TRANSCRIPT

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good morning friends how you doing today splendid responses always I love it my name is alex I’m one of the pastors here if you’re visiting we’re really glad that you’re visiting uh and just in before we get to what’s on the screen I just wanted to just add a little note uh today’s a year since laura and I and the kids moved to join you here at south and it’s it’s gone very quick and um and and just for me it’s just a thank you of making this a space where we felt welcome my kids feel like they own this building they’re very proud that they’ve been on the roof and most people haven’t and all of those different things they know the different hiding spaces and they feel like they belong and just as someone moving to join a community that’s so important but I do feel this tension that last week nearly ended my time with this community because I

managed to insult both the broncos and cat lovers within the same week um which which again like with the broncos hey you guys did great last week maybe they’ll continue and and and you guys don’t care because there’s a game on right now and you’re sat here dan elliot’s somewhere checking his phone every couple of minutes but but for the most part um like this is where like 20 people like I forgot about the game they go dashing for the doors um so so that’s fine broncos with the cat thing I don’t apologize at all um I just for a couple of reasons one I’ve actually owned like 15 cats in my life so I actually kind of like them but they keep dying on me so I have a bit of a resentment in that respect and the other reason is you cat levels are so easy to wind up it’s just like it’s just not even fun so until you get less sensitive it just your easy fodder for a sermon so there we go um we survived another week a year in it’s about that time

I’m thinking about a sabbatical which I was told is like once every two years or something like that for this role so we’ll see where we get we are jumping into this series uh the book of acts so if you missed week one let me just catch you really quickly uh up to speed we started with this question what kind of book is this and the the sort of like smart answers it’s the bible but but there is so much breadth to that bible which is 66 books with so many different authors and and you and I probably know if you’re a reader you jump into a book and and you deduce very quickly what kind of book you are reading you you maybe know that it’s a fantasy novel you know that it’s a romance novel you know that it’s fiction or know that it’s non-fiction and you do that very intuitively but there’s times that it can catch you off guard as well if I were to throw you the line once upon a time there were a princess there was a princess what book is

that now on the surface you’d say very quickly well it’s fairy tale it’s fiction but once upon a time there was a princess he’s also the opening line to a 1997 biography on the life of princess diana of way of princess diana of wales so so you can be caught off guard by just slight nuances what kind of book are we reading when we jump in to reading a book like acts well the truth is when luke writes acts he believes he’s writing history but yet for those of us that are 21st century people we might say this this isn’t history as we would expect history to be written there is so much in it that is supernatural that is different that is distinct that it catches us off guard at times because luke will write things as fact believing that they happened we may question whether he’s accurate or not but for him he’s writing history as he has heard it he believes he’s giving us the real stuff and that’s why he gives us so many details particular little

things that only an avid historian would know to make sure we know we can trust him on the little things and therefore maybe we’ll trust him on the big things so we’re going to jump into a passage today that that is just one of those passages if we would say that luke this biography of Jesus life was about what Jesus did acts is then what his followers did you could say it’s luke part one and then luke part two the the books are united they just flow into each other but when we say acts is about what his followers did there’s a tension there as well because it’s not really then is it if you have any familiar familiarity with it you’d say it’s not really them doing the stuff a better title might be something like this the acts of father son and spirit as they partner with humanity and there’s a lot of religious language there if you’re new to the church thing but but really God working with humans is what the book is all about it the spectacular stuff it’s

God that does it humanity’s job is to partner with that garden and so we might say this we might say that this book is our book if you’re a follower of Jesus one of the hard things to wrestle with is this there is nothing in this book supernatural as it is that cannot happen today if you partner with God and I partnered with God as these people did everything in this book is still up for grabs and that in itself has been a tension point for so many people there’s this story of a fairly well-known pastor who becoming converted in his sort of late teens goes to the pastor of the church and says when do we do the stuff and the pastor says what do you mean small groups do you mean potlucks what do you mean by the stuff and he says no the the stuff that I’m reading about there’s all these things that these first followers of Jesus did that are miraculous that are spectacular everything from being able to share their faith and and who

Jesus was in a dynamic way so that the church grew organically like crazy all the way through to seeing people healed speaking in different languages and his question was but I don’t see that it can cause us some tension now maybe you have a nice easy answer to that maybe you don’t believe stuff like that happens today and and we’re not going to wrestle with that too much today but but at least on the surface there seems to be this idea in acts that that this Jesus story and the spirit that he’s given afterwards provides some kind of power for followers of Jesus to work in the world around us and our question might be well do we still see that so we’re gonna jump into acts chapter two and this passage in itself is supernatural if you have a text in front of you you can read along this is the new international version if that means anything to you verse one when the day of pentecost came they were all together in one place

suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them all of them were filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them lots of language there that will unpack now they were staying in jerusalem God fearing jews from every nation under heaven when they heard this sound a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language been spoken there’s this question with this piece of the text did the these followers of Jesus actually speak in other languages or did people just hear their own language again it’s a fine detail you might want to look and research yourself but we’re not going to have a chance to get into it too much today utterly amazed they asked aren’t all these who are speaking galileans

then how is it each of us hears them in our native language parthians medes and elamites residents of mesopotamia judea and cappadocia pontius and asia phrygia and pamphlea egypt and parts of libya near cyrene visitors from rome both cretians and arabs how many of you know more than two of those places or where they are in the world if you did props to you good job I went to seminary I definitely missed a few of them so you are in good company if you’re like I don’t know amazed and perplexed they asked one another what does this mean some however made fun of them and said they have had too much wine let’s pray God as we unwrap this passage as we ask what you might have to say to us we ask that you would speak there is a supernatural element to this passage and there’s all sorts of people in this room all sorts of people watching online and we come from all sorts of different backgrounds and have

all sorts of different questions and for some of us the supernatural might be okay yeah I can handle that and some of us might be I’m not sure about anything that claims this kind of thing and yet there’s this character this holy spirit that we’re introduced to and on some level we see that he brings life and these people come alive in new ways and that in itself is compelling so as we learn together would you speak might we become alive in new ways in the ways that we feel tired the ways that we feel broken weighed down by life would you lift us up would you bring a life to us your people amen so back to the start I would suggest that when you look at this passage one of the fascinating things about it is this there’s really three different groups of people that we’re going to encounter yes there’s this character of the holy spirit who is central to the whole thing we’ll get to him in a second but but there’s these three different groups that

that maybe aren’t super different from the groups that might be in this room so we read at the start of the passage when the day of pentecost came they were gathered all together in one place this is the the insider group the people that are going to experience the event that know to a certain degree what is going on suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them all of them were filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them the event may be strange to them it may be new to them but they are in the middle of it they are somewhat compelled by there’s something that’s happening to them that is unusual that is different they are the insider group they are the insiders but there’s another group there’s the the curious

ones the ones that sit on the edge of the event the ones that watch it happen the ones that have significant questions about it now they were staying in jerusalem God fearing jews from every nation under heaven when they heard this sound a crowd came together in bewilderment because each of them heard their own languages being spoken utterly amazed they asked aren’t all these who were speaking galileans the galilean accent was particularly distinct it stood out so even for people on the outside they were like we know where these guys came from there’s something very familiar about them and yet the languages that they’re speaking it doesn’t doesn’t make sense there’s something that’s happened instantly now you and I would say like you can learn a language over a few months by rosetta stone or duolingo or something like that but to be able to suddenly speak in a different language and convey

religious truths well that’s a different thing and so that’s the curious group that asks this question amazed and perplexed they ask one another what does this mean and then finally you’ve got this other group some however made fun of them and said they have had too much wine this is the dismissive group and aaron bjorkland our worship pastor said to me you should go with the line they didn’t think it was the spirit they thought it was the spirits and I said I can’t pull that off and he was right apparently it doesn’t work so thanks for the tip um these three groups exist within the text they all observe what’s happening in different ways with different expectations some of them believe it because it happened to them others are observant and interested on the fringes still but with questions and the third group are the ones that are just like no that’s not for me now my question for us as a community is this which group do you

identify with because within this room on the back of a screen whoever whoever’s watching whoever’s connecting with this there’s probably different groups that we might identify there’s definitely these three different groups and and you might be in any one of those places you might describe yourself as been part of the dismissive group the some however made fun of them and said they have had too much wine maybe you come to this community thing because long ago you agreed with your husband or wife well I’ll keep coming uh I’ll keep attending but I’m not sure this thing really makes sense and it’s it’s just we do it for the kids or or whatever there’s there’s potential that in even in a church environment there’s some people that like I can’t buy in to this kind of thing church is fine to a point Jesus is fine to a point he has some compelling teaching but but I don’t believe anything particular about him that might not be true

of buddha or any other great religious teacher we might find ourselves in that group and and there’s this other group this curious group that if you’re part of that dismissive group I would invite you into because this group is fascinating this language that this writer luke uses about them amazed and perplexed they asked one another what does this mean they are seeing and observing something that is supernatural and different but their questions are what is this what what exactly is happening is this something that’s accessible that I can be a part of the greek language behind the text that we don’t necessarily see is made up of these two words existing displaced disrupted the idea is to stand aside like when you see something unusual shocking you kind of step back and you just observe for a while maybe you ask that question am I out of my mind am I really seeing and hearing what I think I’m seeing and hearing but the language

then moves on the word perplexed this word thomaso is to begin to chatter about so so when I took a group of uh missionaries up to the top of the mountains in haiti haiti’s got mountains beyond mountains and they really just drop down into the ocean it’s quite spectacular spectacular and as we drove along these lines they would look out either side of the windows and just gasp and then they would call to each other from opposite sides of the bus are you seeing this this is incredible you maybe have your own experience that is the moment of pause that moment where you can’t speak that moment where you’re just blown away you stand to one side am I out of my mind and then there’s that moment where you start to maybe unpack with someone maybe you think I know someone who would want to talk about this and you begin to chatter this is this process that these first curious people go through a few years ago I

was visiting my parents and this rainbow that was just beyond a normal normal rainbow appeared outside the house there was actually a double one sort of over the top of it that you couldn’t see and whether it was just the light or the time of the evening I remember people walking outside of their houses and just staring and stopping am I out of my mind am I seeing this thing and then you would later unpack it and you would talk about it remember that time that we saw that rainbow that just and you could probably pick lots of different things that you have seen maybe the first time you drove towards the continental divide in colorado and you just see this landscape drop away from you like wow am I really seeing this there’s that moment of pause and then that moment of conversation and that’s exactly what is happening to this curious group the movement that happens here is this movement from I just can’t talk

about this to and now I’m going to start to ask some questions amazed and perplexed they asked one another what does this mean and one of my questions if you find yourself in this curious group maybe I would say even my apologies is this I feel like sometimes as followers of Jesus we jump very quickly into language that isn’t necessarily accessible we use these words partly because we don’t have better words so we maybe talk about sin and redemption and even the word spirit I would suggest lands at that camp if you’re a follower of Jesus yourself and I would say to you something like explain to me the holy spirit but you’re not allowed to use any religious language what would you say how would you describe this character that has just appeared in a distinct way in this point of the narrative you can’t rely on well of course it’s the holy spirit the third member of the divine trinity who came to infill the lives of believers and

suddenly that language has already lapsed into language that he’s only used in church and so what I’d like us to do as a community for a second is to backtrack a bit and just start to unpack what exactly is this who exactly is this character what do we mean when we use a word like spirit what even is spirit and to do that I would like a couple of volunteers and if I have to stand here awkwardly until someone volunteers I will I don’t I don’t like the broncos lions don’t play till tomorrow night so I need someone that isn’t afraid to be just a little you know on stage and uh and if I don’t find someone soon I’ll have to pick someone one person thank you maya way to go come up here join us and oh so interesting two guys volunteered in the first one and my wife volunteered in the second one okay so so here we go we’ve got some we’ve got some tools here and um two two is perfect okay there we go so if you come over this side and sorry

what was your name again laura laura laura great to see you maya laura welcome to the stage so what I want you to do for a second is imagine yourself back in 1776. some stuff happened there that I’m told over this side of the pond is fairly important it matters to you guys we could argue all day about who was right and who was wrong and whether a benevolent king was usurped against and whether taxation without representation is really that bad but we won’t discuss that today and and so in the middle of this conflict you have two sides and I have for you a red coat red coat there we go so picture yourself you’ve got a noble revolutionary on one side and you’ve got a the bad guys sorry the the red coats on the other side and during the the battle there is this moment of conflict I guess they used swords maybe at times in that day and age I don’t really know but these are swords um they’re stolen from my kid’s tent but during

the conflict there is this moment of striking each other with the swords you guys can feel free to have at it just you know there we go it was far more aggressive in the first service I will say this when we had two guys on stage it got vicious and and during the conflict what happens the the good old revolutionary the good guy he attacks and he stabs the bad guy and so there is this moment of tragedy and and they fall to the ground you don’t have to fall to the ground you can stand up um but then the revolutionary they dash off and celebrate with the other bad guys and um and then our red coat stays here for just a second now this poor young soldier 4 000 miles from home one battalion fighting against 65 others in a way most people would say just isn’t fair but is is tragically killed and and then then what happens when their friend the other redcoat finds them what do they want to know are they alive or are they dead and how

do they find out whether they’re alive or dead well maybe in this scenario what they do is they grab a feather from their cap or whatever I don’t even know what they wore back then but they they do something they grab a piece of paper or something and they hold it over the mouth because they want to know what are they breathing are they are they alive or are they dead is linked to this question are they breathing or are they not breathing you can take a seat laura thank you very much very very good volunteering let’s give them a round of applause maya thank you so much for thousands of years when we talked about language or we look at ancient language the language of breath and the language of spirit are very closely tied together in latin we see the word spiritus which is both breath and spirit in hebrew the word ruach breath and spirit in greek the word number breath and spirit what we’ve known just language wise for

years is that when something is breathing it is alive and when it stops breathing it is no longer alive there is something that has happened that has taken away the life the breath has gone the two are tied together so on a very basic level the word spirit is simply the idea of breath the writer frederick beakner would describe it like this spirit is an animating power the livingness of that which is alive you have breath you have spirit when when breath is gone you are no longer alive and in the same way you would say this is is that God has breath God is spirit now his aliveness is different to our aliveness it is on a greater level and yet there is a unity between the two when you stop breathing you are no longer alive breath is what gives you life and God is spirit and he is breath so when we look back into the early parts of the bible genesis chapter 1 now the earth was formless and empty darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit

of God was hovering over the waters there is this idea that God’s breath God’s spirit is is brooding over this world that isn’t yet taken shape and then he breathes into things he breathes specifically into humans and they become alive in a distinct way when Jesus unpacked who God was he said God is spirit the source of life yet invisible to mankind and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth there is something about spirit that is this animating power if you like pictures as ideas if they are the thing that connect with you take a look at this picture this is good old crash from finding nemo swimming around doing his thing and look at the left hand side of the picture this is before they put light into the image and this is after they put light into the image and look at the way that the texture changes there is something about that picture that is more alive more real than this side that we see and there

is something about spirit that is the thing that gives life if you are part of that curious group to reduce it down to like non-religious language spirit is this animating power that is the aliveness that makes things alive and then there’s the question of this other group what does that mean for us as insiders what about the insider group which so many of us would say we are and are more comfortable with that language of the holy spirit and who he is what is happening in this text and what are we supposed to take from it there’s this moment where something supernatural happens and God comes to what we’re told dwell within us in a different way it’s not like the old story where God was accessible connected with human beings but external on the outside what is happening in this moment that we’re supposed to grasp and take away well I would suggest there’s two stories at least that are behind this story one is implicit and one is

explicit one is kind of the story that that people would know in the first century the other one is the story that peter one of the followers of Jesus will talk about so aaron read this passage during worship this is from ezekiel 37 the hand of the lord was on me and he brought me out by the spirit of the lord and set me in the middle of a valley it was full of bones he led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley bones that were very dry he asked me son of man can these bones live I said sovereign lord you alone know then he said to me prophesy to these bones and say to them dry bones hear the word of the lord this is what the sovereign lord says to these bones I will make breath spirit life animating power enter you and you will come to life I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin I will put breath in you and you will come to life then you will know that I

am the lord so I prophesied as I was commanded and as I was prophesying there was a noise a rattling sound and the bones came together bone to bone I looked and tendons on flesh appeared on them and skin covered them but there was no breath in them then he said to me prophesy to the breath prophesy son of man and say to it and prophesy is simply this idea of speak new things into tell a better story four give a preferred future to say to it this is what the sovereign lord says calm breath from the four winds and breathe into these slayed that they may live so I prophesied as he commanded me and breath entered them they came to life and stood up on their feet a vast army this text wrestles with the idea of lots of things are seen as dead can God bring a life to that which is dead and the idea within this text is yes absolutely he can so for hundreds of years this text hovers around this group of people these israelites as

something that is important to their story and yet when the thing actually happens it doesn’t look exactly like they are expecting it turns out that when God talks about breathing into bones and them coming alive is that possible yes but in this story of the spirit it happens in a different way in this story of the coming of the spirit God takes everyday humans like you and I and comes to dwell within them and that in itself makes us alive in a different way that this Jesus story has long been associated with the idea that God is not just external not just giving rules not on the outside but he actually comes and lives within us and is transformative within us these disciples these followers of Jesus are alive now in a new way that they weren’t alive in before something significant has changed and then there’s the story that’s explicit there’s the story that peter actually shares then peter stood up with the eleven raised his voice and
addressed the crowd fellow jews and all of you who live in jerusalem let me explain this to you listen carefully to what I say these people are not drunk as you suppose he addresses the dismissive crowd that says they’ve just simply had too much wine he says no no it’s nine o’clock in the morning that hasn’t happened that’s just not proper there’s another story behind this no this is what was spoken by the prophet joel and he quotes another old story 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 new things will happen God’s spirit may have interacted with the odd unusual person in the old stories but now this story is for everybody anybody can participate in this interaction with the spirit this is how

spectacularly the story changes in this moment and this is why for thousands of years we might say this is the moment that the church is born Jesus death and resurrection were leading to this moment where you and I can interact with this holy spirit in a completely different way than was ever accessible before you might say this the spirit is the one who animates the life of Jesus followers the one without whom nothing is possible and with whom nothing is impossible that we will read in this book act is only possible because of this moment right now in chapter 2 verse 1 through 13 this is the moment where this group of everyday people will become people that can change the world this is the moment where a group of 11 people who really if they’re honest are probably hiding terrified that the same thing that happened to their leader might happen to them this is the moment where all of the things that take shape over 2000 years

become possible this story is our story and yet the tension point I would say if you’re a follower of Jesus is this are we inside us with the same questions as the curious group now if you’re sitting here and you say I’m part of the curious group what I have to say you’re very welcome to listen in on and gather what you can but I’m not asking you to do anything because you haven’t yet made this decision on who Jesus is it’s a decision that you’re invited to make but right now you’re free from having to do or having to ask this question but but if you are my question is are we insiders with the same questions as the curious if you think about this character of the holy spirit do we have the same uncertainty as so many people who would say they are outside church I I have often wondered I have this sort of working thesis that the holy spirit in church is kind of like when you have a wedding if you have a crazy uncle who kind of does some unusual

things who acts differently you have to invite them because they’re family but what you do is you put them on table 27 over in the corner with the florida cousins that you weren’t sure you wanted there either because it’s just expensive to pay for the meals and so you say will you sit out there don’t do anything unusual don’t don’t dance on tables don’t act out don’t do any of those things were terrified that you might do and I have this theory that within church life this character of the holy spirit creates the same nervousness the writer gordon fee said this ask most followers of Jesus to draw a picture of the holy spirit and what that draw is a is a gray oblong shape we have the uh the the humanity the personification of God the father in the old testament so we might draw a picture that looks kind of like gandalf the wizard or something like that we we have this idea of what Jesus looked like so we can draw him but when it comes

to this character of the spirit we’re left with this sort of like I just don’t know so this beautiful character that God introduces that Jesus talks about as a gift to the church gets pushed off to one side because we just don’t know how to interact and yet what Jesus promised was this was this this spirit came to give life to us that this spirit came to stand alongside of us in our lowest and weakest moments that this spirit came to empower us indwellis that any life change that we experience is because of this spirit later the writer paul will unpack these fruits of the spirit of love and joy and peace and patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control all of these things that we might say as followers of Jesus where we’re moving towards and yet he leaves us no doubt that the only movement towards them is based on relationship and interaction with the spirit who is transformative and I wonder if we just don’t know how to

interact with this spirit and maybe worse for those of you that would describe yourself as curious we owe you a deep apology because perhaps so often we’re not really as transformed as the story which would suggest that we should be that you may have interacted with christians of all sorts of backgrounds who seem to be no more loving or patient or kind or good than anybody else and so we kind of have a credibility issue at times maybe simply because we don’t know how to interact with this spirit there’s a song by a band called the lumineers called submarines it’s imagines a world back in 1944 something like that where submarines appear around the coast of america and this guy sees one of them a japanese submarine during war time and he goes to tell everybody and nobody believes him and this is the lyrics I believe submarines underneath deep blue seas saw the flags japanese no one will believe me an attack

is imminent some big story is being shaped and there’s this nerves what do we do in this moment and what he says is this in the end it boils down to credibility I had none so I will die with the secrets of the sea this man has news to share and yet for whatever reason whether his background or his history nobody believes what he has to share it’s like the fairy tale of the boy who cried wolf so many times he saw a wolf he claimed and and comes to tell the townspeople and after a while they say but you’re always lying and then when a wolf does turn up nobody believes him this story talks about credibility and I question whether we have the same problem as a massive aside when I searched submarines to find these lyrics the first thing that came up was submarines for sale and because no guy is ever much more than a 14 year old boy I actually spent 15 minutes just looking at what submarines were for sale I was very

disappointed to find that they were all just pictures of submarines so I then googled real submarines for sale and found nothing good either but I just wanted to share that with you and apparently france has a now a little political joke for you going on there and so if you want one maybe there’s some good deals right now there is this idea that the spirit is supposed to be this one who animates the life of Jesus followers the one without whom nothing is possible and with whom nothing is impossible and yet I wonder if those of us that would call ourselves followers of Jesus really live into that this story speaks of this moment where the spirit engages with humanity and everything that we see take place in acts is because of that moment and yet when we ask ourselves what we see today we might say does it look like that we’ll wrestle during this series with a question is it supposed to look like that the stuff that happens in acts

that we might say man that just doesn’t seem like it fits with what we know of God we’ll wrestle with the question are we supposed to copy these people or are they just humans figuring out how best to follow Jesus for themselves how best to interact with the spirit but certainly it seems there are moments where through humans that are engaging with the spirit the world changes and I think we long to see a world that changes whichever group you sit in dismissive curious or insider I would suggest you and I are invited into deeper engagement with this spirit and with his heart and who he is and this writer that I quoted earlier frederick beekner has this fascinating passage that I just every time I read it just engages and teaches me something more and I’d like to share it with you most of the time we tend to think of life as a neutral kind of thing and the common view is that life doesn’t care one way or another any more than the

ocean cares whether we swim in it or drown in it to say that God is spirit is to say that life does care that the life giving power that life itself comes from is not indifferent to whether we sink or swim it wants us to swim he wants us to swim this picture that we are given of of this holy spirit is this character that Jesus introduces as a counselor someone who walks alongside someone who places an arm around a shoulder in a lowest moment someone who uplifts when we deeply need uplifting and to say that behind this world is not just material but is spirit is God is this breath that gives life this energy that gives animation that that brings out all that makes this world alive is to say that life is not indifferent to the struggles that every single one of us dismissive curious or a face that each one of us has these moments where we would say I feel like the ocean is dragging me down the weight of this life the struggle of this life is just too

much whether it’s the fact that the bills come through the door with greater frequency than the money fills the bank account whether it is simply the next argument with a child with a spouse with a sibling whether it is the constant weight of I have employees to pay who rely on me whether it is any of those stories the 24 out of 7 news cycle that that makes us feel weighed down makes us feel hopeless any of those things in those moments what this tells us is that this spirit he doesn’t want us to sing he wants us to swim he wants us to swim you and I are invited into this relationship with this God who is knowable who longs for us to be something different than we are we started off with that idea that an animating power the livingness of that which is alive but that in itself isn’t enough what the story of acts tells us is this that this holy spirit is not just an animating power he is knowable relational and longs to be with us in a particular

way he is God’s great gift to this world and doesn’t deserve or need to be pushed to the side of the church because he’s just a little bit more difficult to understand whether dismissive curious or insider you are invited into relationship with this spirit in a new and particular way I’m going to invite the worship team to come back up on stage and we’re going to take a moment to pray together and to begin to engage with that God that spirit that loves us