| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Gifts of the Holy Spirit
00:02:12
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| Why do you speak about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and why aren't we as the church activating the Spirit of God? | |
| Think about this when we call them the gifts of the Holy Spirit over there in 1 Corinthians 12. | |
| When you reject a gift, you in essence reject the giver. | |
| Wow. | |
| So in order to say I'm receiving a gift, I am being grateful, thankful, appreciative of the one giving me the gift. | |
| I dare not say that if God wants to give me anything, I want to reject that because I think I don't really need it. | |
| Listen, God, the way God gives gifts is on the basis of us needing it and he gives it to us as a gift freely out of grace and mercy. | |
| Think about the gift of Jesus Christ. | |
| Who dares say, I don't need him, and still somehow then have a relationship with God? | |
| You couldn't reject my gift and turn right around and say, listen, you and me are good. | |
| I just don't want what you have to give me. | |
| So the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the expression, the empowerment, the endearment from God himself so that we can live the life that God intended for us while on the earth realm. | |
| Nothing more, nothing less. | |
| In fact, if you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, don't gifts come out of a relationship? | |
| Any relationship you're in, if it's a good relationship, if it's a fruitful relationship, a gift exchange is automatic. | |
| And the Holy Spirit has gifts for us. | |
| I like to say it this way. | |
| Jesus came that we could have an entrance to the kingdom, but the Holy Spirit came to bring the kingdom into us. | |
| Think about that. | |
| We have the kingdom into us. | |
| If you've watched and if you haven't, you need to get those DVDs of the New Year's show. | |
| But we talked about the judgment that is to come. | |
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Goodness and Destruction Crossed
00:00:57
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| Can I confess and tell you guys this? | |
| There was a time, there was a time when I had a little bit of a, I was a little more restrained when it came to talking about judgment. | |
| I always thought, I don't know if people need to hear that. | |
| I want to talk about how good God is. | |
| All of which is true. | |
| But one day the Lord showed me that God's goodness, his saving us, meant that there was something that he had to save us from. | |
| And to talk about the goodness of God would automatically mean that there was a badness somewhere that we had to be offered good to or from. | |
| And so I realized that really they are the same thing. | |
| Did you know that the cross of Calvary is the perfect picture of grace and mercy, judgment and destruction? | |
| Think about this on the cross. | |
| You had the absolute picture of the destruction of God on Jesus, but there was grace and mercy. | |
| Those two go together. | |