More Series

April 30, 2017

Morning Worship

Text: Romans 8:37

Subject: The Anointing of the Holy Spirit – Part 1

Title: More

Last week I finished up the series on Lessons from Revelation. I by no means exhausted the things that we can learn, but where we finished last week created a great starting oint for a new series – The Anointing of the Holy Spirit.

This is not a new topic or something that I rarely teach about. Most of you know that I consider it to be one of the primary facets of our Christian lives. Much of what we will study will be a refresher for many of you. For some it will be new information. But the goal is to get us to the place where we understand the importance of the Holy Spirit in our everyday Christian walk and what we miss out on without Holy Spirit power alive in us.

In order to begin I fell it is necessary to take you back about 13 years to an event that impacted my life as a pastor. We had been here a couple of years and had seen the church begin to once again become a healthy body, but for a long period of time it seemed that we had reached a plateau. No growth! No movement! Not a lot of activity other than just having church. It was a Saturday night, if I remember correctly, and I was in church praying as I do on occasion, with the lights out and music playing. And I had reached a point of frustration in ministry and I cried out to the Lord, “Why am I here?”

And immediately is heard – not in my ears but in my heart – I have brought you here to bring the Holy Spirit back to the church. So I began preaching on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit – everything I could think of about the Spirit. And I had people say to me, “You are teaching things we have never heard before…” Now I don’t think that was necessarily accurate. But what I was doing was preaching and teaching with a passion and from a perspective that maybe the church hadn’t seen before.

You see, I didn’t preach like the old time Pentecostal preachers. I didn’t even know what a Pentecostal preacher was supposed to sound like. But what I did do was preach with the conviction that what the bible says about the Holy Spirit is true and just as valid for the church today as it has ever been.

That was then and this is now. I sense a renewed urgency to study and teach about those things once more and to even add to our understanding that we have had about the Spirit. Nothing new – just new revelation from the scriptures about the importance of the Baptism in the Spirit in the church and in each believer.

Let’s begin with where I left off last week.

Romans 8:31-37 (NIV2011)

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.

34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Verse 37 is going to be our starting point throughout the series.

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

I believe this is God’s word…

I believe it is for me…

I accept it as mine…

I will appropriate it to my life today…

Let’s begin with this thought… the idea that we are more than conquerors is directly connected to what Paul had written previously in chapter 8.

Romans 8:26-27 (NKJV)

26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.