Experience The Spirit In Service Series

Series: Experiencing the Spirit

Theme: The Body of Christ needs to learn to experience the Spirit in their everyday lives so that they grow spiritually. We can learn to experience true spirituality as we see the Spirit at work in our daily lives and activities.

As we learn to recognize the Spirit and embrace His Spirit spiritual growth will take place in our lives.

Over the last few weeks we have been learning how to experience the Spirit in various dimensions of our life. The intent or focus of this series is to encourage all of us to be intentional about our spiritual growth.

According to researchers America possess the world’s largest infrastructure for implementing spiritual growth and assisting people in their spiritual development. This nation has about 450,000 churches according to Answers.com. There are 1,000’s of para-church organizations in the USA as well. We have an estimated 3,000 Christian Schools in this country with this number dwindling every year. We have seemingly unlimited Christian products, resources, and even experts in this country. We have 100’s of Christian radio stations and TV stations in the USA. We have more Bibles than you can imagine in this country with close to a 100 translations and versions of the Bible available today. We have more than we need to grow spiritually in this country, yet “Spiritual Maturity” is highlighted as the number one problem among Christians today by the Barna Research group in a 2009 study.

Many Christians cannot define or have a very hard time defining what Christian Spiritual Maturity is or even looks like. Yet, many will say that they want to grow into spiritually mature Christians.

We have learned the importance of the Bible in our spiritual growth.

We have discovered how we need recognize and experience the Spirit even at work.

We experienced the Spirit through prayer, praise and worship a few weeks ago as God’s Presence showed up in that service.

We stressed the necessity of listening to wisdom from above to experience the Spirit in our decision making process of life.

Last week we talked about the importance of working through the process of conflict so that we grow spiritually through the difficult dimensions of life. We also made the choice to forgive someone who had hurt us which opens the door to experience the Spirit.

Sermon: Experiencing the Spirit through Service

Thesis: The Lord desires us to use our gifts in service to Him and when we do that we will experience His Spirit in the midst of our serving.

Romans 12: 3-8

3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,

5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach;

8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Introduction:

Definition of Service from: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/service

a. Assistance; help: was of great service to him during his illness.

b. An act of assistance or benefit; a favor: My friend did me a service in fixing the door.

c. Active devotion to God, as through good works or prayer.

d. A religious rite.

e. The serving of food or the manner in which it is served.

As we see in our definitions service is a outward act of devotion for good which assists or benefits another person.

How would we rate our society or culture today in America on “service” or as we just discovered active devotion to God through the means of serving and assisting others? Would we get a 1 being poor or a 10 being excellent.

Here is how Max Lucado rates us as a society: “Call us a fast society, an efficient society, but don’t call us a personal society. Our society is set up for isolation. We wear ear buds when we exercise. We communicate via e-mail and text messages. We enter and exit our house with gates and garage door openers. Our mantra: ‘I leave you alone. You leave me alone.” (Out live your life, page 54).

Do you agree with assessment of our society today?

Here is another evaluation of our society from a writer named Amy: