem, and how limited my own abilities are, what God has said he will do, he will accomplish. And when the Bible talks about a measure of faith, it means that none of us have the whole shooting match. The only one who has that is Jesus. Jesus was fully trusting the Father even to the point of humiliation and death, which is why God exalted him. But remember, when you become a Christian, you could join to Jesus, you share his anointing, and guess what? The faith that was in Jesus, he gives to you. And so in the place where your fire burns, in the place where God wants to move you into godly authority and responsibility, God will give you a corresponding gift of faith. That is to say, you can see the unseen. You can believe this can be done. Everybody else will tell you you're crazy. Everybody else will point out all your limitations. Everybody else will point out all the obstacles, and they may even be right in the flesh. But if it's truly of God, God will birth a faith in you that says, "I'm going to trust God until this becomes a reality." And he will give you that faith then in the area of your call. And so if he gives you a passion for the sick to be healed, he will give you faith to believe that as you step out and pray, something is really going to happen. And when it doesn't happen, you're going to persevere because you live by the word of God and not by what you see. You've heard me tell this story. John Wimber, the founder of the vineyard family of churches, called by God to have a significant healing ministry. First nine people, I think it was, they prayed for. They all died. You can imagine that number ten wasn't too anxious to get prayed for anymore. But you see, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Eventually they persevered, and God began to demonstrate significant signs and wonders for his glory through that ministry. And thousands of people all over the world have benefited from him, from that ministry, because he persevered. That's what faith is. And if your calling is evangelism, or if your calling is prayer, or if your calling is business, or if your calling is raising children, then God will birth in your soul a faith that says, "I cannot let this go." God is going to make it a reality. And if I don't see it in this life, then I'm going to see it in the life to come. But God is true to his word. And this doesn't mean you don't have doubts. A lot of people think faith is the absence of doubt. I like what C.S. Lewis said many years ago. After he became a Christian, after having been an atheist for many years, he asked him, "Do you ever have doubts?" He said, "Yes, I have doubts all the time." But he says, "It's very encouraging to me to remember that when I was an atheist, I had a lot of doubts too." And I much prefer this over that. But it means, you know, the image that comes to my mind, you know, these blow up things with a weight in the bottom, and you knock them over, and you knock them over, and no matter what you do to them, they stand back up. That's what faith is. Faith is a place that won't let you go because it's not based on anything that you have or that you see or that you experience. It comes from the Holy Spirit, and it's the faith of Jesus. And that is a gift God makes available to you and to me. So God births dreams, visions, hopes within our lives. God gives us a corresponding degree of faith, and along with that then, he provides a corresponding opportunity. You can have all the passion in the world. You can have all the faith in the world, but that faith has to get put into practice. And so if you look at the ministry of Peter, here in Acts chapter 9, it's very instructive because certainly he has passion, and certainly he has faith, but faith comes to expression, and the passion comes to expression in the reality of this paralytic whose name is in E.S. And so it's as Peter goes about his business, goes to preach the gospel and to visit the saints at Lydda, he's informed there is a man here who has been sick for many years. Peter goes to see him, and he uses that opportunity to speak healing in his life. And then he gets the invitation to Joppa. We have this wonderful woman here, her name is Dorcas, and she has been of such service to the Christian community. Look at all the beautiful clothes that she has made. This is a woman who has served the Lord. Won't you please come? And he prays, and he speaks, and things happen because he uses the opportunity. And I can promise you that when there is that flame of fire that God births in you, that dream, that passion, that longing in Christ, purified and cleansed and all of that kind of stuff, and faith gets birth in you, it won't be very long before you will be placed in an opportunity where you can exercise faith, and as we'll see in a few moments, step into the opportunity that God gives you. And the reason for that is twofold. The opportunity provides practice, because, you know, it takes skill. David didn't start off throwing stones at Goliath and winning the battle there. If that's where he had started, he would have high-tailed it out of there and run the other way just like everybody else did. What gave David the courage that he could take on this uncircumcised Philistine and win the battle? Because he had been a shepherd with his sheep, and the bears would come and the lions would come and they would attack his flock, and he had perfected his technique of swinging his sling and killing those animals or driving them away. And he says in the Psalms, "You have trained my hands for war." Don't expect to be able to rule the world as a kid if you don't know how to keep your own room straight. Don't expect to climb in the organization if you haven't been faithful over the little. Don't expect to be honored in Christian community with great responsibility if you're constantly fleeing the minor tasks because you think you're too good and you're only good enough for the recognition up here. That itself is enough to show you you're not ready for responsibility. Be faithful in little, says Jesus, and what happens? I'll put you over much. And you know what else the opportunity does for you? It will confirm the passion and the faith. Because if the passion isn't of God, and if the faith isn't real, I can promise you the obstacles that you will encounter towards fulfilling that dream will knock the tar right out of you, and you will be discouraged long before you can ever see it through. So, God places a dream. God grants us faith. God gives us opportunity. And then, of course, going back to my main three points, we have to expand, or rather, sorry, we need to engage the opportunity. Because no matter how much faith we've got, no matter how much opportunity we've got, no matter how much passion we've got, nothing is going to happen until we actually step into the situation. And I love the story in the Old Testament. Israel has just come out of Egypt. Pharaoh has belatedly awakened to the fact that he's losing all of his slaves, and now he has taken pursuit. And now Israel finds itself with the Red Sea in front, mountains on either side, and Pharaoh behind. And you'll recall, what do they do? They have the gift of complaint and fear. They're crying out to God, and they're saying to Moses, "Now what in the world are we going to do? We're all going to die." Do you remember what the Lord God says to Moses? Here are the words. Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. And God, in effect, is saying this. Don't bellyache to me. I've already given you authority. Use your authority. Step into what it is that I've given you. And so if he gives you the gift of feeling, if he gives you the gift of prayer, if he gives you some other vision, passion, area of responsibility, he brings the opportunity to you, nothing is going to happen until you make up your mind to actually step into the situation and try to be obedient to God. That's what Peter does. He comes to Aeneas, sees the situation, steps into it boldly. With Dorcas, I really like that story because he prays first. I think it's harder to raise people from the dead than to heal people who are sick, wouldn't you think? And so I think he really wants to make sure that he knows what God's agenda is here, and once he knows what God's agenda is, he speaks into it and he makes it happen. Now, I don't know about you, but that scares the living daylights out of me. You know why? What if nothing happens? What if I'm wrong? What if I haven't learned, what if I haven't heard from the Lord? What if, what if I look foolish? Who? And I'm not suggesting we be foolish. I'm not suggesting we go tilting at windmills or we go around trying to do crazy things in the name of the Lord that the Lord hasn't authorized or that the Lord is not backing up. But I can tell you this, nothing is ever going to happen until by faith you step in to what God has burdened your soul with. And I always say, if you're not sure, God puts you in the context of Christian community, and part of the purpose of Christian community is to help discern what the will of God is and to encourage us to step into those situations. How many things do not happen in the kingdom because you and I are afraid to obey? Give me an honest show of hands this morning. How many of you here at some point in your life have felt you should say something or do something, but you neglected to do it because you were afraid to fail or you didn't know that you were really hearing from God or you otherwise made up many reasons why you couldn't do what you were-- just put those hands up real high. Just look around you. See, that's most of us. And that's understandable. But let me ask you this question. What would have happened if Peter had looked at Aeneas and said, "This dude is too far gone, man. He's been paralyzed for eight years. There is no way that he's going to get better"? Or what would have happened if Peter had come to Dorcas and said, "Poked her a little bit"? This lady is like really dead. And we all know that dead people don't come to life. Well, not only would Aeneas not have been healed, Dorcas would not have been raised from the dead, but hundreds if not thousands of people in Lydda and Sharon and Joppa would not have come to faith because he had missed the divine cure. And I'm not saying this to lay a guilt trip on any of us because failure is part of God's strategy to make us miserable enough so that we learn to obey him the next time. But it is to say that God is trying to bring his body to life so that we are not just a paralyzed body unable to respond to him, but a body so in tune with him, so filled with his life that when he says, "Go," we go. And if he says, "Woe," we will. And to wind this up and to just give flesh to this, I've asked Nancy Koopmans to come up and to just take a few moments this morning to share with you her adventures in this regard. As you know, our staff takes turns every Tuesday doing devotions, and Nancy did devotions last Tuesday. And I said, "Nance, this is just the illustration that I'm looking for for Sunday morning." Give her a warm welcome because you need to know this is an incredible stretch for dance. You'll listen to her story, and you'll see why I want to wind up with this. Just to let you know, I am very nervous. I knew that my turn was coming closer, and the nerves were growing, but I knew that I'd better think of something to say. I kept thinking about what I could say, and nothing was coming. And I was getting scared and even more nervous. But then I asked God what I should do, and there it was. So I'm going to share my heart with you. Growing up as a kid, I always wanted to work in an office. I wanted to work as a secretary. And my plan was to go to college right after high school, but that idea was squashed due to circumstances. So instead, I took ECE. But deep down, I still had that dream, but it felt like that was all it was going to be was a dream. After I'd done with the ECE course, I did not pursue that, but instead I worked in many other jobs, but none of them were what I was looking for. Then it turned out on a fluke that I started helping Marlene in the office. I enjoyed it very much, but it still didn't fulfill my desire. Then Marlene went on holidays, and she asked me to fill in, and that seemed to help the dream. Then when Marlene decided to move on to something different, I thought maybe then I would have a chance of seeing my dream come true. But I was not in the right place in my life, so I could not do the job yet. But as Alex came on board, I still came in to help, again, fulfilling part of the dream, but not completely. But then Alex told me she was stepping down, and I thought maybe now. And lo and behold, it was time. God said to me, "Now you are ready." There have been many stressful moments as I worked through this. It has been hard at times to not think of this job as Alex's or Marlene's, but still as mine. I know that I have made mistakes and will make more, but I also want to thank you for all your support as I work to make this position mine. I thought for a long time that this dream would just never come to fruition, but God knew my desires and dreams and knew when it was time to fulfill them. And I have two verses. First is Psalms 37, verse 4. "Delight yourselves in the Lord, "and he will give you the desires of your heart." The second one is Jeremiah 29, 4. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, "plans to give you hope and a future." [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:53:02.080; remove through 01:00:07.000] Amen. (applause) Great job. Great job. In the last days, God says, "I will pour out my spirit on all people. "Your sons and daughters will prophesy. "Your young men will see visions. "Your old men will dream dreams. "Even on my servants, both men and women, "I will pour out my spirit in those days, "and they will prophesy." Stand with me as we close. Lord, we just really covered a lot of ground, and only you know what lives in our hearts. But we do know that it's your desire to make us fully alive in Christ and fully able to present our whole beings to you so that we may love you, the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We're all too keenly aware of the many places where we fail you, the places where sin still has dominion, places where our own wills get in the way, and places where sometimes stubbornly and rebelliously we just defy you and do what we want to do. But Lord, that's not really our heart. Our heart is to know you and to love you and to step into all that which you have for us. And so all we can do this morning, Lord, is lay our hearts before you, thanking you for the person of Jesus, thanking you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, thanking you for the inheritance that you have for each one of us, and asking you, Lord, to sovereignly lead us into those places of authority that flow from our union with Christ in submission to you, and that you will help us to recognize those flames, those passions that burn, those places where you raise up in us the gift of faith, those places where you not only give us opportunity, but those places where you invite us to step in to places of opportunity. And Lord, may we know the joy of obedience. May we know the joy of watching your kingdom come. May we watch the joy of extending your purposes all over the world as men and women, boys and girls of every tribe, tongue, and nation. Bend their knees before Jesus, proclaim him as Lord, and begin to honor him and to worship him in the power of the resurrected Christ. So, Lord, here we are. Take us as we are. And when our faith gets tried and when the mountains are great and the obstacles seem insurmountable, we pray that in that hour you give us the courage to speak to the mountain, to commend it to be moved, so that in Jesus' name, your kingdom will come, your will will be done on Earth even as it is in Heaven. And Lord, we'll be careful to give you the glory. In Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said... - Amen. - Amen and amen. - Amen. [music] ♪ Oh, wrap your spirit ♪ ♪ On all the peoples of the earth ♪ ♪ Let your sons and daughters ♪ ♪ Speak your words of prophecy ♪ ♪ Set the streams and nations ♪ ♪ Reveal the secrets of your heart ♪ ♪ Lord, our faith is rising ♪ ♪ Let the heavens sound the coming of the rain ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great awakening ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great revival in our land ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great awakening ♪ ♪ And everyone who calls on Jesus' sake ♪ ♪ Will be saved ♪ ♪ Lord, pour out your spirit ♪ ♪ On all the nations of the earth ♪ ♪ Let them see your glory ♪ ♪ Let them fall in reverent awe ♪ ♪ Show your mighty power ♪ ♪ Shake the heavens and the earth ♪ ♪ Lord, the world is waiting ♪ ♪ Let creation see the coming of the day ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great awakening ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great revival in our land ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great awakening ♪ ♪ And everyone who calls on Jesus' sake ♪ ♪ Will be saved ♪ ♪ And everyone who calls on Jesus' sake ♪ ♪ Will be saved ♪ [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 01:00:07.000; resume after this marked segment]