When the Spirit Moves in Power
Transcript
But happy, happy Labor Day weekend. If it's your first time hanging out with us, my name is Matt. I'm one of the pastors, and we're coming to the conclusion of a little two-week series that we've been doing. I was reading recently in a book, and the author shared a story that I want to share with you guys. In 1857, there was this young guy named Jeremiah Lanphier who had just been given a new job as a pastor on the south side of Manhattan. It was a really small church, and like anybody who's going into a new job, he was excited.
He was excited to get to know people, to start spending time with them. But it didn't take long for Jeremiah to become discouraged and frustrated, because it seemed like every person he met didn't have time to talk about God, wanted nothing to do with the church. It was like people just bypassed him in such a fast-paced city. And so not really knowing what else to do, he decided to pray. And as he was praying, an overwhelming sense of God's Spirit, God's presence came over top of him. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
And so what he decided was, okay, I'm going to just invite people to pray with me and ask for God to continue doing this. That was his new plan of attack. So he decided that one day every week, he would put a sign outside of the mission, inviting people to come in and pray with him during the lunch hour. So that was his new plan. So he put out the sign, the day came, he went inside and waited.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. A half hour went by and nobody. And again, defeated and discouraged, he went to close up shop when six people walked in the door. And he was excited because people had come to pray.
So he just, he prayed with those six people. And he was really excited about it. The next week he put the sign back out, 20 people showed up. The next week, 40 people showed up. And those 40 people decided, no, let's, let's, this is great. Let's do this every day.
So they started meeting every day at the lunch hour until after a couple of months, there were hundreds of people filling the auditorium of that church at the lunch hour every day praying. They outgrew that space and they started meeting in other places all around Manhattan. And in a couple of months time, reporters estimated that there were nearly 10,000 Christians crying out to God at the lunch hour in Manhattan. And in just nine months time, 50,000 people came to Christ in Manhattan at a time when New York's population did not exceed 800,000. That's amazing. That's amazing.
Like doesn't that like raise every hair on your arms? Just going, I want to see God do something like that. I want to see God move and work in Columbia. I want to see an outpouring of the spirit where there's thousands of people coming to Christ. In fact, the pages of Christian history are filled with stories like this. It's happening right now with the underground church in China.
I mean, there's just thousands of people coming to Christ. We see stories like Peter in the book of Acts. And every time I hear these stories, I just, I long for that. Like I want to see God doing a work like that, outpouring his spirit. And what we talked about last week is that as Christians, we understand that prayer and the Holy Spirit are vitally important to the life of a Christian. But sometimes we have a hard time wrapping our mind around like, how do I pray on a regular basis?
How do I see the Holy Spirit moving and working in my life in the day to day? And we made the connection that the reason that we pray in the first place is that we need God. So in the same way that a child is wholly dependent upon its parent to get the things that it needs to take care of it, we relate to God in the same way. And God's answer to everything that we need is to send the Holy Spirit. So we get to be needy children with a good father.
And the good gift that our father wants to give us is the Holy Spirit. And so when we're praying, we're praying about everything and we're asking for God to send the Holy Spirit to be active and at work. I was talking with one of our group leaders this week and he was telling me, he said, you know, I've been a Christian for a while and I pray. But just in this last week have begun to pray. Instead of God help me have a good day at work, I've begun to pray. Holy Spirit, help me do what I need to do at work today.
Help me reach the people that I need to. Help me interact with these people. And he just said it made all the difference in the world because he was asking for God to be at work in his life. That's what the point of prayer is. And so what we're looking at today is a specific prayer in the Bible where the guy is praying about God bringing about restoration, bringing about redemption. And as we look at this passage, we're not going to see specifically the Holy Spirit talked about here.
So as he's praying for restoration, he's not asking for the Holy Spirit. But we know on this side of the cross and in light of what we looked at last week is Jesus teaches us to pray. When we're asking for God to redeem, when we're asking for him to restore, what we're actually wanting, what we need to be asking for is the Holy Spirit. And so the question we're trying to answer this morning is if that's the case, if we should be praying for the Holy Spirit and God desires to work and he's going to use the Holy Spirit to do it, how does that show up? Like what exactly is that going to look like in our lives?
So before we hop into the text, let's pray and ask God to open his word to us. God, we don't have the ability to comprehend your word outside of you moving and working through your Holy Spirit. So God, I pray that these would not be my own words, that they would be yours. God, I pray that there would be encouragement this morning as we understand the point of prayer and what we're actually asking for and how you desire to send the Holy Spirit to be everything that we need. In Jesus' name, amen. Grab a Bible, turn to Psalm 126.
So if you grabbed one of those blue and white Bibles in the chairs, you're going to be turning to page 333. We're going to be looking at Psalm 126 today. And if you haven't spent a lot of time in the Psalms, I would encourage you to. They're amazing. It's basically a collection of songs and poetry that kind of span the range of human emotion from love to anger to despair to worship. And the majority of the Psalms are actually written as prayers.
So they're prayers to God. In the Psalm that we're looking at today, the author is yearning for the same type of outpouring of the Spirit from the story that we just saw in Manhattan. It's the same kind of thing. He wants to see God move and work. And before we start reading, if you look, look just above the text. So if you grab a Bible, you may see it says, Song of Ascents.
Okay, all that means is this is one of the songs that the Israelites would sing, they would recite, they would pray as they were going up to Jerusalem to worship. And it was almost as if they were setting their minds on who it was they were going to worship, why they were going to worship. And so it kind of in light of that, I want us to be reading it. This is the people reminding themselves of who God is and how they ought to be relating to him. So Psalm 126 is just six verses, but there's a lot here.
Verse one. So the writer of this Psalm is recalling a time when God came to the rescue of his people. So he says, God, when you restored the fortunes of Zion and that word Zion, it's just used throughout the Bible to either refer to the people of God or the place where the people of God were. He said, you came and you restored the fortunes of Zion. And it must have been amazing. And while we can't see it, we can get a picture of how they're describing it.
He says, we were like those who dream. It's one of those like you're wiping your eyes trying to figure out what's it's that type of moment. We were like those who dream. Our mouth was filled with laughter. Our tongues with shouts of joy. We celebrated as a church family last week the return of college football.
Hallelujah. And so some of you hopefully have enjoyed that all week long. It has been a great weekend of college football. There's even college football tonight and tomorrow night. It's a glorious Labor Day weekend, guys. And most of you were probably glued to your televisions on Thursday night watching the Gamecocks play.
Okay. There was not a whole lot of expectation with the Gamecocks going into this season. Everyone was kind of wondering what the must champ era was going to look like. And according to the first half, it wasn't going to look very good. Because the Gamecocks went in to halftime down 10-0. But then they came out in the second half.
Perry Orth started completing some passes. Some of those wide receivers started making some catches. And Carolina found themselves deep into the fourth quarter tied 10-10 with Vanderbilt. And so they're way out from the end zone. It becomes fourth down. And the field goal unit comes onto the field.
And the smallest guy on the team, which I can't help but point out, guys, his last name's Fry. So a small Fry comes out onto the field at about 130 pounds. And that joker kicked that ball. And it would have been good for another six to seven yards. He crushed it. And the Carolina fans that were in that stadium went nuts.
They were losing their mind and high-fiving. And I'm looking at the screen going, it's just Vanderbilt, guys. Calm down. And all across our city and all across our state, people, like, you may not have even known the person. Like, the people in the stadium, they might not have even known them. But they're high-fiving.
They're excited. That's the type of unbridled joy that the psalmist is describing. We couldn't believe it. We were like those who dreamed. This is unbelievable. It was so unbelievable that even the surrounding nations were looking at it going, the Lord has done great things for them.
Not a God. The God. The Lord. The Lord has done great things for them. And so the guy who wrote this Psalm is remembering what God has done in the past. And in verse 4, he begins praying.
So in light of what God has done in the past, he then brings his request to God. So this is verse 4. He says this. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Okay, so he started praying now. He's using the exact same language that he used up in verse 1 to remember what God had done in the past.
So restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Maybe your Bible says Negev with a V. Maybe it's Negev with a B. There's an exclamation point. So he's getting hype right now.
He's really excited about what he's praying and asking God to do. He says, restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. So the writer of this Psalm turns out of thanksgiving for what God had done in the past into a request. He says, okay, God, what you did, what you did in our past, how you rescued, how you redeemed, we want you to do that again. We need you to bring rescue and salvation and mercy.
God, come. Come to our rescue. And it's not hard to get the gist of what he's saying here. God redeemed in the past and there's a situation now where they need him again. And this is not, this is very akin to what we looked at last week when Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray. The whole point was they were needy and they needed God's active work in their lives.
Like they needed the Holy Spirit to be moving and working. And they're in the same situation right now saying, God, bring about restoration. So it's not hard to understand what they're saying, but they are using terms that we wouldn't use on a regular basis. And I think if we'll take some time to just kind of unpack what they're saying, to talk about what's going on in their culture, it'll help us have a better understanding of how we ought to be praying. So you guys know this.
Israel is located in the Middle East, which is one of the like harshest climates in the world. It is mostly desert. So like picture the cartoon version of the coyote, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner and like the tumbleweeds rolling. And like it's that type of dry. It's arid.
It's hot. It's windy. Rains are sporadic. And the culture at this time was based off of farming. Oh, boy. It's like, could you imagine trying to plant crops in this kind of an environment?
And some of you, some of you have green thumbs like you. Maybe you've got some tomato plants or maybe you've got a garden. I know one of our group leader actually has a garden on her balcony of their second floor apartment. And you walk outside and it's kind of like you're in a jungle. And there's some spices over here and some tomato plants. It's actually pretty cool.
I'm impressed that it hasn't been scorched by the Columbia sun. But we don't talk about things in terms of farming in 21st century America because we don't interact with it on a regular basis. And so the language he's using, I want you to imagine that you've got to plant a garden. So you're thinking about the seeds that you're planting and the water and the sunlight. And the place that you had to do it is, oh, I don't know, the top of the Grand Canyon. And you've got a pretty good picture.
You've got an idea of what they were up against. And what the psalmist is praying is for God to restore. And the language that he's using is that of farming, that of bringing about growth, bringing about a harvest. And he's giving us two ways that God does that. So there's an Old Testament scholar named Derek Kidner.
He says that this Psalm is basically showing us two ways that God works in the hearts of people. And so one of the ways we say that, so look back at verse 5. Look at verse 5 again. It says this, Those who sow, so sow just means plant, Those who sow in tears shall reap, that means gather, with shouts of joy. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. Those who sow in tears.
That sounds terrible. Like the psalmist is imagining land so dry that individual seeds had to be planted and like watered with tears. Like you know you're in bad shape if to get your tomato plant to grow, you've got to like cry over top of it. You know you're in really bad shape. And that's what he's imagining. But the psalmist understands that even though that may require exhausting patience and excruciating labor, the growth would come.
That's the way the verse ends. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. And what he's saying here is that part of God's response to our prayer, part of his answer for his presence and for him to be working, is to actually send to the Holy Spirit to help us labor and sweat and work and toil on the grind to see growth come about. Jesus talks about this in the Psalms. Not in the Psalms, in the Gospels. He tells a story about a guy sowing seeds and he says, some of it fell on the road and some of it fell among rocks and some of it fell among thorns, but some of it fell among good soil.
And that produced a crop of 30, 60, 100 fold. Like even in Jesus' story, he's talking about how hard it is to sow seeds and to be planting. And the truth is, we often see God work like this through us. So we talk about planting the seeds of the Gospel, spreading the Gospel in the lives of people that God has placed us around. So maybe for you, that's the place that you work.
Maybe that's with your neighbors. Some of you, that's with your family. So like with your kids or your spouse. And it's painstaking. Your investment in their lives is just hard. It's difficult.
There are sleepless nights and tireless days. And you're shedding tears because it's just difficult. You can all think about those relationships right now where you've been investing for so long and you're just not seeing any kind of result. You're not seeing God at work. So maybe it's a co-worker.
It's someone that you work with and you've been talking to this girl about her relationship with her boyfriend. And you've been sharing the Gospel with her and you tell her that her worth and value doesn't have to come from that guy who sounds like a jerk based off of the stories. It can actually come from Jesus and she's actually, she's receptive to that. And you run into her the next week at work and she's really excited to tell you that she has since moved in with her boyfriend and wants to go on a double date with you and your husband. What the heck? Right?
You hear that and you're like, oh, what happened? What happened to the good conversation? Or maybe there's a guy that you work with that you've been inviting him to go get wings with the guys in your group. He came to your poker night. He's kind of a skeptical type person so he asks a lot of questions. But he's starting to see how Jesus is the answer to those questions.
And he comes by you in the warehouse. Hey, dude, I got that job in Philly. And like while his hand's in there, you just want to like get one of those jabs in. Dude, I didn't know you were looking for a job. Ah, yeah, man, I've been trying to get out of this dump for a long time. What about the countless hours that I've spent like pouring into what happens to this guy now?
Some of you have been like investing in the lives of your children. So like you're trying to teach them how to obey and like why obeying is good and should be motivated by the gospel. And they just got the third note sent home this week. And school's only been in session for two weeks and you're running out of patience. Your investment in their life is difficult. Some of you, you've been working in your marriage to really have the gospel come to bear.
You're trying to learn how to communicate. But they said that comment again. They brought that thing up again and you exploded and now you're in other rooms. You're having a hard time seeing it. It's hard. Planting seeds, sowing seeds is difficult and painstaking.
Some of you, maybe you've got some neighbors. You've been building with them. You've been investing in their lives. Like you've been watching their kids so they can go on date nights. You've been helping them do some yard work. And then in a discussion late one night, you point out an area of their life where there's some sin.
And they automatically become flaky. Not answering their phone. Not wanting to come to the door. They've just checked out. Sowing seeds is difficult. And it's even more difficult to see the results.
But what we're seeing in this Psalm is that some gospel work is just like that. It's long and laborious and costly. But that's not the only way. That's part of it. We get another picture of how God wants to bring about restoration. Go back to verse 4.
So we kind of skipped over this. We're going back to now. This is the beginning of the prayer. He says, Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Okay, so now the Negev, I already told you Israel is kind of a desert climate.
The Negev was like the desertiest part of the desert. Like it was the hottest of the hot. It was the, you see just the bones laying around everywhere. It's a rough patch in Israel. But every once in a while, torrential rains would come through that area.
And the small stream beds that kind of wiggle through the land would fill up, would overflow, and would flood the land. The flat land would be covered in water. And the land was so dry that it would soak up all of that water. And almost in a 24-hour period, it would go from looking like a desert to a green field. The landscape would be transformed in an instant. Like it was just sitting there waiting for it.
And the psalmist, as he's writing that, he's praying and asking, God, do that. Do the miraculous. Take desert and turn it into living land. Take it and make it green. Bring life. That's the miraculous.
So when you look at sowing seeds, and God bringing about this type of flood, the streams in the Negev, it's unbelievable. And that's what he's praying for. And that's what the story from Manhattan is. It's God sending his Holy Spirit and working in a big way. 50,000 people coming to Christ in just a nine-month period. I referenced the underground church in China.
Within the last century, the missionaries who had been serving in China got kicked out. And Christianity as a whole began to be persecuted. So the church had to go underground. So they just had to basically be the church in hiding. And so the handful of Christians, and it was still a pretty decent number, in the last century, the best estimates they can give is that the church in China is currently 60 million plus in the face of persecution, where they cannot openly be Christians and share the gospel. It's the same thing that we see.
If you read the book of Acts, that's all about the big movement of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus dies on the cross, rises from the grave, and ascends into heaven. And when he ascends into heaven, there's basically 120 believers. And he tells them to wait, wait to do anything until the Holy Spirit comes. And the Holy Spirit shows up at Pentecost. Peter stands up and preaches.
And 3,000 people get saved that day alone. The gospel begins to spread from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. And within the century, they estimated that there were one million Christians. That's a huge move of the Holy Spirit. And every time I hear stories like that, I just want that. God was doing stuff that people laboring could not accomplish.
It was miraculous. And let's be real. If we're looking for God to bring about restoration, to bring about healing, to bring about salvation, and our two options are for us to sow seeds with tears, so to be empowered by the Spirit to do that, or for God to send the Spirit like streams in the Negev, like a flood, I don't know about you, this is the one I want. For lots of reasons. I want as many people to come to know Jesus as possible. I want them to know the hope and the life and the joy found in Him.
The other part is, I know what this is like. This is what life is like for a lot of us. Where we're sowing seeds and we're working hard. And if I can just have the flood, I'll take that because I know what I'm struggling with and what I'm working through right now. That even though the verse ends with, we'll reap with songs of joy, it still makes it difficult. And the truth is, if our only option was that we, like for restoration, was that we would sow seeds with tears and that's how the restoration came about, I think it would almost be easier than if we didn't know about the flood part.
But sometimes God works through us sowing seeds and tears and sometimes it comes through the flood. There's a story from South Korea in 1907. Christians had been there for a while. They had been sharing the gospel and there was a, it hadn't really gained traction, but there were some believers at this time. And so they decided that they would try to get all the believers together and hold a conference. And so the night came for the conference to begin.
And a man by the name of Mr. King walked up to the podium, visibly shaken. And in a trembled voice said, I must confess before God and before you that for the last several weeks I have harbored an intense hatred for Mr. Lee. And I repent before God and before you. And the room fell silent.
Because Mr. King had just admitted to hating the person who was hosting the conference. So all the eyes turned to Mr. Lee and Mr. Lee was visibly taken aback, but gathered himself and said, Mr. King, I forgive you.
And what happened next is indescribable. One reporter tried to describe it and here's what he said. What happened next was a poignant sense of mental anguish due to the conviction of sin. After Mr. King publicly repented before God and to Mr. Lee, Christians all across the room began to repent of their sin.
They began to cry out to God and to confess their sins. And they were going around the room, going to their brothers and sisters and repenting of sin. And they were shedding tears because they were broken over it. What began in the early evening continued on to 5 a.m. the next day. And the Christians gathered the next night and the next night and the next night. And by the end of the week, the missionaries didn't know what was going to happen because the presence of God's spirit was so strong in that place they couldn't contain it.
And so all of those Christians went back to their homes. And they sought out people that they worked with and that they lived near, people that they had harmed, people that they had sinned against, and they started repenting to them. And as they repented to them of their sin, the people began to understand the good news of the gospel and those people started becoming Christians. Within a couple of weeks, there were hundreds of new Christians in South Korea. This eventually spread to a local college campus. And by the end of the semester, 90% of the students at that college had become Christians.
Christians, the people who were in the city started traveling out into the rural areas. And then people from the rural areas were walking upwards of 200 miles to get to a city to hear what God was doing. In a year's time, 50,000 people came to Christ. Thousands of churches were planted. And the gospel began to spread to all the neighboring Asian countries. And it hasn't stopped.
If you know a South Korean Christian, you know what's up because they're not playing around. I want that. I want to see that. I want to see God do that. Within a five-mile radius of this place right here, which includes parts of downtown, there are over 60,000 people outside of a relationship with Christ. There are estimates of about 600,000 people in Lexington and Richland counties.
And if you apply those same statistics across the board, you're looking at 100, 150, possibly 200,000 people who don't know Jesus. You work with some of those people. And they don't know Jesus. You frequent the restaurants where they work and they don't know Jesus. They don't know the hope and the life and the joy found in Him. And as a church, we're not okay with that.
We want to see as many people come to Christ as possible. So when I hear stories of the Holy Spirit being poured out, I want that. I want to see streams in the Negev. I want to see God pour His Spirit out. And here's what's even harder to grasp. God wants to send those streams.
He wants to. It's all throughout the Bible. Psalm 2.8 says this, Ask me and I will make the nations your inheritance. Matthew 9.38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field. Acts 1.8 You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Matthew 28 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.
The Bible is filled with the language of God wanting to send the flood, wanting to send the streams. How do we know? Because the streams of God's mercy flow from the cross of Christ. It's the sacrifice of Jesus that actually makes true restoration possible. That every bit of sweat and labor and work that as you invest in the lives of people that God's placed you around is only a shadow of the sacrifice that Jesus made on your behalf. The song that we just sang is an old hymn.
There is a fountain. It says this, There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And you hear that and you're like, that's kind of weird language, weird imagery, but it's not. So the blood comes from Emmanuel's veins. Emmanuel means God with us. That's Jesus.
What about the blood? Sinners, that's you and I, plunged beneath the flood, lose all their guilty stains. The flood of God's mercy and salvation and rescue come from the cross of Jesus. God desires to send it incomprehensibly more than you do. Even more than you want it. So much so that he was willing to allow Jesus to go to the cross to make it possible.
So how do you reconcile those two? How do you reconcile those two ways that God moves, that God brings about restoration? When it feels, when you're praying for streams in the Negev, when you're praying for the flood, and all it feels like is you're just sowing seeds in tears. Look at verse 6. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, shall return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. The harvest happens.
You see that? They come back with sheaves and with shouts of joy. And some of you this morning are tired. You're frustrated. You're emotionally burnt out. There are people in your life that you've just been investing in.
You've been sacrificing for. You've been pouring yourself out for it. And you're just not seeing the results. And I want you to see what this Psalm is saying. See the promise. Those who go out weeping shall return with songs of joy, carrying the results of the harvest with them.
Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't stop. Don't quit. God promises it. Don't stop.
The harvest is made possible because of Jesus. Not because of your ability to hold it together. Not because of your ability to be strong, but because of His. Keep fighting. The harvest comes. Jesus makes the harvest possible.
And here's the deal. Wanting to see God send streams in the Negev, wanting to see Him flood, doesn't stop us from continuing to sow seeds. So how do you reconcile these two? How do you reconcile them together? We keep sowing and we keep praying. We keep sowing and we keep praying.
These aren't mutually exclusive. It's not either or. It's both and. We keep sowing seeds and praying for God to send the Holy Spirit. And He's going to bring about the harvest. He promises to do it.
And sometimes it's going to be through sowing seeds. And other times it's going to be through a flood of His Spirit moving and working. Sometimes people talk about a big move of the Spirit and they use the word revival. There's a pastor in New York City. His name's Tim Keller. He's a really smart dude.
And so we're going to see what he has to say about this. I've got a quote. I want to put it on the screen. He says that revival is the intensification of the normal operations of the Holy Spirit through the ordinary means of grace. Okay, now English. Let's do English this time.
The big move of God's Spirit. So that's the intensification. Okay. Of the normal operations of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so it's the intensification. It's getting bigger.
It's a bigger move of God's Spirit in His normal operations. So what does the Holy Spirit do? We talk about this stuff all the time. The Holy Spirit leads us. He convicts us of sin. He leads us to repentance.
He helps us understand the Word. He is God's response to everything in our lives. He's what leads us in the day to day. He's what helps us have courage and boldness as we invest in the lives of people around us. So revival is the intensification of the normal operations of the Holy Spirit through the ordinary means of grace.
Okay, what's that? The ordinary means of grace are just the ordinary ways that God continuously works in our lives. So if you're using that farming metaphor, it's the tilling soil. It's planting seeds. It's watering them. It's the sunlight.
It's those types of things in the life of a Christian. It's the things that we know that bring about growth in us and growth in the lives of people around us. It's preaching the gospel. It's reading the Bible. It's praying. It's repenting of sin.
It's actually being invested in church community. It's going out and serving and being on mission. Like revival is not so much the Holy Spirit doing a new thing as it is pouring great power on the things that normal Christians are already doing. And so our response this morning, some of us, what we need to hear is, is keep sowing. Keep sowing seeds. Keep pursuing the ordinary means of grace.
Keep doing the ordinary while you're praying for God to do the extraordinary. And there's a ton of ways this shows up, but I've got four. I just want to show us this morning. Preach the gospel. Preach the gospel to yourself and to others. The gospel is the life-changing good news.
It is not just good news that it's salvation. It is good news for all of life, which means that as Christians, we're thinking about how does the gospel impact me at work? How does the gospel impact me as I'm a dad or as a husband? Like, how does the gospel impact that? It means that we're actually opening our Bibles and asking God to show us and to help us be obedient. It means we're looking at the people that we work with and listening to their stories and what's going on in their lives.
And we're asking, how is the gospel good news here? How can I share the gospel with this person? That's the ordinary stuff of Christians. And we're praying for God to do the extraordinary, which is to actually cause belief, which is to actually bring about salvation. Some of us need to be praying for our entire floor at work to be saved. Some of us need to pray for our entire school to be saved because God can do that.
And so we do the ordinary while praying for the extraordinary. The other thing is this, we repent of sin. The Bible is clear that there is nothing that grieves the Holy Spirit more than unconfessed sin. Some of you may be sitting there this morning and you know, you know what God is doing in you right now. You know the sin that you're pursuing and you're not repenting of it and you're going, where's God's presence? Where am I?
I'm not seeing him move. I'm not seeing him work. Part of the way the Holy Spirit moves and works is through the repentance of sin. That's what happened in the story from Korea. That's what we're fighting for in our community groups through openness and honesty. It's the ordinary stuff.
And we're praying for God to do the extraordinary. In a culture where the mantra is you do you, do whatever feels best, we're praying for people to be convicted of sin and to follow what the Bible says. We're praying for the extraordinary while we do the ordinary. We persist in prayer. This is really what we spent most of our time talking about last week, is that we understand that we're needy. That's the story of the guy going to his house at midnight.
That's asking, seeking, knocking, persistently asking for God to be at work and to send his Holy Spirit. And we pray about everything. Work, family, relationships. There's nothing that we can't ask for the Holy Spirit to be involved in. And the fourth thing is that we're the church. Be the church.
Be invested in God's means to save the world. That's what the book of Acts is. That's what the New Testament is. It's Jesus continuing to work. So we do the ordinary while praying for the extraordinary.
This church began as seven people in a house. It is no longer. There have been people who have met Jesus and have been baptized. And there are disciples who are making disciples. And there is one group that became two groups that became four groups that is now six groups. It's the extraordinary.
We keep sowing seeds and praying for the flood. In South Korea before that conference, just a few months, just a few months before that conference, the missionaries got together. And they had been there for 23 years and they were tired. They were ready to give up. They had all but decided to pack their bags and go home. They had spent 23 years preaching the gospel and repenting of sin and praying and being the church with very little results.
And what God did through the ordinary means of grace was intensified the move of the Holy Spirit. The move of the Holy Spirit came through the ordinary means of grace. It started by repenting of sin and took the country and surrounding Asian nations by storm. So we keep sowing seeds, praying for God to send the flood. And so in this two-week series, what we've seen is that we're needy. We need God.
We need His active work. We need His presence. And so God wants us to pray, asking for the Holy Spirit. And as we do that, we pursue the ordinary means of grace, asking for God to move and work. So what does that look like for us?
For us as a church, that means we're a gospel-centered community on mission. It means everything. It means we preach the gospel. It means we read the Bible. It means we're pursuing Jesus. It means we're preaching the gospel on Sundays.
It means we're sharing the gospel where we go. And we're existing in community, in biblical community with each other, where we bear one another's burdens and we love one another and we fight alongside one another. And we're on mission to see more people meet Jesus in our city. It's the ordinary. And we're asking God to do the extraordinary. The way our church continues to grow is through the multiplication of healthy groups.
Josh said that earlier. Most of you are here because you got invited into a community group. Someone that was in a group invited you. And so you want to know the flood that we're praying for? And I want you to grab a card in front of you. Grab a card and grab a pen.
They're in the seats right there in front of you. Grab a card, grab a pen. You want to know what we're praying for? Remember, we're praying for 24 healthy community groups in 2019. Do the math. Yeah, we're six now.
That means it's got to double and become 12. And it's got to double again and become 24. We're praying for God to bring about 24 community groups by 2019. By the end of 2019. Because if we've done that, that means disciples are being made. People are meeting Jesus.
Leaders are being trained. Our city is being impacted by the gospel. God is doing work. And it happens through us doing the normal things that Christians are to do. And so we're going to spend some time praying. The band's not going to come up quite yet.
We're actually going to spend some time praying over these things. Like I said, some of you are tired this morning. Some of you are having a hard time seeing God active and at work. And you're struggling. And you want to. Like you need to see Him at work.
And so I want you to write those four things down. Preach the gospel. I want you to write that down. Repent of sin. Persist in prayer. Be the church.
Write those down. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to have some music playing in the room. We're just going to spend some time praying. So I'm going to kind of call these things out.
And I want you to start praying. I want you to start praying and asking God to be active and at work in you. For God to send the Holy Spirit to be working and moving. So that you can sow seeds. So you can not faint or grow weary.
Because it's hard. But Jesus promises that the harvest comes. He does work in it. So all across the room, I want you to bow your head. I want you to pray that God would help you grow in your own understanding of the gospel. That God would help you grow in your own understanding of the gospel.
That God would help you grow to love Jesus. To love his word and to want to follow. So all across the room, if you can let him know, what to say, God would help you grow in your own understanding of the gospel. Thanks for warning, 떨어�ctive, for the gospel.