In 2020, Ligonier sponsored that study that was conducted by LifeWay, it was the state of the American theology study, and it assessed how Americans view God. The following was reported on all four surveys, two-thirds of Americans have considered the resurrection an actual occurrence, that's good, but the majority of Americans deny the deity of Christ.

That gets weird. They say, "You believe in the resurrection, but He wasn't God," and it only gets kind of weirder from there. Listen to this, almost six in ten categorize the Holy Spirit as being a force rather than a personal being, and then the majority of Americans denied that Jesus has always existed, so now we have created being.

A consistent seven in ten Americans believe in one true God in three persons, that's good, and almost two-thirds believe God is perfect, that's good too, it's better than nothing. Almost as many believe God accepts worship from all religions, that's not good. And then listen to these, 65% of Americans agree God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake.

52% of Americans agree Jesus was a great teacher, but He was not God, 55 agree that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, probably a lot of Mormons in that group, two-thirds of adult Americans agree biblical accounts of the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus are completely accurate, this event actually occurred, and then 59% of Americans agree the Holy Spirit is a force but not a personal being, 19% of Americans agree the Holy Spirit can tell me what to do with something completely forbidden in the Bible.

Okay, 72% of Americans agree there's one true God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and 64% of Americans agree God accepts the worship of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These surveys, I always get a kick out of them, and the only reason I'd use this one is Ligonier's name is on it, so we know that the train is on the tracks.

The amount of contradictions, you catching it? It's a microcosm of how a lot of us see the issues around us and the world around us filled with contradictions. People who come to our churches and say they believe one thing, but then they say they believe another, those two things are illogically at odds with each other.

We see the world around us. Mike Riccardi did a phenomenal job dismantling all of that. I hope with sermons like that I sit there sometimes and I pray, "Lord, would you let this one just sort of leak out that even an unbeliever who's conservative would go, 'Look, you may not believe in Jesus, but listen to this guy.'" And Mike's just blasting every worldly ideology with the truth.

People are confused. We serve a lot of confused people. In America, in Canada, and take it further, those of you who are international, the stats would be even worse than this. You guys don't even get surveys, I think, in some of the places you are, because no one cares.

It's tough. George Barna concluded in one recent study that only a small minority, they found six percent of professing Christians actually possess a biblical worldview, six percent of professing Christians. And so, brothers, we need to be teaching our people theology. They're not too simple-minded for it. They're actually hungry for it.

A lot of people keep coming to church because they want the Word. I think more and more this has been fun to watch people exit shallow pools of easy-believism and sort of the social club version of Christianity to come to a church where a guy gets up with the Word of God and says, "Turn in your copy of God's Word," like H.B., or, "Turn in your Bibles." I was talking to a family recently that came to our church, and they had asked their son what he enjoyed the most about his morning there.

And he said, unprompted, "It was really awesome. I actually felt for the first time that I wasn't in kid care," he called it. He comes from a mega church that has about 5,000 to 7,000 in weekend attendance. Mega is not bad. I know where I'm standing right now. Big isn't bad, but the way that we try to draw people often in those movements, you already know, is let's have fun.

There was a Sunday where he was told, "You don't need to bring your Bible. Just leave it over there. We have a lot to do today. We have a lot of activities. You won't need that." A child should never hear that at church. We talked to parents at our church, I'm sure you do too, crying over the 15 or 20 years they wasted.

They feel so guilty. They think, "What have I been doing? Our kids had fun. That's why we chose it. I didn't know this stuff. The woman I talked to and her husband at membership class, bless their hearts, so sweet, dear friends, now that first membership class, I remember them, she's clutching her new MacArthur study Bible like it was a life raft in the middle of a storm in the ocean.

And they said, "We just, we didn't think of this. We didn't know." That's what they want from you and I now. They always have, the remnant at least. But more and more, I think people are waking up and the Lord is gathering His church. I think some pastors may be insecure if this is you.

Don't get sucked into it. "Well, they'll be bored with theology if I preach this stuff." I would argue that people only get bored if we're boring or they're unbelievers. But believers don't get bored unless you're the one putting them to sleep. I remember a seminary professor once telling me, "You're not supposed to sound like a running commentary." Another man who was a seminary professor said, "Too many of you guys preach like your seminary professors are listening." I was convicting, "Just in case they watch on YouTube, I really want to sound smart." Like, who cares?

Preach for, you know, Jay, the plumber who's going to work the next morning, dealing with issues, preach to Mark, who shook his fist and added another appendage when he was driving and didn't like what the guy next to him did. Pray for him. Preach to him. Help him. Don't preach to your seminary professors.

They poured into you, so you'd go preach the Word to people. You don't need to sound smart. Give them doctrine. But if we're joyful and we're vibrant and we love the Lord and we are practical as well or experiential, as Joel Beeky always talks about, you know, taking it all the way.

We don't need to apply things as much as the Puritans did. You know, the Puritans in their preaching, they'd spend all that time just in every facet of those of you who are lawyers and those of you who are... We don't need to make long lists, but make it practical, bring it into daily life.

This is good for us and it will help them in the midst of their challenge of knowing what to believe. Their discernment will increase as their armory of truth does, so give them that. Many times over, Christians suffer from what Spurgeon described with discernment is the difference between knowing what is right and then almost right.

I think people hear a lot of that. They need our help. And so I want to walk you through three particular ways that you can recognize and rejoice in the Spirit's work with your people who are God's people, and then you can add to these and their sub-lists as well.

And before I get to number one and unpack it, I want to talk about two extremes. Extreme number one. We've got charismatic abuses and we've got a lot of sensational emotionalism, and that confuses a lot of people. That's a bad thing today. It's a lot of bad theology. That's an extreme.

We want to be aware of it and we want to watch out for it. Not long ago, I was watching the video again, the old video of Jen Johnson, you know the Bethel singer, and she's up there and she does this multiple times in conferences, and the one I saw, she has no shoes on, which is like a thing in that world.

I've got a family member who every time I see her on video leading worship, she's barefoot and sort of just running around all over the place. It's a thing. It's kind of like the "take off your shoes, this is holy ground" idea. And so Jen Johnson's in the chair and she says, "The Holy Spirit to me is like the genie from Aladdin." How many of you guys have not seen that video or heard that before?

Wow. Okay, brothers, that's a useful illustration then. I thought I was going to just get, "Oh yeah, we've seen it, Costi." Yeah, that would be a great place to start. I don't have time to get into Bethel and all their issues, but that's a real like popular kind of foundational teaching.

They make a mystical funny. She says, "He's funny, he's sneaky, and he's silly." And then she says, "He's wonderful. He's like the wind. He's all around." And then in another video she goes, "And he's blue," after talking about...and she holds up her barefoot with her blue jeans and waves her foot up and down in the air, and everyone laughs and thinks it's great.

And then she's, you know, at these major conferences, and she's all over the place with the lineups of other women speakers, and you're Christine Caines, and you're Jackie Hill Perrys now, and it's just that whole swath of individuals. And I'm not saying that, you know, they all think as weird as she does, but that would give you an idea of sort of just what Big Eva, and I'm not using it in the conspiracy theory way, it's just that the way that kind of Big Eva, giant kind of conference world does it.

They bring together all these people with their disillusioned and confused and divergent theology, a wide spectrum, and say, "Hey, we're all just, you know, big tent, big family of God. Let's just worship Jesus." And your kids go to Passion, and they feel the feels, and they've got the wristbands that light up like the Coldplay at concerts to the music, and they're all experiencing God.

I mean, these are the people who are teaching and modeling theology for a massive generation who, by the way, is really eager for the power of God. Why do you think the Asbury stuff started, and why do you think it went viral? It's because young people, they're not just floating around.

They actually want the power of God. They want to experience God. They want truth. They want to be a part. The largest demographic of volunteers in our church plant, and believe me, we're multigenerational already. We have a lot of gray-haireds, you know, the crown of wisdom that serve. We have elders that range from age 67 to 50s, and I'm 39, I mean, we have a wide amount of people.

The largest demographic of volunteers in our church are college students. They show up in droves. We don't even have to ask them. They set the church up. They tear it down. They go to snobby coffee places together. They eat burritos together. They have their own shirts, their own hoodies.

Some guy's making something. Next thing, I go, "I want one of those." They're like, "We'll make you one," you know. They have their own little, like, Christian in the church kind of cult thing going, and I'm okay with it. I love it because they want to be mobilized. They're going in groups to Radius.

Some of them want to be missionaries. They're going to Fiji with pre-men choy in May. They just want to keep going. They're crazy. And I think of them, and I say, "Wow, imagine if none of you had sound doctrine. You'd be in all these YouTube videos chasing the stuff that's hitting the mainstream." They're a zealous generation, so what they need from you and I is truth to be paired with their zeal.

Give them the doctrine. Give them the truth. They want answers. When studies are showing that six out of ten have an inaccurate worldview, and they think the Holy Spirit's a force, brothers, you are the solution from God to His people. You're not the mediator. That's Christ. You're just the messenger.

But if you do your job well, and I do, that extreme of charismatic chaos and that insanity, the noise quiets a little more in your parts. It'll never go away until Christ returns. Certainly, we know that. It'll only get worse as more of the world gets sucked in, but the church will grow stronger in the midst of that darkness, amen?

Extreme number two, this is some of us, neglecting His work, ignoring His work, or even with the best of intentions, because we don't want to be weird, treating Him as a bit of a "less than" in the Trinity. Now, you don't believe that, and neither do I theologically. Doctrinally, you and I would be orthodox.

But the way that we treat His work is sometimes, in some places, and if this is you, let the Holy Spirit convict you, metaphorically we relegate Him. And in a room like this one, metaphorically, so relax, you can't relegate God, but we would… I didn't do this on purpose, but it's a perfect illustration.

We would put Him behind that curtain over there, and we would metaphorically hope the Holy Spirit sort of is there, it's sort of awkward, no one knows what to pray. Some guys, we thank you for your spirit, and that's all. They don't want to say too much more. Some people, they get weird if you sing a hymn, and even weirder if you sing a hymn to the Holy Spirit.

We shouldn't be talking to Him. We don't know what to do at times, and I don't mean to make fun, I'm with you in this. That's why part of the reason I wrote the book is I sometimes don't know what I fully think or fully believe about something until I just spend a lot of time like you, studying it, then writing it on paper and looking and saying, "Is that biblical?" That's what we need to do.

So in church, at times, through our leadership, maybe we don't know what to say, we don't say things as fully as we ought to, or we ignore them in the song selection, which by the way, thanks to Piper, this quote, "The congregation doesn't learn its theology from only the sermons that it preaches or they preach, but the songs that they sing." So we want to sing about the Spirit's work, His true work.

At the same time, in our prayers, we don't acknowledge Him, we're just happy that nobody did anything weird. Then somebody raises their hands and we're like, "Oh, they must have been influenced by the charismatic movement for sure." We forget at times the way that the Bible describes a people who are excited about their God.

The Old Testament is not useless in this regard. I sometimes tell our church how exciting it would be, I'm like hinting. One day if they would, when I read the Word of God, raise their hands, like when the book of the law was read aloud, you think about Ezra and Nehemiah and that whole era, what if people got excited in the Reformed-ish Bible church camp, if you will, because they believed this stuff.

And I'm not saying that everybody has to be a hyper-emotional expressor, some of you men are going, "What are you suggesting, Costi?" I'm suggesting that if it's your personality, brother, to stand and meditate on the lyrics MacArthur-style, praise God for you, sing with all your heart. But if it's the style of some in your church to be excited and they do a little bit of this in the middle of something, you don't need to go.

Bob Kauflin means the stuff he's doing up there, you could tell. You could tell because it doesn't fit all the time, he's just in his little world worshiping Jesus, and he's yelling, "It's true! It's true! This is true!" And it just sort of almost makes it okay. You start thinking, "Yeah, people are just excited about Jesus.

Not everyone is a charismatic crazy here to derail the whole service, they're just excited about Jesus." I've got a brother that likes to say amen during sermons a lot. I'm not going to tell him to stop. He's saying, "Let it be." I'm saying, "I hope so." That's my prayer.

That's the elder's prayer. So let's be careful of the extremes. Amen? All right, three things. Number one, the deity of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to go through these things quickly so we can get to Q&A with about solid 20 minutes and 15 to go. The deity of the Holy Spirit.

Your church needs to understand that He's God, and you need to teach about His deity and His equality in the Trinity, that He's an active and equal person in the Trinity. In Christianity we understand our God is one, yet He exists in three persons, and that will seem a little bit confusing to their minds, and you come alongside that with understanding and say, "Yeah, me too.

He's an incomprehensible God." And you can quote R. C. Sproul who said, "The doctrine of the Trinity is not a contradiction but a mystery, for we cannot fully understand how God can exist in three persons." You don't ditch doctrine because it's beyond your comprehension. You just submit to it.

You embrace that tension. And what a comfort to know that God, while He's knowable, He's made Himself knowable to a degree, is altogether unknowable in all that He is. Teach your people that He's God. The Holy Spirit is God in the Old Testament. Let me just give you 10 observation or examples.

If you want to screenshot these, they'll be on the screen. Hovering over the waters before creation, Genesis 1-2. Killing certain men under Moses, Exodus 35, empowering Joshua, coming upon Gideon, Samson, rushing upon David when he was anointed as king, departing from Saul, carrying along the word of the prophets.

I love this though from 2 Peter. So in the New Testament, Peter saying the Holy Spirit was in the Old Testament, carrying along the word of the prophets. Isn't that good? What a comfort to know He was always there, ensuring that the Word made it to its destination. You could apply that in your own prayer life, asking God to take the Word that you preach to its destination, ask Him to penetrate their hearts, to open up their minds.

What a neat thing. We're not prophets anymore in the sense that we're foretelling the future, but we have the preaching voice, the prophetic voice of forth telling the Word of God to His people. Calling Ezekiel and then prophesied to one day rest upon the Messiah. We're in the book of Matthew at our church right now going verse by verse.

It's been so fun to see the Holy Spirit's present activity, His work with Christ, baptism through temptation, onward, powerful stuff, all the way back to His conception. The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, He moves in a normative way, if you will, because the language we see suddenly shift a bit from coming upon believers, mostly, in the Old Testament.

I unpack this a little bit in the book. There are some instances where the description is "in" or "filling," but generally moving to entering into believers under the new covenant through Christ. Why? Because He's God. And now He's made us, the church, the believer, His temple. And so that's made clear.

He's mentioned almost a hundred times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke alone. He conceives Jesus in Mary's womb, present at baptism, sent by the Father. He teaches the disciples all things and reminds them of what Jesus was taught. You know it's good to teach your people when they have these questions about bibliology is how did they know?

You know, "So-and-so says," or the YouTube video I watched, you know, the guy is saying that how do you know? That's why we have all these conflicting accounts. You could take them to a clear understanding of how the Holy Spirit called to memory for the disciples. And then you can take them to John 16 and just preach on the Holy Spirit's job description through the original apostles and the authors.

Powerful stuff. He's God. Believers are baptized in His name, Matthew 28, 19 and 20. He's eternal, Hebrews 9, 14 says. He has the power to seal believers so nothing can steal them and rob them of their salvation. Only God can do that. He dwells within believers, makes them His temple, and He has the power to make believers new.

He washes away our sins, Titus 3, 5 says. He's God. It's not hard to find that He's God. And one of my favorite examples of this is in Acts chapter 5. You remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira? They kind of flaunt their big offering, but they held back.

What does Peter say? Apostle Peter confronts them saying, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the proceeds of the land?" Don't do this, by the way, in your building campaign. We're starting one in April. I'm not going to go this far.

"You have not lied to men but to God." Why would he say that unless the Holy Spirit was equally God? He's God. He's not the low man on the totem pole of the Trinity, not a lesser, he's not the JV benchwarmer, he's not the backup, he's not the minor leaguer, he's not the footnote, he's not the understudy.

So be careful in taking the John 16, 14, "He will glorify me" and turning that into, "Well, we don't really want to make a big deal about the Holy Spirit." No, you want to make a really big deal about His true work. You don't want to turn Him into this shy, sort of background individual who doesn't really want to be talked about.

You've got to teach about Him, teach the whole counsel of God. And yet, we don't need to go too far into sensationalism. Number two, the person of the Holy Spirit. Teach your people He is a person, and He's personal. He's active in their life. He's not a distant deity.

The Father loves you and calls you, Son died for you, calls on you to believe, John 11. Then the Holy Spirit fills you, baptizes you in the body of Christ, fills you, transforms you, sanctifies you. He's your helper every single day. We don't want to forget His work, neglect His work, or misrepresent His work, especially with our churches, because He is the agent of salvation, and He's the agent of sanctification.

He's the one they desperately need, and the one whom Paul commands, "Walk by," who? "The Spirit, and be filled with the Spirit." Don't ignore the God you need. Is it weird if I look at you while you're taking a photo? The Holy Spirit doesn't exist to put the spotlight on me, He exists to put the spotlight on Christ.

We love you, Lucas. So if the Holy Spirit's a person, what else does that mean? He's not an "it." Don't call Him an "it" in your prayers, don't model treating Him as an "it" in the way you minister, in the way we sing, in the way we talk, and guide your people, again, gently, lovingly, with compassion, with a purpose, when they call Him, by ignorance, an "it." You don't need to interrupt their prayer, but help them.

We don't call the Father an "it," we don't call Jesus an "it." I'm uncomfortable even giving examples by way of illustration. Why would we call the Holy Spirit an "it?" We ought not to. In John 16, verses 1 through 15, we get the job description of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is preparing His disciples to see Him go, and He tells them what? It's to your advantage that I go. Why? Well, because the Holy Spirit is going to carry out a ministry that is going to strengthen and equip and baptize and fill. He's going to give them Scripture, lead them, guide them, comfort them, be their advocate, be the helper.

He's going to descend on them, if you will, and enter into them at Pentecost, and the gospel is going to go out explosively from the epicenter of His work in Jerusalem. And when Jesus describes this, He does it in a very personal way. He doesn't talk about a distant "it" or a force, but a person.

One of the most dangerous deviations in church history that continues to wreak havoc, even though people don't use the term, is Sibelianism, named for its namesake, Sibelius. He taught that the Holy Spirit wasn't a person, but rather a force, an impersonal force, just an expression of God. According to him, God is one person, He just expresses Himself in three different ways.

This view holds that God the Father was expressed in creation, God the Son through redemption, and then God the Spirit in sanctification. Eventually, the belief was declared a heresy, but it almost preaches pretty good, if you don't know the Bible. We love steps and formulas. God the Father was expressed in this way, God the Son in this way, God the Spirit in this way.

That's why people get sucked into these things. It sounds clever, but it is damning. We need to teach well about His work. He's a person. The Bible describes more aspects of His personhood, comforter, helper, advocate, but there's more. He feels, reveals, searches, and dwells. He teaches, He helps, He prays, He speaks, He has a will, and He bears witness to our spirits that we are children of God.

He is an active person. And third, the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit. We need to teach our people, and this is just a short list, let me give you six, but I'll list a few at the end that you can add. Regeneration. Don't forget Him in your soteriology.

He's very much involved. Titus 3, 4 to 7 explains this, "By the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He richly poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified by His grace, we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." The Bible clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit's work is directly attached to and involved with rebirth, regeneration, being born again.

Number two, teach your people about sanctification and all of its aspects. "The such were some of you, but you have been washed, you've been sanctified." Paul ends up saying it's by the Spirit of our God. The Holy Spirit is the one sanctifying, and there's aspects to sanctification that your people need to understand, and this will be a comfort to them.

Probably talk to people weekly, if not at least monthly, somebody sending you an email or coming up to you after service or meeting you in the office and saying, "I feel so convicted." They're weeping after your sermon on what it means to be a true believer and what a true believer's life will look like, and they come to you and they are distraught.

And you either help them see they're absolutely right. They've been a false convert, or what else do we do when we counsel that situation? We help them see that this besetting sin they're wrestling with, the fact that they're weeping over it and they hate it, and they're going to war against it, and they're seeking counsel for it, and they've come to talk to you about its effect on their heart and their life is part of progressive sanctification.

As the Word comes to bear on their soul, and they can't sleep until they come and meet with you. They've got to tell you about this thing. Unbelievers don't do that. Unbelievers hide their sin, they love their sin, they relish in it and then try to look perfect. A believer who's experiencing progressive sanctification and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and responding to that is someone that we bring comfort to.

So we want to help them understand the differences, and then when they say, "So when I sin, can I lose it?" I mean, you said, "I can't lose my salvation," but based on what you're teaching, if I have sin in my life or I'm not bearing fruit, I mean, unbelievers do that, and they kind of get all twisted up in their own thoughts and fears, you come along and say, "Let me help you understand three aspects of sanctification." There is positional.

You need to remember that, that you have been saved. You went from sinner to saint in God's eyes based on your profession of faith and that you've been bearing fruit. You're a member here. You don't need to every week be worried about losing it. You can have assurance today, and you give them biblical assurance, not your own.

You all know we do not give people the assurance of salvation. We point them to Scripture for their assurance of salvation. They were a target of the Father's wrath and now they're a recipient of Christ's righteousness. That's the gospel. It's the good news. And then progressive. It means you're not going to change into this perfect person overnight.

Talk to my friends who have been coming out of Nazarene churches. They teach perfect sanctification. Some of you know that. You navigate those issues. And the idea that they're not going to be perfect yet. So helpful last night when Piper, I think he's echoing something that a lot of older men and older pastors have said when you say, "What's the Lord teaching you at 80 years old?" I remember asking a man this one time.

He said, "Just how sinful I really am." I was like, "That's really encouraging." In 40 years I'm just going to realize that, yeah, you just see your heart. Salvation is a gift and you love it and you're grateful to the Lord. Now wait until you're 80 and you really know so much more about your wicked heart.

And you think, "He saved me? Wow. He's changing us day by day, slowly but surely." Philippians 1:6 will come to pass. Number three, perfect. Perfect sanctification. What is this? It's what awaits us in glory. And you can talk to your people about the freedom from sin that awaits us.

That's why we long for heaven, to be with Christ and to not sin, and to have no separation from Him relationally, and to not be weighed down by all these encumbrances that slow us down in the race. If you love Jesus, how many of you know you really hate sin?

I hate it. I can't stand my sin. I don't love it. I want to love Him all the more. You talk to your people about the now but not yet promise that the day is coming. Third, so regeneration, sanctification, illumination. That without the Spirit's work through the Word, their eyes will not be opened.

I love what MacArthur says, "God must open the eyes of our understanding before we can truly know and rightly interpret His truth. Only the Spirit can illumine Scripture." Martin Luther said, "Nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what's in the Scriptures. The Spirit is needed for understanding of all Scripture and every part of Scripture." So not only teach your people that, but brothers, we should be practicing that in our own study and in our own prayer life.

So my encouragement to you is don't neglect the work of the Spirit in your prayer life. Don't forget before we study to ask His blessing on your study, His wisdom to pour out, James 1:5 wisdom, which the Father will give. And this is maybe a good, a great point of discussion with your own team and your own mind and you can do this study.

Some, this is one of those kind of open debates that can be debated, some would say that they feel very uncomfortable speaking directly to the Holy Spirit in their prayer life. Those same people sing hymns to the Holy Spirit, I don't always know how those two things jive, but they don't necessarily want to say, "Holy Spirit, help me in my study." Okay, but don't forget Him altogether.

And others, they may say bluntly in line with His work, "Pray that the Holy Spirit would fill me for service to our church this weekend. I pray that He'd bear His fruit. I pray He'd give me eyes to see." However you pray, don't forget His work. Now pray in line with biblical job descriptions.

We would never say, "Holy Spirit, thank You for dying for me." That doesn't make sense theologically. We want to acknowledge the Father, the Son, and the Spirit's work through the Bible. But many times, because we don't think about these things, we don't pray about these things. So pray for His illuminating work, baptizing, filling, and sealing.

Three more aspects, baptizing, filling, and sealing. I'll give you these in kind of a 60-second bundle, and then we'll get to Q&A. People need to know the difference between the baptism and the filling of the Holy Spirit big time. 1 Corinthians 13, 12, real clear, sorry, 12, 13, that it is through one Spirit, by one Spirit, we're all baptized into the body.

So everybody gets the baptism of the Holy Spirit when they get saved. It's not this secondary experience they need. They're not on the JV team until they get it. They're in. He's in them. And the filling, the Ephesians 5:18, "Be being kept filled," the ongoing action that's happening, that, yeah, there's one baptism and there could be many fillings.

That's a daily thing, by the way. Why? Well, because what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It means to be yielded to Him. I don't know about you, but I don't want that happening quarterly. One annual conference, really felt like I got filled this weekend. Maybe you were filled with a renewed zeal for the gospel.

Praise God. And that can be accompanied by the Spirit's filling work. I don't know how it all works. No one does. He does what He does in us. But what we do know objectively is that we want to be yielded daily. So certainly you want to be filled with the Spirit ongoing.

You're either under the influence of something else or Him. And then you think about Galatians 5, 16 and all the way to verse 23, "In the fruit of the Spirit," but start at 16. And when Paul says, "Walk by the Spirit and you won't carry out the deeds of the flesh," what does walk mean?

It's the Greek word peripateo, means to be preoccupied with. So you fill your life up, your pursuits up, your recreations, your vacations, your work and your vocations, all of it with what is in line with the Spirit of God and His will, which of course will be aligned with the Word of God and helping you glorify Christ.

It's a preoccupation. You should teach your people that so that they would view their work as still worship, everything under the glory of God. When we're all filled up with Him, there's not a lot of room for much else. I love the illustration, well-known evangelist D.L. Moody is going to have a big service in England, pastors get together to talk about it.

Pastor stands up and protests, you know, "Why do we need this Mr. Moody? Who does he think he is? He's uneducated. He's inexperienced. What does he think he is, a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?" An older, wiser pastor stood up in that pastoral meeting and said, "No, but the Holy Spirit sure has a monopoly on him." That's what it means to be filled and yielded.

We want to model being monopolized by Him. Number six, the sealing. I already mentioned this so I won't have to go too far with it, but give your people the doctrine of eternal security and teach them how the Holy Spirit keeps them secure. What a joy to know He's working.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. You can add His gifting, meaning the gifts of the Holy Spirit, worshiping in the Spirit, praying in the Spirit, conviction of the Holy Spirit, grieving, blaspheming, walking, unity, how He speaks today. You could talk about His work in Scripture, get into bibliology.

All these things matter and they help your church have a fortified pneumatology. It is good and right to preach Christ. You ought to be all the time. It's good and right to ensure people know their Father and love Him all the more and live for His glory. It is also good and right that they have a clear understanding and personal relationship and daily communion with the Spirit of God.

He is in them. They should be aware of His work. Let's do questions. We've got ten minutes and I'm going to take all of it. Yes, sir? Hey, Philip. How would you describe what a true biblical revival is to someone who has adopted more of a Charles Finney type perspective?

How would I describe true revival to someone who's adopted more of a Charles Finney approach to it? I'd go to the book of Acts, explosive conversion, bold preaching, courageous evangelism, endurance through suffering, eternal perspective, joy, exuberant joy. I'd go over to the Philippian jailbreak, Paul and Silas, and just show a generation, "Look, there it is.

You're not sitting around." I mean, look, no offense at all. We should sing all the more, and we do. We're doing it in there. I mean, I love, when Bob walked off last night, it was like the best walk off, better than any baseball walk off I've ever seen in my life.

Just walked off. Those are moments where I would go, "Man, you want to talk about renewal or some revival, something awakening inside of the hearts of men as they go back and serve missionaries." I met a pastor today who when he goes back, he can get arrested. He has to have his phone wiped before he goes back to his country.

I don't even want to say what country it is just in case, but, you know, that's revival. That's renewal. And then people's being saved because of that. But you know, when you sit in a room and you feel really good, that's fine. I feel good after this. It's awesome.

It's what do you do after. If I go to Chick-fil-A and then go play more Xbox at Asbury, that's great. But if they're in their churches and there's a vibrancy, like we should see, if it were real revival, and I have my skepticisms about all that kind of stuff, but if we see an explosion in global missions and pastors, I just think it's a little less hyped and a little more of the long view.

It doesn't go away, but there'll be a steadiness to it, if that makes sense. >> >> Yeah. >> >> Yeah. He said his brother-in-law says the gift of healing and these things in 1 Corinthians, they're available. That would be one of those conversations that you just have privately and personally with them.

I don't think that's just some terrible heresy. It's a misunderstanding, but it's available. What it does is it makes us feel good about them being available to us, and now we're not taking a hard stance on something, which is kind of this generation's MO. We want to just live in the middle and make it feel good for everyone, like they're available.

It also makes us feel more in control. And, I mean, I don't want to dismantle his view in a cheeky way or a rude way, but it makes us feel more in control. It's there. They're available. I just need to step out and do what? I would ask him truly, genuinely, "So, how do I get them then?

You know, how do I get Justin Peters out of his scooter?" Not being funny, like, "How do I help that family in my church and deal with the stage four cancer if they're available?" You know, I'd rather just pray for someone to be healed and then say, "Lord, we trust Your will in the matter, no matter what." You know, there was nothing available for Tim Chalice when sweet boy Nick dropped dead at 20 a few years ago on the podcast, not this Monday, but next Monday.

Tim is coming on the For the Gospel podcast for three weeks, and he's telling the story. And I just think of Tim, and I go, "What didn't work for him?" They tried to revive him. I mean, he was at Southern Seminary. I guess they're Baptists, right? So they didn't get the power of God in that moment.

I don't know. That's what we used to think when I was in the charismatic movement. So I think it gets touchy and dangerous because how do you get them? But I would dialogue with him on that. But the fact that you're in a solid church and you're in his life, that's a gift from the Lord to him.

What else? Yes, sir. You're standing. I got to go to you. Okay, on top of all that conspiracy theories, that one might have to wait. Jeff Williams isn't here, but we can talk about the moon landing later and chemtrails and flat earth. Stay off YouTube is probably some of the best advice unless you're watching John MacArthur sermons.

Okay. Your original question was about reaching family. Okay. Let me try to give you this in like 60, 120 seconds, be easier. First expect a diverse response just like in church. Some will be saved, some will be interested in what you're saying and assessing, and others will be angry and it will irk them.

I'll give you examples. When I told my family members that I've come to faith and that I've come to the realization, literally said this to a room of multiple individuals, we'll leave it at that, "You're all wolves, but if you'll just repent, like this could all be fixed." Literally what I said, like 12 years ago or something.

And I had a McCarthy study Bible, true story, black goatskin leather, it was open, I was in 1 Timothy 3. I was like, "Can I just read you this?" And they're just like gnashing of teeth, you know? And I read all the qualifications, it was the longest reading I've ever done in my life of such a short span of verses, and I looked up and said, "You're none of these, none of you are, but I've got friends, they would love to walk with you." They're like, "Oh, here we go," you know?

You've got to expect that with some. That's how it started. If I could do like a meme, you know, how it started, how it's going, there's some...how it started, it was really rough. I got cut off for years, ridiculed. I'm still today, I don't get invited to anything, you know, none of that.

But some of my family members are circling around with me, and I talk to them. I'm going to go visit a few of them in April, non-heretics, but definitely used to be, and they're in that, and they're like assessing things. So I want to have those dialogues, but some will never talk to me.

And part of that is, you know, I brought the heat, I think, early on when I was in cage stage. So I was ready to just, you know, burn them all, but then throw cold water and go, "Now, let me help you." You know, like, "I'll just manage them up after you beat them up." And that would be my...that's where I failed so bad.

Like, in God, greed, and the prosperity gospel, one of the last chapters is reaching people caught in deception. None of that's like expertise. Look at me, ivory tower. It's man, I failed so bad. No one told me about cage stage, but I was definitely in it. So I would say, try to keep as many bridges as you can built for conversation where you influence them, not the other way around, and understand that some are in that third category in Jude.

Have mercy on others with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. I'm not having steak dinners with my uncle to like, "I just want to explain." No, I'm not being rude. Just like Francis Chan, like, "I'm going to win them from the inside," and not like, "No, you need to win them from the shoreline, throw the rope, and pull them out of the river." You don't go jump in and be like, "Hey, guys, I'm here to help you." And then we're all looking going, "What are you doing?" You save, you reach by what?

The verses prior in Jude 17 through 23, snatching them out of the fire. So you want to stay safe and careful with some, but if you've got family that aren't like flaming heretics, try to have as much interaction with them in love with the truth as you can, and then trust the Lord.

Let me get one more. Verse 59, "Brother with the glasses." Yeah, yes, okay, one of the best. If you just wanted to kind of give a menu, Greg Gilbert's "What is the Gospel?" You know that little hardcover? It's just a great book, doesn't attack heretics, doesn't name any names, it's about the gospel.

That would be a good one. If you...if they're tolerant of John MacArthur, try to get them like "Vanishing Conscience," some things about sin and soteriology, one of the most interesting conversations I had with this guy who's kind of in that whole world. He said, I sent him my book, and he said, "You know, I don't agree with you on some things." I said, "Yeah, obviously." And then he said, "But that whole section on soteriology, whatever it's called, I'm like, 'Yeah, you got it right.

Good job.'" Probably one of the first times he's ever used that word, I'm not kidding. He said, "We're really shallow in that." And I was like, "There's a good entry point. If I can get him to understand the gospel, I can get to, 'Hey, your prophets are absolutely of Baal,' you know?

But let me get the gospel first to you." And so that would be an interesting one. You know another one would be Tom Schreiner, "Spiritual Gifts." He is so nice to Pentecostals in that book. My friend, Wayne Grudem, my friend, Sam Storms, my friend...he doesn't say friends to heretics, but he's, you know, my friend.

He is so irenic and so kind, it is hard not to say, "Yeah, the guy's kind of right. That makes sense." I wrote "Knowing the Spirit" to be nice. There's no heresy hunting in it. And then one other book, I know this seems self-promoting, but it's actually based on my burning down of everything for the first two years.

I wrote a book called "More Than a Healer" about Jesus, and it's not...there were people that actually reviewed it and were like, "Man, what, are you going soft?" I'm like, "No, I'm trying to give people something that they can give to someone, and the first line isn't, you know, about their favorite false teacher." That one's just about Jesus and all the other things that He is.

I would try to get them a devotional, a good biblical devotional. If you can introduce them to Spurgeon, that's always helpful, like a morning and evening. I have some things I've leaked in. I've sent my mother a few books that really put cracks in the dam, but I was never like, "You need to read this, that." So hopefully, there's probably more that I would say.

You know who's really good? Last one, and then I know we got to go. But Allie Beth Stuckey is kind of a sleeper, fellas. Let me explain this. My sister, who is way caught up in some weird stuff, shoots me a message like a year and a half ago, and she was like, "Hey, I saw that you were with Allie Beth Stuckey at a women's conference." I was like, "Yeah." She was like, "She's my favorite." I'm like, "Yes!" You know, I never realized that.

And then she said, "Yeah, I think we'd agree on more things than we used to now. We should talk." I was like, "Thank God for Allie Beth." She's not just a political pundit at this point. She kind of throws some theology around. She defends pastors, but that she's drawing in.

So her book, "You're Not Enough and That's Okay," it is anti-everything that their women's, Lisa Bevere and all these women's ministries are pumping. She's like, there's Sadie Robinson and Christine Kane and Lisa Bevere, and then there's Allie Beth. They're like, "You're enough. You're you. We love you." And she's like, "You're not enough and that's okay." And then she points to Christ.

It's a pink book. Getting one of those to a sister would be a good idea. This was fun, guys. I hope it was helpful. So thanks for letting me talk. (audience applauding)