Are the gifts of the Spirit for today?

I was speaking with someone, and I don't remember what, you know, it was a couple, a few weeks ago or whatever, but I heard about somebody who had mistakenly referred to our fellowship as, under a different name. I was told that somebody referred to Calvary Chapel as Calvary Baptist, and you know, that's an honest mistake. I get it, you know, there's, it's understandable. There's several churches that use the word Calvary, and we certainly don't have a corner on it, you know. And I understand that there is even, I think, a Calvary Baptist in Weezer. Never been there, but you know, and you know, that's cool. But it got me thinking about something, and that's what I feel like the Holy Spirit started kind of working on my heart about, because when somebody referred to our fellowship as Calvary Baptist, I thought to myself, gee, I wonder if very many people know the difference between Calvary Chapel and a Baptist church, because there are some pretty significant differences. And I got to asking myself the question, I wonder how many of our own people would be able to explain the difference, if somebody asked them, if somebody said, well, I've gone to Calvary Baptist in Weezer, and you go to Calvary Chapel, what's the diff? Are you guys the same church? And somebody might assume that, because of the similarities in the name. But you know, obviously we're not the same fellowship, and there are differences. Now, before I get started, I want to have it clearly understood that what I'm gonna be sharing this morning is not intended in any way to be a put down or a criticism of any Baptist church. I have brothers and sisters whom I love who attend Baptist churches, and they are my brothers and sisters, they're born again believers, we're gonna be together in Christ, and there's gonna come a day when those distinctions no longer matter, okay? And so I want that to be very, very clear. It is not my intention, even in fact, to really talk about Baptist churches at all. That's really not even my point. Because what I want to share with you this morning is not exclusively a Baptist issue or anything like that. What I want to accomplish today is to point out one of the distinctives of Calvary Chapel in such a way as to, I hope, bring clarity on a key element of what we believe here at Calvary Chapel, and it surrounds the role and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And you know what? There are some people who, when you even mention the Holy Spirit, they get nervous. You can kind of feel the tension in the room rise. But I wanted to talk to you about one of the key areas where we do differ, frankly, from most Baptist churches, again, though it isn't a Baptist issue, but we differ from many other churches, denominational and otherwise, in the fact that many of those churches hold to a belief that is referred to as cessationism. And you may or may not be familiar with it, and if you're not, let me just put a definition up on the screen for you, because cessationism is the belief that spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, those sorts of things, have actually ceased with the apostolic age. And that's where the name comes from. Cessationism comes from cease or cease. These things have ceased to function. And it is a belief, and it is a belief held by many genuine believers in Jesus. Again, they believe essentially that when the last of the apostles left the scene, meaning they physically died, that the functional use of the gifts of the Spirit were no longer necessary in the body of Christ. And if you were to ask those individuals who hold to a cessationist position why it is they believe that, they would probably explain that they're no longer needed because we now have the completed New Testament. And this is a very popular teaching, and it's a very popular belief. And since the New Testament has been completed, there is no longer a use for spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miracles, and the like. And when you ask them about miracles, they'll usually say something like, well, miracles were needed to kind of kickstart the church in the first century. It was a very difficult world that God was planting the seed of the kingdom of God, the church in, and miracles were needed to get people's attention so that the message of the gospel could get traction and get going and so forth. But now that the church has been established, it's functioning, we have the completed word of God, they believe that God has ceased, again, there's that word, to operate in those specific ways in our time. And one of the reasons why they believe that is because the Bible does say that the gifts will cease. And it's actually very clear in the word of God. And it's found in 1 Corinthians 13. I'll put it on the screen for you. And it goes like this. Love never ends. As for prophecies, look at this, they will pass away. That's pretty clear. As for tongues, and he's talking about not just the language of, because tongues is just simply the word languages. And so he says, but here he's talking about the gift of tongues. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, and he's talking about the gift of knowledge, because all knowledge isn't gonna pass away, you can't, knowledge can't pass away, that's simply knowing. In fact, knowledge is gonna increase. But he's talking about the gifts here. And he's saying they will pass away, they will. And then he says at the end of that passage, for we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfection comes, and this is how the ESV translates these verses, the partial will pass away. So I'm gonna have us leave that up there, if you would, on the screen for just a little bit so we can kind of look at that. Because you see, cessationists believe that the gifts of the Spirit were part of what Paul refers to as partial. And imperfect. And they explain that the words, the perfect, that you see outlined in that passage, the perfect, they will explain to you it comes from a Greek root word that means complete, or completeness. And they will go on to explain to you that what this passage is saying is, is that when the completion of the New Testament comes into play, that's when the gifts of the Spirit are no longer necessary. It's easy for me to find this explanation in my commentaries, my Bible commentaries. Cessationists have been around for a long time, and their comments and opinions are replete within those sorts of things. So in other words, let me take what a cessationist believes and we'll put it on top of this passage, okay? Here's how they basically have it. They basically say, love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the New Testament is completed, the partial will pass away. That's what a cessationist is saying, okay? That's what they're interpreting the perfect to be. And it's not what I believe, I've never believed it. And more importantly, it's not what Calvary Chapel believes. Although we do believe that the cessationist is right about one thing, but wrong about another. What they are right about is that the Greek word that is used there to translate for us the English words of the perfect is the word tilios, and it does have a root word that means the completion. Absolutely true. But what I believe the cessationist is entirely incorrect about is the assumption, and yes, I said assumption because it is an assumption, that the word completed, tilios in the Greek, is here referring to the completion of the New Testament. There is, in fact, nothing in the passage that would lead you to believe that he is talking about the completion of the New Testament, nothing. It's not there, it's not inherent in the passage at all. In fact, the Greek word tilios literally means having reached its end. That's the true Greek literal meaning of that word. And by the way, that definition is taken right out of the New American Standard exhaustive concordance of the Bible. It means, again, having. reached its end." So what is the Apostle referring to when he writes to you and I in 1st Corinthians that the gifts of the Spirit will end? He says when the teleos, or the perfection, or the completion, or when it has reached its end, what is he talking about? Well, the key to understanding that passage is actually going a little bit farther down into verse 12, and I'll show it to you here, where Paul writes, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, Paul says, and then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known. And once again I'm going to ask that we leave that passage up for a little bit so we can kind of simmer on that. Paul tells us that when the perfect comes, we will no longer see things, partially. He describes it as like looking in a bad mirror, like those mirrors in rest stops. I always think of that when I read that passage. You know those ones that they don't want you to break, so they put up this really bad metal, and you're kind of looking at yourself, kind of going to get your whole face in there a little bit or whatever. Yeah, and that's, Paul was kind of describing that as the way we see all things. He says we don't, we don't see the whole story. We only see a little bit. We just see a partial aspect of the story. It's like looking in a really bad mirror, you know. And, but yet he tells us there that when the perfect comes, we will no longer see things that way. What he tells us is that we will see things with such incredible clarity as to know everything the way we are known. Let me ask you a question. How does God know you? Is it partial? Does God only know you partially, or does he know you completely? Paul says when the perfect comes, we will know as we are known now by the Lord. He sees you in every aspect of your being in ways that you can't even see yourself, and that's what Paul says will happen when the perfect comes. And we know, you know, Paul says that, he's involved in this. He says, for now we see in a mirror dimly. Who's the we? Is that you and me? Well, it's not you and me if you're a cessationist. If you're a cessationist, we does not include you. Because, see, you believe as a cessationist that the New Testament brought in a perfection whereby, and you have to believe this because Paul said it, now you see better than the Apostle Paul. Paul says we see in a mirror dimly, but the cessationist says once the New Testament is completed, we're going to know fully even as we are known. So, you see, that's kind of an interesting sort of a thing. A cessationist believes that modern-day Christians see with absolute clarity. So, I guess I have a question for you. Are you prepared to make that statement if you are a cessationist? Are you prepared to say, I see and I know as I am known? Well, I'm not prepared to make that statement. I don't believe that I can say I am, that I know all things as I am known. In fact, I've been studying the Bible long enough to admit to you that there are things the Apostle Paul wrote about I still haven't figured out. And there are many of you who have attended Calvary Chapel for a long time, and you've heard me teach from this pulpit, and you've heard me read a verse or passage and look you right in the eye and say, I'm not really sure what this means. And I've done that on more than one occasion. In fact, it was kind of like a skipping record in our study through the book of Revelation. There are so many things that I do not see, and you do not see with perfect clarity. We do not know as we are known, because guess what? We're just like the Apostle Paul, and we still see as through a mirror dimly. We still see that way. Now, don't get me wrong. I want to make a very important point. The Gospel was crystal clear to the Apostle Paul. That was not something that was dim. It wasn't dim to him, and it's not dim to us. When we talk about the way of salvation, the way a person is saved, Paul had absolute clarity on that topic, and so do you and I, because frankly of what the Lord revealed to him. But that being said, there are many other things for which you and I don't have absolute clarity, and as I've already inferred, many of those surround issues related to the last days, the coming of the Lord, and most certainly the book of Revelation. I mean, you know, we do our best to try to figure things out and know what's what and so forth, but the body of Christ is still working through a lot of those things, as evidenced by the fact that we don't agree. We don't all agree on a lot of those issues related to the last days. We at Calvary Chapel believe that Jesus is coming for his church, the bride, prior to the tribulation period, but there's many, many believers who disagree with that position. Some believe he's going to take the church away midway through the tribulation period, some after the tribulation period is over. Do we break fellowship with people because of the difference in belief in those areas? No, of course not, but the point is we differ. What does that tell you? We don't see clearly. We don't know as we are known, at least not yet. So if the perfect that we looked at back in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 doesn't refer to the completion of the New Testament, which I don't believe it does, and there's nothing in the Word that says that it does, we have to ask the question, what does it refer to? Well, I found a quote from a fairly popular Calvary Chapel teacher, and I thought, hey, this kind of sums up what I think, so I'll put it on the screen for you. This is David Gusick writing. He says, Paul says that when that which is perfect, tilios, right, has come, then the gifts will be discontinued. But what is that which is perfect? Those cessationists say it refers to the completion of the New Testament. They are wrong. Virtually all commentators agree that that which is perfect is fulfilled when we are in the eternal presence of the perfect one, when we are with the Lord forever, either through the return of Christ or graduation to the eternal. In other words, when you die and go and be with the Lord. I don't think we're going to need the gifts of the Spirit, you know, when we're in heaven. So for the church, when the gifts of the Spirit are going to pass away is when, you know, when Christ returns for his bride. I'm talking about for the church as a whole, right? That is, I believe that is the perfection that Paul is talking about, and that's why I believe, I think that that's consistent with the literal definition of tilios, which is, have reached their end. When the times have reached their completion. In other words, the church age that we're living in right now. So I guess the bottom line is, what are you and I going to do with this information? What are we going to do, you know? Because with knowledge comes responsibility. Well, Calvary Chapel has always believed that the gifts of the Spirit are fully functional today. I have taught that for 28 years, you know. Well, it's going to be 28 years here in about two weeks. First Sunday of December, we will celebrate our 28th anniversary as a church, and I have always taught that as recorded in the book of Acts, we believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit are fully functional today, and that's why we say so in our statement of faith, and we have said it for 28 years. Let me show you what our statement of faith says. It says, we believe, this is point number seven, in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit as manifested in the early church and recorded in the book of Acts and various letters of the New Testament. And that's not just saying we believe that they existed back then. It means we believe that they're still fully functional today. We believe, and we don't see that there's anything in the Word of God that would suggest that they're not. We're basically saying to anybody who understands and knows how to read that we're not cessationists. We are not cessationists here at Calvary Chapel. We believe the gifts of the Spirit are still active. Here's the problem though, you see, cessationism and the teaching of that has gone on for a long time in the body of Christ, and it is still active today, and it has had a huge impact on the body of Christ over the years. And one result of the teaching of cessationism is a marked de-emphasis in the body of Christ on... relying on the Holy Spirit. And I believe it has weakened the church. I believe cessationism has had a very negative impact. We've basically backed away from this whole idea of the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, relying on the Holy Spirit, and we have become weakened as a result. And I don't think we can afford to be weak. Just saying, I watch the elections that go on and I think to myself, can we afford to sit back and be weak now? We who have been tasked by the Lord with being salt and light, can we afford to sit back on our laurels now and say, yeah, but that was for yesterday. No, we've already made the point, that wasn't for yesterday, that's for now. The work of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, it's for now. And here's the other thing. Satan hasn't slowed down a bit. We have, but he hasn't. And I say this with a tinge of sadness. We are getting beat. We're not winning, you guys, we're losing. When it comes to the influence of the church in the world, we're losing. It's like a lot of those percentage of votes that I saw come out on the election. We're on the losing side. I wish we were on the winning side, but we're not and we need God's power to reach people for Christ in these last days and especially in this last hour. We need his power. I wanna show you here this morning one of the ways that I believe cessationism has created confusion regarding the person and the work of the Holy Spirit. And so what I'm gonna have you do is open that Bible that you have to the Gospel of John. Would you do that, please? And go to John chapter 20. And what we're gonna be reading about here is some statements that Jesus made. And I want you to know when these statements were made because it's critical that you and I understand right from the get-go the timing for these events. If you look at John chapter 20 and verse one, you immediately understand the timing of what this is about.

All right, so do you understand the timetable we're dealing with here? We're talking about resurrection day. This is the day that Jesus emerged from the tomb, right? Resurrected, glorified, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. All right, now skip down to verse 19.

All right, I'm gonna have you stop there for just a moment. And I'm just gonna ask you, does that seem fairly clear to you? I mean, it does to me. It says here in this passage that Jesus appeared to them on the very evening of the day he came out of the tomb, and he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. What do you and I assume from that? Well, we assume that they received the Holy Spirit. And so, we believe that this is when the first Christians received the Holy Spirit for regeneration. They were born again. Do you understand that in the Old Testament, nobody was ever indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Do you understand that? The Holy Spirit came upon people in the Old Testament. He did not come within. He did not come in to live in the Old Testament. That's a New Testament idea. And the reason it never happened in the Old Testament is the vessel had to be cleansed first for the Holy Spirit to come inside and take up residence. It's a beautiful reality. But Jesus breathed on them, and what a beautiful picture breathing on them was. How did man first become a living being? God breathed in his nostrils, Genesis tells us, and he became alive. But the Bible tells us that when man sinned in the garden, he died spiritually, and now, Jesus, we find out in the New Testament, tells us that he needs to experience a new birth. And so, Jesus, the creator, breathes into man a second time to give him that second birth by which he is born again. And new life takes place within these individuals. Wonderful passage, wonderful passage. But wait, I sound like one of those, wrong code, but wait, if you call now. No, that's not what we're doing. When we turn just a few pages forward and get to the book of Acts, we learn about something else regarding the Holy Spirit that may, in fact, be confusing to some people. So turn ahead to Acts chapter one. It should be only one or two page turns for you, depending on the size of the type in your Bible. For you older people, it might be four or five page turns. Anyway, Acts chapter one, skip down to verse four. Bring me down just a hair. It says, and while staying with them, he, that's Jesus, ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. All right, stop there. Now this is interesting. And you have to kind of stop and pause for a moment because you see, we read, and by the way, what we're reading here took place after Resurrection Day. So this is days later. We read back in John chapter 20 that Jesus breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. And again, our assumption is that they received the Holy Spirit. I mean, why not? Well, then we get to Acts chapter one, which is days later, and Jesus is telling them to stick around because the Holy Spirit is coming. And we're all kind of looking at this going, hmm. So why is he talking about days later, the Holy Spirit coming? Well, if you just keep reading in your Bible, it's really not a problem because, you know, you read on and you see that, oh, there's a different purpose here. Look at verse six. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it's not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. Look at what he says in verse eight. This is key. You might want to underline it. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Okay, all right, stop there. We learned something very interesting and very important in these verses. Jesus reveals the purpose of the coming of the Holy Spirit in this instance here in verse eight. He says, but you will receive power. Okay, don't miss that. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. So this coming of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus, by the way, called back in verse five, the baptism of the Spirit, that's his words, not mine. In other words, he says you will be immersed in the Holy Spirit, is for power, all right? It's not for salvation. These men were already saved. Jesus breathed on them resurrection evening and they were regenerated. But now they needed this special immersion or baptism of the Spirit for power. Look again at verse eight. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. This is all about empowering for service. That's what this is all about. That's what Jesus says very clearly in these verses. All right, now let's read about when it actually happened, okay? We go to Acts chapter two, right in the next chapter.

All right, stop there. Guess what you just read? You just read about the event that Jesus talked about in chapter 1, where he said, guys, don't leave Jerusalem. Stick around because the promise of my Father is coming to empower you. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Acts chapter 2 describes the coming of the Spirit and the working of power. And so what we read here is about the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Now, if you're a cessationist, this is a problem. And it's a problem because, you see, you no longer believe God empowers people this way. Because what you read in this passage is that these people were empowered by God and they spoke in tongues. And that's not to assume that everybody is going to speak in tongues when they're empowered by the Spirit. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is you see it here. And a cessationist says, those things aren't happening anymore. And so he has to believe, well, I suppose there's a couple of different conclusions that he has to reach. I'm talking about the cessationist who doesn't believe this stuff happens anymore. He has to believe, one, that this only happened to the people back at the day, on the day of Pentecost and for those first-century believers, and it's not something that we experience today. So don't worry about it, you guys. This baptism of the Spirit thing, not something we do today. That's what they're going to say. Okay? Or they have to conclude that Acts 2 records a time when believers were actually born again. See, what they have to do is they have to say, well, this was the very first coming of the Spirit. This is very popular, by the way, in my commentaries, by cessationists. They say, what you see here in Acts 2 is the coming of the Holy Spirit. And then you ask those guys, well, what happened back in John 20 when Jesus breathed on them? Oh, they didn't actually receive the Holy Spirit then. That was merely symbolic. It was a symbolic gesture of coming attractions. And I say, bunk. And I'm like, guys, that's lame. Well, you know what you've done? You've basically taken the Word of God and you've explained it away to fit your preconceived doctrinal idea. Because I think that there's a third explanation that works the best. I think that we should accept what the Bible says and take it at face value. And that means that when Jesus breathed on the believers back in John 20 and said, receive the Holy Spirit, that they really received the Holy Spirit. You know what I mean? And I believe that when the coming of the Spirit took place in Acts 2, it was exactly what Jesus said that it was for, that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. A baptism to empower. But you see, that conclusion, if you and I are going to come to that conclusion, and I have, I've been there for over 30 years, that means that he wants to empower you and I too. There's no denying it. And I know what some of you might be thinking as I talk about things like that. You might be thinking, oh, great. Does that mean Calvary Chapel, Ontario is going to become one of those weird, charismatic, whacked out, jumping around freaky places, you know, where people are crazy and doing stuff like that? Well, the short answer is no. Because as I said, I've believed this my entire Christian life, and I've taught this for the 28 years that I have pastored this church. And I don't think we've gotten weird yet. Now, you may disagree, but in 28 years, we've never had someone stand up in this church and speak in tongues. You know why? I don't think it's necessary. I'm not saying that the gift doesn't exist. I have the gift. I've had it for about 30 years. I speak in tongues and I do it a lot, but you never hear me because I do it between me and God. It's not for you to hear. It's a language that I use for prayer and intercession and praise. And, you see, I think that, frankly, a lot of what you do here in a lot of churches where they're just going weird, I think it's unbiblical and I think it's out of order, and I always have. And a lot of churches just, you know, it breaks my heart. I get emails from people, particularly people in South Africa, believe it or not. There's a lot of people who listen to our stuff from South Africa, and they'll write to me and tell me, they'll say, Pastor Paul, I cannot find any church within driving distance of my house that isn't weird. And what they mean is every church service is just abject craziness. And people are being encouraged to stand up, and everybody's speaking tongues now at the same time, and there's never an interpretation, and it just breaks my heart. And I tell those people, I'm really sorry because that's just flat-out unbiblical, you know? It's wrong. And I believe it does more to damage the gospel. And it definitely freaks out people who don't understand and haven't yet bowed the knee to Jesus. They come to church, and they're like, we're never going there again. We do, though, see spiritual gifts take place around here. From time to time, you'll see, you know, someone stand up and give a prophetic word, but it doesn't have to be preceded by tongues. Tongues is between the person and God. Prophetic words are for the body of Christ. And they're two different things. Anyway, the more I study the Word of God, and the older I get, the more I'm convinced that what I've just shared with you this morning is a truth that the body of Christ desperately needs to hear, and desperately needs to embrace if we're ever going to make a difference in this dark and corrupted generation in which you and I live. And today's believers need to receive the Holy Spirit's power to witness, and to serve, and to live for Christ, just like the first-century Christians. But we need to understand that Jesus told us that that power comes through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And it doesn't have to be weird. It's just, I mean, it's the work of the Holy Spirit. And you know what I've learned about the work of the Holy Spirit? He's a gentleman, and He is orderly, and He is gentle, and peaceful. He is not crazy, He's not wacky, and He's not embarrassing. He's very tender, and He deals very tenderly with people, just like Jesus, a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. Very, very tender. But when we read that Jesus told His disciples, you need power, and you will receive it when the Holy Spirit comes on you, we need to look at that, and we need to say, I need that too. I need power from the Holy Spirit to share Christ with the lost. I need power from the Holy Spirit to face the darkness in my life. Listen, if you're facing the darkness without the power of the Holy Spirit, you need to know that there is a power that God has given you that is unmatched. There's no darkness that can extinguish it. You need the power of the Holy Spirit when you're tempted by sin, to be able to stand against that sin, and to overcome the power of the flesh to dominate your life. How does that happen? The power of the Spirit. We need the power of the Spirit. Let's just face it. So why aren't we seeing more of it in the body of Christ today? Well, there's a lot of reasons, but one of them is that the teaching of cessationism has taken its toll in the body of Christ. And, you know, not only have we seen a de-emphasized understanding of our need for the Holy Spirit, but some teachers have actually taken this teaching so far as to say that those who seek the power of the Holy Spirit are actually being infused by a counterfeit work of demonic activity. And I'll just tell you right now, I wouldn't want to be them on Judgment Day. But what it has resulted in is very sincere believers being frightened. You know, if you ever hear somebody speaking in tongues, that's the devil. That's what they'll tell you. As if God would allow such a thing for His born-again child. Listen, anybody who believes that you can have the Holy Spirit living in you and a demon operating in your life at the same time is making assumptions that are not based on the Word of God. It is impossible for a believer to have a demon. It is impossible. You cannot have the Holy Spirit and a demon living in you at the same time. It's ridiculous. And you never see one single biblical example of it happening. Never once. And, on top of that, you never once in the New Testament read about someone who is caught in sin being counseled to go have a demon cast out of them when they're already a believer. When it comes to believers, they tell them to repent and to trust God and to turn from their sin. Believers are never told in the Bible that they could have a demon. It's not even possible. It's ridiculous. Let's stop believing unbiblical things. We've just gotten freaked out, we've gotten misguided, and we are avoiding the very things that God intended for us to have. But I have to admit something else here before I let you go. There's another reason why we've kind of avoided this whole issue of the baptism of the Spirit, and that's because some of us have witnessed craziness. We've walked into churches, some of you, and I know because you've told me, you've walked into churches where these things are being misused, currently. And for that, I apologize. There have been plenty of abuses, and as I already mentioned, I get emails pretty regularly from people who describe those kinds of disorder and that sort of thing. And while my heart breaks, I have to say to you and I, and this is very important, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Is there anything in the body of Christ that hasn't been abused? Can you think of anything that hasn't been abused? Salvation's been abused. We've got people running around telling people you've got to do this, that, and the other thing. Crow like a turkey or whatever to be saved, or you've got to do this, you've got to... There's all kinds of stupid things out there regarding salvation. Are we going to toss that one out too? You see what I'm saying? Why would we toss out the Holy Spirit? Because there are people acting stupid and unbiblically. There's no reason. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let's open our hearts. And I think it begins for you and I with just a simple prayer. It's just a simple, Lord, I need your power in my life. Simple as that. Lord, I need your power. You've promised in the Word that for your children, you give us power. Power from the Holy Spirit to serve you, to witness for you in this very dark world and time. Power to live our lives in victory. Power to be what you've called us to be, who you've called us to be. I couldn't get up in this pulpit without the power of the Holy Spirit. Couldn't, and I wouldn't even begin to try. This man has nothing. The Holy Spirit has everything. And when you and I are doing what we're doing, and what we're called to do in the Lord, we must walk in the power of the Spirit. And it doesn't mean we're going to be weird, and we're going to start doing crazy weird things. But it does mean we're going to begin to operate in a power that we don't personally possess, but that He does, and He wants to give to you. Because there are times, you guys, that we face situations in this life for which we have no physical answer. We have no natural answer. And what we need is a spiritual and supernatural answer to those issues. And we need to start confessing to people when they come to us with those needs and those concerns and those issues, I don't have an answer for you, but I know who does. And I'm just going to believe right now that I'm going to be a vessel of His to minister to whatever need is going on in your life. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe that the gifts of the Spirit are functional today. I believe God wants to empower His children to do things which we would otherwise not be able to do. And I believe we need to get busy so that we can do what we've been called to do, to be salt and to be light. Amen? Let's stand together. We're going to have some people down front here to pray with you if you need prayer this morning. But we're just going to take just a moment right now and we're going to pray that God would empower us to do His will. He is full of order and peace and joy, and we want it all. Heavenly Father, forgive us. Forgive us for ignoring Your Holy Spirit. Forgive us, Lord, for teaching Your Holy Spirit out of the Christian experience. Forgive us, Lord, for not relying on You every day for what we need to really make a difference. And forgive us, Lord, for reactionary responses to people who've abused the gifts of the Spirit. We know there's been a lot of that. We know that there are charismatic Pentecostal churches that have just gone crazy. But, Lord, we've responded to that by just kind of pitching the whole idea. And we did not form our conclusions based on Your Word. We did it more on experience. And in so doing, we kind of made some of the same errors as our charismatic brothers and sisters who thought that experience was the end all to what they were supposed to do as well. Lord, we ask You to forgive us. And very simply, we ask You to empower us. We ask for Your Holy Spirit to fall afresh in Your church. Let it begin here. Let it begin at Calvary Chapel, Ontario. Jesus, please send Your Holy Spirit to empower us to do Your will. When we share Christ, may we do it in the power of the Spirit. When we face the darkness, may we do it in the power of the Spirit. When we hear arguments and debates that bring doubt into the hearts of people, may we respond in the power of the Spirit. When we face sins and temptations of many kinds, may we fight back in the power of the Spirit. May we be people of the Holy Spirit who walk in that Spirit, respond in that Spirit, and love in that Spirit. Jesus, we love You and we thank You for all that You've done for us. And we ask You, Lord, to change our lives. And we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, who is King and Lord of all. And all God's people said together, Amen. Amen. God bless you. Have a good rest of your day.