Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] We've got some, we've got some good stuff. We've got some beautiful stuff and we've got some challenging stuff as well. Look at that title. It's a bit scary, isn't it?
[00:00:15] Obedience Through Love. Obedience.
[00:00:20] We don't like obedience, do we? We're not very good at doing what we're told.
[00:00:24] But yes, we're going to try and unpack it this morning.
[00:00:29] So I just want to start with this. Scripture's been really important to me for over 20 years. The first time I came across this piece of scripture and God spoke to me through it and like it was, whoa, first of my head. Well, first time I read this, I thought, crikey, I've got some, some changing to do here.
[00:00:55] So I just try and explain how, how I came across this scripture the first time around.
[00:01:01] Some of you might have been here when I preached a few, few months back and I gave my testimony. So I won't give that again, of course, but it's a kind of prodigal story. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian family. Then I went away from God. And then I found God again when I was about 30 years old.
[00:01:19] And just that amazing beauty of being able to come back into his arms after 10 years of being away from Him. And I've not long got back to God when I came across this scripture.
[00:01:31] And ten years away from God, you pick up some pretty bad habits, I can tell you. So I had a lot of habits. I had a lot of the world in me that I hadn't dealt with yet.
[00:01:45] And this passage really helped me through it, actually. So I'm hoping some of you might have it speak to you as well.
[00:01:53] But I just, I'd really found my way back to God. I was so in love with him.
[00:01:59] And I remember just shouting out one Sunday morning, I love you, Jesus. I love you, Jesus. And this release and this feeling of this love for him that I'd rediscovered was quite overwhelming.
[00:02:14] And then he brought me to this scripture and I'm going to read it to you.
[00:02:20] And yeah, yeah, it spoke quite strongly to me.
[00:02:26] So it's quite a lot. It's John 14, 15, 31. In fact, Jeremiah, before he got baptized, quoted from this last week, didn't he?
[00:02:38] And it's something that seems to have cropped up a lot recently in our meetings, in our services.
[00:02:45] So I'm going to read this to you.
[00:02:49] And yeah, even, even the first verse got me. If you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and he will give you Another advocate or helper to help you and be with you forever.
[00:03:04] The spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows Him. But you know him, that he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live. You also will live. On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me. And I am in you.
[00:03:35] I've got the bits in yellow. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. He said it again.
[00:03:44] The one who loves me will be loved by my Father. And I too will love him and show myself to them. And then Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, but, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?
[00:03:59] Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.
[00:04:04] Three times.
[00:04:05] He's counting. My Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.
[00:04:12] Wow, what a promise. I read that again. My Father will love them and we will come to them and make a home with them.
[00:04:20] Jesus is promising that through the Holy Spirit they're going to come and live with us.
[00:04:27] That blows our minds, isn't it?
[00:04:29] Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.
[00:04:34] That hit me hard as well. So if I'm not being obedient, is my love not real for him?
[00:04:47] These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me.
[00:04:53] I keep stopping here, but this stuff just gets me. These words you hear, not my own, but they belong to the Father who sent me. That's not.
[00:05:02] I've looked, I've checked. Jesus says doesn't say that anywhere else in those four Gospels. At no point does he say, these are my Father's words, not my own.
[00:05:12] Excuse me.
[00:05:21] So, yeah, I think we really need to take note, don't we? These words you hear are my own. They are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. This is God speaking directly to us through Jesus. Yeah, we know that Jesus is fully God and fully man. And we know that Jesus was fully dependent on the Holy Spirit and on his Father for all of his ministry. Yeah, but for Jesus to actually make this statement that, that he is speaking the Father's words to us, we need to listen.
[00:05:50] All of this I've spoken while still with you, Ron25.
[00:05:54] But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.
[00:06:03] Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled. And. And do not be afraid.
[00:06:14] You heard me say I'm going away and I'm coming back to you. If you loved me, you would be glad that I'm going to the Father. For the Father is greater than I. I've told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe.
[00:06:29] I will not say much more to you, for the Prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he has. But he comes so that the world may learn from that. I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
[00:06:44] Come now, let us leave.
[00:06:47] Okay, so this is Jesus. They've just had the Passover year. He's just sent Judas Iscariot off, and we're literally. There are hours left before he gets arrested. Okay? Jesus hasn't got long left to give his final messages, if you like, his final words to his disciples.
[00:07:08] And. And he knows, obviously, the recording that's gonna. Those words are gonna reach us today as we're sitting here.
[00:07:17] So these words, they matter, okay? These carry eternal weight. This is important, okay, These words that we're reading here today.
[00:07:36] So through this bit of scripture, we're going to look at three real things that, you know, all Christians, you know, need the answers to, don't we?
[00:07:45] So number one is how do we demonstrate our love for Christ? And we're going to unpack that. And the clue was in the title, wasn't it? And how do we live without his physical presence? Okay, so, yeah, what is this gift of the Holy Spirit? What do we do with it? How do we unpack it?
[00:08:06] How do we work through this Holy Spirit in a way that lives the way we want to live in our purpose for Jesus? And where can we find peace and joy in a troubled world? Okay, so these are the three things that we're going to look at. And I've broken it down to five things, okay? So you can keep track of where we are.
[00:08:29] Once we start getting nearer to five, you'll know that we're reaching, reaching the end of where we're going to want to be today.
[00:08:36] So we've got, number one, love through obedience. So we're going to work a little bit, a little bit more through this.
[00:08:47] Okay? So we've got different words for the word love in Greek, okay? The one we've probably all heard of a few times now is this Beautiful word agape. Okay? And this is the word that Jesus uses when he's asking us to love him, if we love him, he's using this word agape. He doesn't always use this word. In John 16 later, he uses this word filio, which is more of a. A personal I love you, mate type of attitude. Yeah. But this is I love you. This is I'm going to give my life for you, I'm going to commit to you. Okay? This is a father, son love. This is a family love. This is a deep love that God's Jesus is talking about here, okay? And he's saying that if we love him, then, then we're going to obey Him. We're going to follow his commands.
[00:09:39] And that's not legalism. I'm. Okay, don't go, oh, if you're going to tell us we've got to follow the rules now, that's not where we're going with this. Okay? Legalism is I obey so God will love me. Okay? We know that's not right. Yeah. God already loves us. We don't have to earn God's love. We don't have to earn God's love through obedience.
[00:10:00] Okay? But what it is saying is because God loves me through Christ, therefore I want to obey Him.
[00:10:08] Yeah. This is what we're saying here.
[00:10:11] Not that we have to obey God in order to receive his love, but because he loves us, we want to follow him, we want to obey Him.
[00:10:20] Okay?
[00:10:21] And yeah, I've got a little statement here, maybe that sums that up. Obedience is not the root of salvation.
[00:10:31] We're already saved. Okay.
[00:10:34] It is the fruit of salvation.
[00:10:37] Okay? So through our obedience, okay, we begin to bear fruit. Okay? And we know from about a year ago, Phil did this brilliant preach on the fruit of the Holy Spirit and how we know that we're moving in the Spirit because we see we're bearing fruit. Yeah. Okay. So through our obedience to God, we can see that we're bearing fruit. Yeah. We can be encouraged, okay. We can find joy and peace in this.
[00:11:05] Likewise, our love for Christ becomes visible in the choices we make every day. Yeah. So if we're going to declare that we're following Jesus. Yeah. We want the world to see this as well, okay. And through the action, the choices that we make.
[00:11:21] I teach at a school and it's like one of the favorite phrases that we use with the children in the school, okay. We say, are you going to make the right choice? Are you going to make the right choice or are you making the Right choice. Don't make the wrong choice, okay? And these children have to, like, you know, try and. Try and work with us adults in a world where they're living for the moment and we're trying to persuade them that they need to think ahead and there are consequences, and that's the same for us.
[00:11:59] And I was going to share a little video. Have we got that video?
[00:12:04] Yeah, I was. I was like. I didn't. I couldn't decide if I was going to or not. If it's there, we'll play it. Because it's quite funny. It's only one minute long.
[00:12:14] Don't worry if it's not there.
[00:12:23] Not there, okay. I'll try and explain. I won't bother. Just basically, it's just this little video of these two beautiful little children and an experiment that. You've probably seen clips of similar things before yourselves, okay? Where these children are handed a little pile of sweets each, okay? And the Father says, okay, boys, okay? I'm just going to be popping out the room for a couple of minutes, okay? Please don't touch or eat any of the sweets, okay? I think you already know where this is going. Yeah. So Father leaves the room. The kids look at each other, can't help themselves. They grab the sweets and they eat sweets, okay? And that's. And Jesus understands that. Jesus knows that. That's what we're like, okay?
[00:13:12] We.
[00:13:14] We have a tendency of struggling to separate affection from obedience, okay? This is why Jesus repeats himself so many times. He knows that we love him. Of course he knows that we love him, okay? We wouldn't be celebrating him. We wouldn't be shouting our love to him through worship.
[00:13:33] We wouldn't be sat here right now just enjoying God's presence if we didn't already love him, okay? But he also knows that we struggle with obedience. Yeah.
[00:13:46] So I think it's important that we understand that God doesn't expect perfection from us, okay? Obedience is not perfection, okay? True obedience is direction, okay? It's not a flawless performance, okay? None of us, until we meet with them again, I'm going to be in that position where we can be, you know, perfect as Jesus is. We're not. We're not asking for that, okay?
[00:14:18] But true obedience is direction, not flawless performance.
[00:14:25] So it's a heart continually turning towards Christ, okay? And I think maybe we could ask ourselves three things to help us with this challenge of obedience, okay? And these are three questions I want you to ask yourself. Am I becoming more obedient?
[00:14:43] Am I submitting areas of My life to Jesus.
[00:14:47] And can the world. Can the people around me see that I love Jesus?
[00:14:53] Okay? And if we can tick those three boxes, then we're on the right path.
[00:14:59] And if we can't tick all those boxes yet, we can work towards that.
[00:15:04] So love is more than words.
[00:15:06] Love follows. Love is the motivating factor behind spirit led obedience.
[00:15:13] Okay? He's not asking us to do this on our own. He's given us the Holy Spirit to help us do that. The Holy Spirit gives us that heart to want to follow, to want to be obedient, okay? We all know how it feels, don't we? When we get it wrong, it's. It's not a nice feeling.
[00:15:31] That's the Holy Spirit convicting us, okay? Be careful. Don't listen to Satan tell you you're no good. You're a bad Christian, okay? That's not the case.
[00:15:40] We are loved. We are completely loved. We are totally loved by our Lord Jesus, okay? But the Holy Spirit just gives us that heart, okay? To feel uncomfortable when we get it wrong. But at the same time, one chapter later, Jesus is saying this. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Okay? So, yeah, we might feel a bit, oh, dear, I've messed up again.
[00:16:16] But when we get it right, when we are obedient, when we.
[00:16:20] When Jesus is asking us to do something and we follow what he's asking us to do, we get this joy, okay? We get this amazing joy.
[00:16:29] And I know I went on about it a couple of weeks ago actually, and. But it's something that's close to my heart at the moment. So I'll just show you where me and Sharon are with. With one area of our lives, we've been struggling a little bit with our finances, and that's nobody's fault but our own, okay?
[00:16:51] We had some money. Now we haven't got so much of it, but what we were doing is we were living beyond our means, okay? We had subscriptions to television channels we probably didn't need.
[00:17:04] We had subscriptions to special coffee being delivered every month that we probably didn't need. We had a lovely studio for Sharon outside of our house that wasn't absolutely necessary.
[00:17:20] We had two cars that probably weren't absolutely necessary. And we've had to listen to God. First of all, we're going, oh, God, please give us more money so we can have all these lovely things.
[00:17:31] And also we realized, no, this isn't what God's asking us. God's asking us to live within our means. God's ask us what we can give up. And. And as we've given up more things, as we've turned our balance around so we've got more coming in than going out. Again, as we've been obedient to God, we've had this overwhelming sense of joy, this victory through Jesus because we're being obedient to him. We're following what he says.
[00:17:59] And yeah, guys, whatever God's asking you to do, step into it, go for it. The joy of pleasing God through the Holy Spirit is the best joy. The best joy.
[00:18:16] Okay, so moving on to number two. We've got the promise of the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:25] He says this. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another.
[00:18:30] Another advocate. The word advocate actually means helper. Okay? It's parakletos.
[00:18:36] It means come alongside someone who helps, someone who comforts, someone who strengthens, someone who speaks on behalf of another.
[00:18:47] Jesus said, the Father will send another helper. Okay, this. Another. This is the last bit of Greek, I promise. Okay? Another allos. Okay? This is the word allos. This is what allos means. It means another of the same kind or class.
[00:19:04] Okay? This means that this helper is. Is on the same level as Jesus. Yeah. It's not like, oh, we're sending the substitute, we're bringing it on the substitute. Now, he's not as good as Jesus, but you have to make do with him until Jesus comes again. So we've got. I'm afraid that's not the case. No. Got the Holy Spirit that's been promised to us because we're being obedient, because we're loving him. Okay? We get this amazing gift of the Holy Spirit promised to us, okay?
[00:19:36] But when you think about it, it's quite phenomenal, isn't it? We know.
[00:19:40] Well, we might not know. Okay? So I'm going to tell you. We've got the Old Testament. Yeah. We've got the Holy Spirit, okay? It couldn't be shared that people couldn't receive the Holy Spirit before Jesus died and rose again. People couldn't receive the Holy Spirit the way it's been promised to us today.
[00:19:58] Okay? And there's a good reason for that, okay? Jesus hadn't died for them. He hadn't been a living sacrifice for them. He hadn't clothed them in him so that when God looks at them, they see Jesus. That hadn't happened yet. So. So therefore God just couldn't live within that being. For the perfect. For the reason that they were still full of sin. Okay, we're no longer full of sin. Yeah. We've been saved. Okay. Therefore, we have this amazing gift. We have the Holy Spirit that can come and live in us.
[00:20:35] That's mind blowing, isn't it? The God that created everything. Yeah. The God that threw all those. Those suns in the sky that we call stars hundreds of thousands of million light years apart, blew them into the sky, created everything.
[00:20:49] Okay. It says, right, I'm going to come and live with you in your very being. I'm going to come and be with you.
[00:20:55] And you have access to everything that I have. It's like, hang on, how can that be so? How can that be so? Okay, it's like.
[00:21:07] Have you ever played the game where you asked a question, if you had a superpower, what superpower would it be? Okay. And then you. And then you say the wrong one. You say invisibility. And then think, what would I do with that? Now that wouldn't work. Okay. But my one was always teleportation.
[00:21:27] That'd be amazing, wouldn't it? Teleportation. Get anywhere. Like, I'm gonna have the weekend off. I'm gonna Rome, just going to teleport to Rome, and we're going to sit out in the square, market squares and we're going to enjoy Roman. And then, I don't know, we're going to go to I know Lapland for Christmas and see Santa or whatever. Yeah, teleportation would be amazing, but we have something even more powerful, even more beautiful, even more superpower than that. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit promised to us through Jesus, who says, these aren't just my words. These are the Father's words you sent me. Okay? God is promising us through Jesus that we can have the Holy Spirit living with us today.
[00:22:12] Okay? So because of what Jesus was about to do, his living sacrifice, making us pure in God's eyes so that God's Holy Spirit can live in us.
[00:22:33] Okay, so what does this mean, this Holy Spirit? It means that we'll be never alone. He tells us we'll never be orphans. Okay? We'll never be alone. Okay. We might feel like it sometimes. Okay? We might be going through grief, we might be going through all manner of problems as we sat here this morning, Lord. Yeah, but the Lord promises us that we will never be alone. We have the Holy Spirit with us at all times.
[00:23:03] Okay, Number three, I've already touched on it. But we get on to. We'll carry on with. With Holy Spirit, our superpower.
[00:23:11] I want to keep going on about this a bit more.
[00:23:16] If you. I don't know about you, but I. I used to. I haven't watched them so much lately. I haven't got any.
[00:23:21] I'm not prescribed to any television anymore.
[00:23:25] I used to like watching all that. I still do. I like watching all the.
[00:23:30] All the antique shows and all the. All the, You know, all the.
[00:23:40] What's the word I'm looking for? When you get to my age, a word just doesn't come into your head.
[00:23:47] If you're not my age yet or you might still have it happen to you.
[00:23:51] What's that. What's that place where you just. Yeah, you know, you can. An auction. That's the word I'm looking for. Auctions. Think of the word auction. Okay. So I used to love all these auction programs. I still do. Okay. What used to amaze me most was these people would like, turn up with. With their toys, their Matchbox, Matchbox cars. Yeah. That they got a kit as kids when they were 13 years old.
[00:24:16] Okay. They would be absolutely immaculate. They'd be untouched. They'd still be on in their box and. Amazing. Yeah. They get loads of money for them. But who does that? What 13 year old goes, oh, thank you for that lovely gift. I'll just leave it in its box up there and I'll look at it, but I won't play with it. Who does that? But people do, don't they?
[00:24:39] You know where I'm going with this? Yeah. We can't be doing this with the Holy Spirit. Yeah. God's given us this wonderful gift, and let's not keep it in its pretty box upon a shelf somewhere and not use it. That's not what God's given us the Holy Spirit for. Yeah. God's given us the Holy Spirit to use, to play with it, to enjoy.
[00:24:58] Okay. To have fellowship with him.
[00:25:02] When quite a few years ago now, when we were living up in the Northeast still, Sharon did this supernatural ministry thing that Bethel had brought over to this country that they were doing in America, and they brought it over here and. And they would do. And. And the whole point of this course that Sharon was on was to literally start flexing our spiritual muscles to start playing with the Holy Spirit, to start using the Holy Spirit to start working with the Holy Spirit. Okay. And it didn't even have to have any practical use.
[00:25:43] They were asked one time just to literally seek God and seek the Holy Spirit and listen to the Holy Spirit.
[00:25:50] So the Holy Spirit Might tell them something that's going to happen tomorrow or to speak to someone or to meet with someone.
[00:26:00] And I decided to play with this as well then. So it was the grand national, okay. And I've got to be careful. It's not heresy, I promise you. Okay? I wasn't using it to gain anything in any way. It wasn't, I wasn't trying to find out who was going to win the Grand National. You'll find out in a minute what I mean. Yeah, but I, I, I did, I, I got all the. Right before I looked at all the runners for the Grand National, I wasn't going to put any money on it or anything. I said, God, who's going to win the Grand National? Let's have a little play here. Holy Spirit revealed to me the winner of the Grand National.
[00:26:33] And I listened and I listened and I didn't know any of the, Honestly, I didn't know any of the horses whatsoever.
[00:26:40] And I wrote down the word that he gave me. It's something like sailor or something, I can't remember. It was a long time ago.
[00:26:47] And so I took what I felt the Holy Spirit had given me and I looked at the list of the grand national runners, and would you believe it, there was a runner that very closely matched the word that Jesus had given me for the Grand National.
[00:27:05] But this is where it gets a little bit funny. This is where the Holy Spirit demonstrates his sense of humor. If you ever been in this situation where you can actually see the irony, the funny funniness of it all.
[00:27:18] So he gave me this horse and I was confident that it was like this amazing. Yeah, you know, word of knowledge, if you like, prophetic, you know, that, that he'd given me.
[00:27:33] And sort of like an hour before the race, I've done that in the morning, an hour before the race, they started listing the non runners. Okay. And this horse was a non runner. This horse wasn't even going to run in the Grand National. I was going, oh, very good, Holy Spirit. That's funny. You gave me one of the riders not even going to be running.
[00:27:52] Turned out this horse ran in the race before the grand national instead and won.
[00:27:57] And I was like, blown away. Like, wow. God, that's amazing.
[00:28:02] It's not even that big really, is it? The Holy Spirit can do it, you know, raise Jesus from the dead.
[00:28:07] So letting you know who's going to win the grand national, the race before isn't really a big deal. But we've got to learn to just enjoy playing with the Holy Spirit. And working with the Holy Spirit. How else are we going to get better at doing this?
[00:28:27] I don't know about you, but the first time I ever sat in the driver's side of a car and I was going to start learning to drive, it seemed impossible. It seemed absolutely impossible.
[00:28:41] There's no way I can find the.
[00:28:44] What's this biting thing on the clutch? It doesn't feel any different whether I lower it or raise it with my foot. How can I shake my mirrors? Approach around about, indicate change gear, hold my clutch in, put on my handbrake. How can I do all these things at once? This is impossible. I cannot drive a car. Okay, but guess what?
[00:29:03] With practice, and don't start laughing, Gordon. With practice, you can. Or Paul, you can learn to drive a car.
[00:29:12] Okay? And guess what? Every year we drive, we get better and better and we become more.
[00:29:23] More able, more familiar, more confident with what we're doing. Okay, this one's a little bit flat because I crashed my car two weeks ago.
[00:29:33] But, you know, the point I'm making. Yeah, it was a blind junction. I couldn't. The car wasn't there, and then it was.
[00:29:45] Moving on.
[00:29:48] Okay, the point I'm making is it's not easy. Okay? It's not easy. It's all very well. Yes, great. We've got the Holy Spirit. Let's work with the Holy Spirit.
[00:29:59] It's not easy, guys. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of dedication. It takes. It takes a lot of commitment. It takes a lot of turning off the telly and spending time in God's presence itself. It takes a lot of time of meeting in fellowship with each other around, you know, not just on a Sunday morning with our connect groups. Every opportunity we have. Okay? It takes a lot of time just reading God's word and allowing the Spirit to speak through God's word.
[00:30:30] It's. It takes a lot of time just praying. Okay. And not hearing anything back and. And persevering and pressing in.
[00:30:39] I felt a bit like that when I was preparing this. This preach.
[00:30:43] To be honest, the first time, the first preacher, I did send him a second one, isn't it my first one?
[00:30:49] I was, you know, God just sort of, like, blessed me and he just throwing all this stuff at me, and I was like, wow, this is brilliant, God. I'm writing this down. Yeah. I'm going to share this. And it was really good.
[00:30:59] This time was different. This time I had to really dig in. I had to really seek God to come up with, you know, some stuff That I could talk about for.
[00:31:10] For half an hour. It's at the time 5 to 12. I'm gonna have to race on getting too carried away.
[00:31:16] Okay. So, yeah, moving on.
[00:31:18] Okay.
[00:31:23] Another thing that Jesus says on verse 27, Peace, I leave with you. My peace I give you. Okay? This isn't. He says, this isn't a piece from the world. This isn't the kind of peace that we can get from the world, okay? This isn't the peace that we get when we're distracted by watching our favorite program. This isn't the peace that we get when we go on our lovely holiday.
[00:31:47] This isn't the peace that we get when we're in our safe place at home.
[00:31:51] This isn't the peace that we get when we're in company of our close friends, okay? This is a peace that can be found nowhere else. This is the peace that's rooted in God's unchanging character and Jesus. Unchanging character. It's the peace that survives suffering. It's the peace that survives loss. It's the peace that survives uncertainty. It's the peace that does not deny reality. This is the peace that Jesus offers us.
[00:32:21] Okay? Biblical peace is not the absence of storms. It's the presence of the Christ, of Christ in the storm.
[00:32:31] We really have run out of time, so I'm just going to move on to the last one. Christ's victory.
[00:32:38] Okay? So there's so much in this piece of text that we just read.
[00:32:42] Jesus then goes on to say that the ruler is coming. We know he's referring to Satan, okay? The cross appeared to many, even the disciples, to be Satan's victory. Okay? But we know it was Satan's defeat.
[00:33:01] Jesus says, he has no claim on me.
[00:33:04] Like every other human being, Satan had no foothold in Christ. Jesus had no sin. He had no compromise. He had no guilt. He went willingly to the cross, not because Satan forced him, but because he obeyed the Father's will. Okay? The cross wasn't an accident. It was God's eternal plan. Jesus. Death became our salvation. The apparent defeat became eternal triumph.
[00:33:31] Okay? So through what Jesus did, therefore, we can now receive the Holy Spirit. Okay? It was Jesus, what he did that allows us to have the Holy Spirit today. What an amazing gift and what an amazing sacrifice so that we can have that Holy Spirit with us today.
[00:33:48] So literally, give me two more minutes. I'm just going to give us a couple of just reflections on those five things.
[00:33:58] So one, examine your love for Christ, okay? Love is seen in obedience, not perfection. Okay? Jesus is seeking faithful surrender from us. Okay? We don't. We can't be good on our own. We know that. Okay, but we can step closer to being more good. If that's a word, it's not very good English. Okay. Through the help of the Holy Spirit.
[00:34:25] Okay, two. We can depend upon the Holy Spirit. He will never abandon us. Okay? The Spirit dwells within us. Okay? We can walk daily in dependence upon Him. Learn to be dependent on him, guys. Okay? We can't do it on our own.
[00:34:40] We can find joy from this dependence on the Holy Spirit in our lives.
[00:34:45] Okay? Treasure, scripture and prayer. I didn't touch on this enough today. Okay? This is where we find the Holy Spirit. Okay? If you're in trouble, having trouble tuning into the Holy Spirit, you'll find the Holy Spirit through reading God's word and through prayer.
[00:35:00] If you haven't done it yet, come along.
[00:35:03] Check your. Keep an eye on your emails. Okay? Once a month we meet at DO and we pray together. And it's the most beautiful and amazing connection with the Holy Spirit you can ever experience. There's no better way to spend a Friday night. And I've spent some Friday nights in the past. I can tell you there's nothing. Nothing that meets spending an hour, two hours, three hours if you like. You can go from between any time between 7 and 10. Okay. You can just spend time in God's presence in his Holy Spirit. You won't regret it. It's the most beautiful night you can imagine. Okay, Come along on a Friday night to Dio's prayer meeting once a month. We'll let you know when the next one is.
[00:35:49] Number four, Living Christ's peace.
[00:35:51] Okay. So the world offers a temporary calm. I've listed some of those things. But Jesus offers enduring peace. Bring your fears to him. You can carry them all. Okay. His yoke is heavier.
[00:36:05] And we can just hand everything to Jesus.
[00:36:09] And finally, five, Trust Christ's sovereign rule. Though evil exists, Christ reigns. The cross proved God's victory. Nothing can separate believers from his love.
[00:36:24] Okay, so I'm going to bring that to a close. Now we're going to have a final song.
