The Truth About the Holy Spirit | Anchored Week 4

00:00:00

You were made to be brave.

00:00:02

You were born to make a difference.

00:00:04

God created you for heart-pumping, joy-filled adventure

00:00:08

and we're here to guide you to that adventurous life.

00:00:11

Crossroads Church.

00:00:16

Hi, I'm Brian Tome, Senior Pastor for Crossroads.

00:00:18

Great having you with us today as we take a look at the Holy Spirit.

00:00:22

Anchored is about the ancient beliefs Christians have had for thousands of years

00:00:26

that have kept us rooted while things are swirling everywhere.

00:00:29

As we look at what the Holy Spirit is about,

00:00:31

my friend Ali is going to be talking about this.

00:00:33

Ali, also known by me as Ali Cat.

00:00:35

If you're a friend of mine you get a nickname, hers is Ali Cat.

00:00:38

I'd like to say she hisses every once in a while. (hisses)

00:00:42

Actually, no, she's never hissed at me.

00:00:43

She's a really good friend a good woman and a good teacher.

00:00:46

Let's hear what she has to say.

00:00:56

- In the second and third century, just like today,

00:00:59

there were a lot of opinions on what it meant

00:01:01

to believe in Jesus.

00:01:03

His followers knew this was a problem,

00:01:05

so they worked together to write formal statements

00:01:07

about what those non-negotiable beliefs were.

00:01:10

They called those statements creeds

00:01:13

and one of the most well-known and enduring

00:01:15

is the Apostles Creed.

00:01:59

For 1700 years, these are the truths

00:02:02

that Christians have anchored themselves to.

00:02:14

- I'm standing in a place

00:02:15

that makes most people pretty uncomfortable.

00:02:19

Hey, I'm Ali and I'm one of the teaching pastors

00:02:21

here at Crossroads.

00:02:22

And I'm here thinking, did you ever do that thing

00:02:24

when you were a kid, when you would hold your breath

00:02:28

when you would drive by a cemetery?

00:02:29

We did that all the time when I was a kid.

00:02:32

And it makes me feel like there's something about death

00:02:35

that we just want to move by as quickly as we can.

00:02:39

But we can't really do that right now. Right?

00:02:42

We've been living together through this period of time

00:02:46

in our country and our world

00:02:47

where the talk of death seems to be everywhere.

00:02:51

And I don't know about you, but I feel like

00:02:54

I'm more vulnerable than ever.

00:02:56

And I feel sort of unsure how to make decisions

00:03:00

to protect my own life.

00:03:02

And it's making me confront the idea

00:03:05

that death is something I'm actually powerless to stop.

00:03:10

We've been exploring these core beliefs

00:03:13

that are preserved in a creed called the Apostles' Creed.

00:03:17

And today we're going to center on one tiny little line

00:03:21

of that creed that says, I believe in the Holy Spirit.

00:03:26

And that one line has something to say to us

00:03:29

in our culture today, because the Holy Spirit

00:03:32

is who brings life right in the midst of death.

00:03:38

There's always been mystery surrounding the Holy Spirit.

00:03:42

Who is this? What is this?

00:03:44

Is it a force of God? Is it God at all?

00:03:47

There's always been that.

00:03:49

So often I think that we actually sense

00:03:52

the presence of the Holy Spirit

00:03:53

or maybe we even touch or experience the power

00:03:56

and we don't know it.

00:03:57

This happened to me when I was 17 years old for the first time.

00:04:02

I was in high school, and honestly,

00:04:05

I thought I was pretty cool.

00:04:06

But there was this group of kids

00:04:08

that I couldn't help but want to hang around.

00:04:10

There was something different about them.

00:04:12

They were probably a lot nicer than me

00:04:15

and they were definitely happier than me.

00:04:17

They just seemed to have fun all the time

00:04:20

and I wanted to hang out with them, so I started to.

00:04:23

And one Friday night, we ended up at a house

00:04:26

of a couple named Pat and Jodi.

00:04:28

I will never forget Pat and Jodi.

00:04:29

They hosted us for dinner.

00:04:31

And after dinner, there was someone who got up

00:04:34

and he started talking about Jesus.

00:04:36

And he told the story about Jesus's life and death

00:04:40

and resurrection from the grave.

00:04:42

But he must have said it in some way

00:04:45

that hit me differently,

00:04:47

or maybe the Holy Spirit did something that night in me.

00:04:52

I heard it differently.

00:04:55

I don't know. I received it differently.

00:04:56

Has this ever happened to you?

00:04:58

I've heard this so many times at Crossroads.

00:05:00

Someone will come up to me and say,

00:05:02

"When you said the thing, the thing, that was for me,

00:05:04

that was for me."

00:05:06

And it was, that's the Holy Spirit.

00:05:09

And we've experienced this, just like I did.

00:05:11

I went to my car that night after I had thought,

00:05:14

"I think this story is something I believe."

00:05:16

And I went to my car and I pulled on the handle

00:05:20

of my old red Honda Civic - I loved that car.

00:05:23

And I felt something different happening.

00:05:25

It was light and almost giddiness.

00:05:28

It was like something effervescent.

00:05:30

I couldn't even describe it if I tried.

00:05:33

And I'll bet many of us have felt like that.

00:05:36

We've felt some kind of spiritual presence,

00:05:39

some kind of power that's near us or around us

00:05:42

or interacting with us

00:05:44

and we've mistaken it for for something else.

00:05:47

We're all searching for that because we've touched on it,

00:05:51

we've seen it or heard it or known it or felt it.

00:05:54

And we're reaching for ideas around us

00:05:56

to try to understand that.

00:05:58

I hear them all the time.

00:06:00

I hear these ideas, and I get it. I really do get them.

00:06:03

We say things like, "We're going to try to connect

00:06:05

to our divine self or we're going to --

00:06:09

we need to discover our our own truth

00:06:11

and share it with the world.

00:06:13

And we need to be on this journey

00:06:14

of becoming our most enlightened self."

00:06:17

And listen, I totally understand that.

00:06:20

And I want some of those things, too.

00:06:22

And some of us are using different guides.

00:06:25

We're going to crystals or star charts

00:06:28

or the latest book on the pop spiritual idea of the day.

00:06:33

And I admit, some of them,

00:06:35

they actually seem to contain some truth in there.

00:06:38

And they certainly give an explanation for the power

00:06:41

that you and I know is operating in a realm

00:06:45

that we can't see and this can be confusing.

00:06:48

The problem is, there's so many spiritual influencers today

00:06:51

seem to tell us the same thing,

00:06:54

that divine truth and power is actually already within you.

00:06:58

Listen, you can look for truth in yourself,

00:07:02

and without Him, you are not going to find it.

00:07:06

In Romans 8:11 it says:

00:07:21

The spirit of God lives in us?

00:07:24

That is crazy, amazing stuff.

00:07:29

Even though our earthly bodies all this stuff

00:07:33

may be headed here to a graveyard or somewhere like it.

00:07:38

If God himself has come to live in us,

00:07:42

then that spiritual life that He gives

00:07:45

means we never will end up here.

00:07:49

Let's stop looking down these dead ends for truth

00:07:53

and divine life in other places

00:07:55

and join millions of Christians over thousands of years

00:07:58

who have said one simple line.

00:08:00

They say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit."

00:08:10

If you want a life that thrives right now,

00:08:14

believing the Holy Spirit is the only way there.

00:08:18

The Holy Spirit wants to come into our life

00:08:21

and start to transform us from the inside out.

00:08:24

And His goal is that we would look more and more

00:08:28

and more like Jesus.

00:08:30

When I first encountered God at 17 years old

00:08:33

and experienced the Holy Spirit really for the first time,

00:08:36

not even knowing what it was, I noticed I began

00:08:40

to think about my life a little bit differently.

00:08:42

Even that young, I started

00:08:43

to want my questions about God answered.

00:08:46

I am a question asker

00:08:49

and I had some new questions about God that surfaced.

00:08:52

I started to also ask some questions

00:08:54

that were a little bit different about my future.

00:08:56

I remember thinking about college and thinking,

00:08:59

"Is that really the right major?

00:09:00

Or how do I want to pick a roommate?

00:09:02

What kind of people do I really want to be around?"

00:09:04

And I also remember questioning some of

00:09:07

the very early beer drinking that I did in high school.

00:09:10

I don't know about you, but I feel like I am

00:09:13

and I maybe always will feel this way,

00:09:15

a long, slow, maybe hard work for God.

00:09:22

The Holy Spirit comes into our life

00:09:24

to put some things to death

00:09:26

and to lead us down the paths that are going to bring us life.

00:09:31

We read in the Book of Romans before in Romans 8,

00:09:34

and Paul who's writing this letter to a church in Rome.

00:09:37

He's talking about what life following Jesus should feel like.

00:09:42

And right after he says, "Hey, the Spirit of God

00:09:45

comes to live in you," this is what he writes in Romans 8.

00:09:50

He says:

00:10:13

Paul says by the Spirit, He's going to lead you

00:10:16

to put some things to death and bring other things to life,

00:10:20

just like a child with his parent.

00:10:22

Now everybody is either somebodies kid or they have kids.

00:10:26

And I have four, so I appreciate this metaphor

00:10:29

that Paul's given me for trying to figure out

00:10:32

what the Holy Spirit is going to feel like in my life.

00:10:35

It's going to feel like being actively in daily parented

00:10:39

and guided to learn and grow in wisdom and in all kinds of ways.

00:10:43

See, because God, He's just like a good parent.

00:10:47

He has our long term transformation in mind.

00:10:51

Not so much always our short term comfort.

00:10:54

Okay, I want you to think about this for just a minute.

00:10:57

Put in your mind right now the person that you believe

00:11:01

dislikes you more than anyone else in the entire world.

00:11:05

Put that person in your mind right now.

00:11:09

I have that person, too.

00:11:11

And things got real uncomfortable when a few years ago

00:11:15

I thought the Holy Spirit was pushing on me

00:11:19

to call this person and invite them to coffee.

00:11:22

We'd been in a group together

00:11:23

and we had some conflict from the very beginning.

00:11:26

Our personalities didn't go well together

00:11:28

and we just didn't like each other.

00:11:31

It was that simple.

00:11:32

And we just kind of dropped it on the floor and walked away.

00:11:35

And when I called her, my only objective

00:11:38

was to sit and listen to try to see what is it

00:11:42

that God wants for me in this.

00:11:44

And as I listened, I got very uncomfortable because

00:11:47

she told me things that I didn't know.

00:11:50

I didn't even know I had done them.

00:11:51

One of those things that she told me was,

00:11:53

"Hey, when we started to get uncomfortable with each other,

00:11:55

you used to just kind of pass right over me.

00:11:58

You would just -- when I would say something,

00:11:59

you would just kind of ignore it

00:12:01

as though I wasn't even there.

00:12:02

And that really hurt me."

00:12:03

And I thought, "Oh, I think I did that."

00:12:09

And I know I grew up that day.

00:12:11

I know I grew up because God is a good Father.

00:12:13

He wants me to know things

00:12:15

and He wants me to grow beyond where I am right now,

00:12:18

even at the cost of my comfort.

00:12:21

But how did I really know?

00:12:23

Isn't that all of our question?

00:12:24

How do you know if it's the Holy Spirit?

00:12:27

I wonder that still and I'm trying to follow Him all the time.

00:12:30

And I've come up with three things.

00:12:32

And listen, I know this is a little bit cheesy,

00:12:34

but it it actually has the three letters, B, F, F.

00:12:38

So just put in your mind if you want the Holy Spirit

00:12:40

to be your BSF. I know that's cheesy.

00:12:43

Just remember these three words.

00:12:45

First, if you think you're hearing something

00:12:48

or sensing something that the Holy Spirit

00:12:51

might want you to do, the first thing I do

00:12:53

is I go to the Bible.

00:12:54

And in this particular case, it was a no brainer.

00:12:57

What I'm looking for when I go to the Bible

00:12:59

is where is this concept dealt with?

00:13:01

What does God say about this?

00:13:03

Are there any straight commands about this?

00:13:05

In my case, absolute no brainer.

00:13:08

Core to God's character are things like forgiveness and unity,

00:13:12

reconciliation and humility.

00:13:14

I mean, this was an absolute no brainer for me.

00:13:17

Number two, I go to my friends.

00:13:20

Not just any friends, I go to the ones who love God and love me.

00:13:24

It turns out, I'm not the only one

00:13:27

who has the Holy Spirit in me.

00:13:29

And I trust their counsel.

00:13:30

And I know sometimes we want to go to our friends first,

00:13:32

but this is always number two.

00:13:35

The third letter is another F and it stands for faith.

00:13:39

Faith requires us to move.

00:13:42

The Holy Spirit isn't passive.

00:13:44

He wants us to move and move outside of our comfort zone.

00:13:46

And that is where growth happens.

00:13:49

I think there's some really good news today.

00:13:51

See, frankly, I think a lot of people

00:13:53

that will listen or watch this kind of believe

00:13:56

that Jesus is who He says He is.

00:13:59

Maybe we just haven't let ourselves grow up.

00:14:02

Maybe we're not allowing the Holy Spirit

00:14:05

to lead and guide us like a good Father every single day.

00:14:09

He comes to us for our transformation so that we can thrive,

00:14:13

not someday in heaven, right here, right now, today.

00:14:20

- That's good stuff right there.

00:14:21

And yes, the Holy Spirit can talk to anybody

00:14:23

and He can talk to you saying,

00:14:26

"Smile, laugh a little bit today,

00:14:27

it's not always an ominous thing."

00:14:29

We want to bless people in our communities

00:14:31

and bring the Holy Spirits presence.

00:14:34

And part of how we do that is by being generous.

00:14:36

If you'd like to fuel some of the ministry

00:14:38

that's happening through our community,

00:14:39

you can go to Crossroads.net/give

00:14:42

or you can text Crossroads at 313131.

00:14:48

Being a giver is important, I believe, to the Holy Spirit.

00:14:51

One of the people in our ministry

00:14:53

who's heard from the Holy Spirit is Josh,

00:14:55

who leads one of our physical locations, Uptown.

00:14:57

I think he heard right. Watch this.

00:15:00

- Right now, our country feels more divided than ever.

00:15:03

The tension that we're seeing play out

00:15:05

is really high right now.

00:15:07

With the recent killings of

00:15:09

Ahmad Arbore, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd,

00:15:10

we're seeing our country come to a pivotal point in time.

00:15:14

Everyone is asking, "What do we do?

00:15:16

How do we respond right now?"

00:15:18

And as the church, as believers, we respond in a way

00:15:20

that's different than what the world says.

00:15:22

We respond with both peace and justice.

00:15:25

- One of the things we're realizing,

00:15:26

in order to bring the Kingdom of God and show God's love,

00:15:30

you have to be around people who look different than you do.

00:15:33

And as a church, I'm proud to be able to step in

00:15:37

using our community's resources to provide tangible blessings.

00:15:41

- Engaging in this time looks like being led by the Spirit,

00:15:43

those moments when you're unsure of what to do

00:15:45

and that little voice in the back of your head

00:15:47

and thought that's not your says,

00:15:49

"You should go pray for that person

00:15:50

or you should go have that conversation

00:15:52

with that person at your job or in your neighborhood."

00:15:55

In these moments, in these times, we have to lean into

00:15:58

what the Holy Spirit says to us, what God says to us,

00:16:00

and how to act, how to engage.

00:16:02

- So what else can we do to be a part of the solution,

00:16:05

instead of the problem?

00:16:07

- We get close to people who look

00:16:09

and think differently than we do because

00:16:10

we want to be a better picture of the Kingdom of God.

00:16:13

We want to stand Undivided.

00:16:21

- If you don't feel the presence of the Holy Spirit

00:16:23

in your life on a pretty regular basis,

00:16:26

maybe you need to consider

00:16:28

whether you are being inhospitable.

00:16:32

I'm here on the patio of one of my very favorite restaurants,

00:16:35

and even with these cars going by,

00:16:38

I still feel at peace here

00:16:39

because it's just a special spot for me.

00:16:42

Who knows how these things get started in our lives.

00:16:44

We used to live about a mile up the street from here,

00:16:47

so we came here really early on in our marriage

00:16:50

for some special occasions.

00:16:51

One of those was a little mini gender reveal party.

00:16:55

I know they're quite the thing these days.

00:16:56

I wish someone had thought of that when I had all my babies.

00:16:59

But in this case, we just had an envelope.

00:17:02

And inside that envelope, it was supposed to tell us

00:17:05

whether we were having a boy or a girl.

00:17:07

And we brought it here for dinner

00:17:08

and we ripped it open to find out,

00:17:10

only to see just an ultrasound picture.

00:17:14

If you've ever seen one of those things,

00:17:16

you know nobody without some degree can read those.

00:17:20

There was nothing there for us to read.

00:17:22

We had no idea if it was a boy or girl and we freaked out.

00:17:26

I don't know, maybe it's memories like that

00:17:28

that kind of attached my heart to this place,

00:17:30

but I do know that when I come here, I feel a warmth,

00:17:34

I feel a welcome.

00:17:35

I feel like the place holds the memories

00:17:37

of the other times that I've been here.

00:17:39

And sometimes the waiters or waitresses,

00:17:42

they'll even remember preferences that I have

00:17:44

or things that I've liked.

00:17:46

And man, that kind of hospitality, that is going

00:17:49

to keep me coming back here over and over again.

00:17:53

It's exactly that sort of hospitality

00:17:56

that we want to have with the Holy Spirit.

00:18:00

We want to be an amazing host.

00:18:02

If He's going to live in us

00:18:04

and work through us in our lives every day,

00:18:07

you and I can actually impact the kind of strength

00:18:10

and connection we have with Him on a day to day basis.

00:18:14

I think of these verses in Ephesians 4 sometimes

00:18:17

when I'm thinking about the person of the Holy Spirit.

00:18:20

Ephesians 4 says:

00:18:43

The Holy Spirit is a person of God.

00:18:46

He has a personality.

00:18:47

There are things that encourage Him to stay.

00:18:49

And there are things that will run Him off in a heartbeat.

00:18:53

And I've done that before.

00:18:55

Those tend to be the times in my own life

00:18:58

where God goes silent.

00:19:00

And I don't think He's trying to punish me.

00:19:02

I actually think he'd rather it not be that way,

00:19:04

i's just that the Holy Spirit has certain environments

00:19:07

that He can't function very well in.

00:19:10

And the question for us today is, how do we do that?

00:19:13

How do we create a place in ourselves and in our lives

00:19:17

that's hospitable for the work of the Holy Spirit?

00:19:21

I just think, "Hey, we need to do what a good host does."

00:19:25

My husband is a great host.

00:19:26

He's actually way better than I am

00:19:28

and I've learned a ton by watching him.

00:19:30

The first thing he always does is

00:19:32

he makes a clear invitation.

00:19:34

And we can do this with the Holy Spirit.

00:19:36

It's not unusual for me to pray in the morning

00:19:39

or at the beginning of a week, "Hey, Lord,

00:19:41

I want You to be active in me.

00:19:44

I want You to be alive in me.

00:19:45

Show me if anything's blocking that, helped me to know."

00:19:49

Luke 11 says:

00:20:03

We can ask the Holy Spirit to come, to be active in us.

00:20:07

We can welcome Him.

00:20:09

And I also think of reading the Bible as a way

00:20:11

I just get to know Him.

00:20:12

The Bible is the story of God.

00:20:14

I get to know His personality and things He might say

00:20:17

and language He might use.

00:20:18

And so I recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit

00:20:21

a little bit better when I hear it.

00:20:25

The last thing that I always try to be is an easy get for God.

00:20:29

That's what I call it. I want to be an easy get.

00:20:31

I want to be someone who moves when I think that God is speaking.

00:20:35

I'm interested. I'm available. I am interruptible.

00:20:38

Is that even a word? Interruptible? It is now.

00:20:42

You know what I mean.

00:20:43

I want to be someone that God thinks,

00:20:45

"There's a woman who's ready to go."

00:20:48

Because friends, the Spirit of God is near all the time,

00:20:52

in me, around me, in you, around you,

00:20:55

waiting to draw you into faith in Christ

00:20:59

and to push you out into a thriving life

00:21:03

that transforms to look more and more and more like Him.

00:21:08

The question on the table for us today is:

00:21:10

are you in your life really a place

00:21:14

that the Holy Spirit wants to be?

00:21:17

For 1700 years, since the Apostles' Creed was written

00:21:22

and summarized, Christians have been saying,

00:21:26

"I believe in the Holy Spirit."

00:21:28

Today, the Holy Spirit is an anchor for us who want a thriving life.

00:21:36

The Holy Spirit is right here waiting.

00:21:38

He's just waiting for us to be hospitable, to invite Him in,

00:21:42

to share our life with Him through faith through faith in Jesus,

00:21:46

and all we have to do is open the door.

00:26:10

Singing is actually a way we can invite the Holy Spirit

00:26:14

to be alive and active in and through us right now.

00:26:19

We're about to sing a song called It Is Well.

00:26:21

And this is a song that was written by someone

00:26:23

who was in a lot of pain.

00:26:24

And even despite that suffering, continued to believe

00:26:28

that there was life and peace available

00:26:31

through the Holy Spirit.

00:36:32

God, I thank You that You are faithful.

00:36:36

and that You promise to send Your Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper.

00:36:40

And so right now we invite the Holy Spirit to come into our situation,

00:36:46

into our condition, into the human condition.

00:36:49

God, would You do Your work through the Spirit right now?

00:36:53

In Jesus's name we pray, Amen.

00:36:59

Maybe there's something you need to overcome.

00:37:01

Maybe that song or other songs we've been doing

00:37:04

have been connecting with you in a unique way.

00:37:06

You can go to the major music platforms and download our music,

00:37:08

or you can also text MUSIC to 313131.

00:37:14

The Holy Spirit might have been stirring up some things inside of you

00:37:18

and if you want to connect with somebody or talk with somebody

00:37:21

or just laugh with somebody even

00:37:23

you can go to crossroads.net/anchored

00:37:27

because we want to anchored in God's presence

00:37:29

and we want His pervasiveness to come

00:37:33

and go through our entire being and through our world.

00:37:36

The church hasn't closed.

00:37:38

Our buildings may not be open but we are open to blessing people

00:37:41

and are blessing people all over the world.

00:37:43

If you'd like to help fuel that through your giving you can text CROSSROADS to 313131.

00:37:49

We're actually impacting neighborhoods all over the world.

00:37:53

We have an event we just got done doing called GO Local

00:37:56

where we're blessing people in our local communities,

00:37:59

that even means local communities in Japan.

00:38:04

- Hi, my name is Jack Adams. - And my name is Megumi Adams.

00:38:07

And we are a part of Crossroads Anywhere in Kagoshima, Japan.

00:38:11

- A family in our church community moved a couple weeks ago.

00:38:15

And we knew this would be a great opportunity

00:38:16

to invite others in our community to serve and love them.

00:38:21

- So when we told we would be helping their family for moving,

00:38:25

their response was, well, they were surprised,

00:38:28

but they are also happy to receive the help.

00:38:31

- Being the church is a big part of our mission,

00:38:34

but outreach and serving the community,

00:38:36

and actually being able to allow people to see who God is

00:38:40

and the love of Jesus through us is a rarity.

00:38:46

And so any time we get the opportunity to serve people in our community,

00:38:50

it's such a great experience to allow them to see who Jesus is.

Recent Series