Presence – Carrying God With Us

We’ve been looking at 4 keys to help make 2017 the best year yet

Those keys are, in no particular order:

Worship

Word

Presence

Prayer and Fasting

I think all of us would agree that these 4 things are most definitely keys to a successful Christian life

We have looked at each of these 4 keys and started to explore them, but have by no means done an exhaustive study on any of them

Last week we talked about the fact that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit

That we were designed to worship God and that the presence of God lives inside of us

Not a junior version of God – Not God lite – the fullness of God the Spirit lives inside of us!

As you hear me say constantly – we carry God with us everywhere we go!

Today I want to build on this topic a little bit, but before I do I want to openly admit something

I am breaking one of the rules of preaching

One of the first things I learned about preaching is that you cannot effectively lead someone to a place where you have never been

As a preacher I need to be living it before I should be preaching it

Honestly, I am still learning what I am going to be teaching you

I am still figuring this stuff out myself

Overall I think I do okay, but I am still on the journey

My goal is to stay ahead of you, but it may only be a few steps ahead

The title of my message today is Carrying God With Us

I want to talk about the significance of carrying the Holy Spirit with us everywhere we go

Again, I think this is a concept that we may understand intellectually, but that’s about it

We don’t really get it

I firmly believe that the greatest problem in the Church and in the lives of Christians today is a lack of the awareness of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit

We do not lack the Holy Spirit – the fullness of the Holy Spirit lives inside of us

We lack an awareness of the Holy Spirit

Francis Chan wrote a book about this very topic called “The Forgotten God”

In this book he talks about how we have all but forgotten the importance of the Holy Spirit in our churches today

He said –

“If I were Satan and my ultimate goal was to thwart God’s kingdom and purposes, one of my main strategies would be to get church-goers to ignore the Holy Spirit” (Forgotten God page 16)

He goes on to say –

“The degree to which this has happened is directly connected to the dissatisfaction most of us feel with and in the church”

Wow, pretty powerful statements!

And as much as I would like to say they are not true I cannot say that

If the thing that Christians need the most is the Holy Spirit, why wouldn’t the devil do everything he could to get us to de-emphasize the Holy Spirit?

We must be aware of the fact that we carry the Holy Spirit with us everywhere we go

Why is this so important?

Why do I keep emphasizing this over and over?

To give you a good idea of why this is so important let me ask you to do something

When you leave church today go somewhere public where there are a lot of people

Maybe it’s a restaurant, maybe Walmart or the mall or someplace like that

When you get there I want you to look around at all the people and tell me – how many of them are struggling?

How many feel hopeless, alone, abandoned, or unloved?

How many feel taken advantage of?

How many are addicted, abused or dying on the inside?

How many of them are seeking for some kind of fulfillment or answer?

How many of them need exactly what God can offer?

That is why I keep emphasizing the fact that we carry the Holy Spirit with us wherever we go!

We live in a messed up world full of messed up people

People that have very real needs – needs that can be met by the God that we bring with us!

We carry within us the answer to many of the world’s issues

So, why aren’t these issues solved then?

Very good question! I really wish I knew the answer to it

I know that part of the reason is that the Church as a whole has become almost irrelevant in our society

I firmly believe that a lot of that has to do with how we are perceived by the world

There have been many surveys done in which people are asked what they think of when they think of Christians or the Church

Overwhelmingly the answers have been somewhere along the lines of judgmental, hateful, and hypocritical

That’s pretty sad in my opinion!

I can safely say that the overwhelming majority of Christians that I know are, for the most part, very decent and loving people

They certainly are not perfect, and occasionally mess up like the rest of us, but overall are very decent and loving

However, there are others that I know who call themselves Christians that are anything but decent and loving

They are the very embodiment of judgmental, hypocritical, and hateful

Ever notice that they are the ones who also seem to be the most vocal?

Jesus had something very interesting to say about this topic

Matthew 7:15-20 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. ¹⁶  By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷  Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. ¹⁹  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰  Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Jesus said that we will be able to tell the false from the genuine by looking at their “fruit” or the byproduct of their life

There are many people out there who claim to be Christians – who claim to have the Spirit of God living within them

People can claim whatever they want, but it doesn’t mean that it’s true

People can even fake it for a little while – but the genuine proof is in their fruit

I totally agree with Jesus in the fact that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit

With that being said we need to remember that none of us are perfect

We all make mistakes, we all say and do things that we are not proud of

But there is a huge difference between an occasional bad fruit and a lifestyle of bad fruit

So, what does good and bad fruit look like?

Galatians 5:13-26 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. ¹⁴  The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁵  If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. ¹⁶  So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. ¹⁷  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. ¹⁸  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. ¹⁹  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰  idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹  and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. ²²  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³  gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵  Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶  Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Love, joy, peace, patence, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control all should be evident in the life of anyone who claims to follow Jesus

I’m not saying that we will always get it perfect, but it should be there

If not, then I really wonder if our faith is genuine

Scripture says that God is love

Jesus is the very embodiment of God

In fact, Jesus said that if we’ve seen Him, we’ve seen the Father

Jesus is exactly like the Father and we are called to be like Jesus

This means that we also should be the very embodiment of love

So, how is it that there is such a huge difference between how we should be and how we are actually perceived?

Desire for holiness

Policing the gospel

What do we do when we run into sin?

We love

I am never surprised when a heathen acts like a heathen

If they stop acting like heathens, but never follow Jesus, then all we have are a bunch of well behaved heathens!

Love should be the centerpiece of what we do

You will never hate someone into the Kingdom of God

You will never judge someone into the Kingdom of God

Yelling and screaming at them will never make them want to fall in love with Jesus

Pointing out every mistake that they make will not attract them to God

Love is what does it

Video – Bethel Testimony

Fierce love is what worked

We carry God with us everywhere we go

We need to accurately represent Him to this world that so desperately needs Him

Fierce love is how we do it