Marcus Mecum - The Spirit Filled Life
Jesus said in John 16 that it was better that he would go away so the promise of the father or the Holy Spirit could show up. And now, to think about that, just to me, it magnifies the greatness of the presence of the Holy Spirit because Jesus, how many of y'all know, at this point, would have been, he would've hung on the cross, he would've been buried for three days, he would've defeated death, hell, and the grave, he would've been on the planet for 40 days with many infallible proofs, appearing, at least, we have about 15 occurrences where he appeared to people. To Pontius Pilate, of course, his disciples, of course, to the 500 witnesses is where he closed out his time after his resurrection and he said to them with the scars in his hands, the wound in his side, he said, "It's better that I go".
So, to imagine Jesus in his resurrected body looking at the 500 that were there saying, "It's better that I go for the Holy Spirit to come". This should heighten our desire to know exactly what could possibly be better than that. I meet Christians all the time that they're missing something. Maybe they have a sense they're missing something or maybe even sometimes I have a sense they're missing something. I go to churches every now and then on vacation, I hear preachers around the world, I listen to singing around the world, and sometimes I'm just like, "There's just something missing". Anybody know what I'm talking about? Just something missing. And the truth is it's not something, it's someone. So, you cannot really live the Christian life at the level that I believe God designed for us to without having a relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Now, I had a checkered church experience growing up. When I became a Christian at the age of 16, I became a Christian in a Pentecostal, I mean, everything you wanna think about. I mean it was, they cast out demons, people fell on the floor, they ran the aisles, when they prayed, they stomped, they shouted, their buns fell out. Oh, yeah. We had church forever, forever. I don't even get through my close and half of y'all are out of the building. I mean, we had church forever. I mean, forever. Forever and ever and ever amen. And we would, after church, after prayer meetings, which was pretty much every night, we would, if you didn't speak in tongues, they'd put you in the middle of a circle, they'd all lather you up with oil and they'd all scream in tongues, and they kept looking at you, "Do you got it? Do you got it? Do you got it"?
So, we're not gonna do that to you, okay? We're not gonna do that to you. I'm bringing your attention to that because though I appreciate my roots, they made a mark of spiritual maturity speaking in tongues or a spiritual gift. Well, we would know that that's not true because Paul actually brought attention to this when he talked to the church of Corinth by saying, "Hey, it doesn't matter how spiritual you are, it doesn't matter what spiritual gifts you have, if you don't have love, all of that, you're just wasting your time".
So, the mark of spiritual maturity is love, not speaking in tongues. However, some of us will miss what I'm saying and think I'm talking about a gift or think I'm talking about speaking in tongues, which, by the way, it's impossible to discuss the subject of the Holy Spirit without talking about that. You really can't. You can dismiss it, but you can't really talk about the subject without going there. But don't miss that I'm not talking about getting a gift, I'm not talking about receiving a prayer language necessarily. I'm talking about you get the person. We're talking about not asking for a gift, we're talking about asking for him. "God, I want to know you more, I want to draw closer to you, I want to have a more in sync relationship with you than what I've had before".
And so, we decided that we would dig into this. Now, if you have been in church any time at all, you would know that there's, kind of, the two extremes that I just mentioned. There's this camp over here where everything is all that, and there's camp over here where there's barriers and resistance and stay away from it. I'm not asking you to go to either one of those, I'm asking you to find the road in the middle. Stay away from both ditches and find the road in the middle.
In acts 17, Paul, the apostle goes to Berea, and he's preaching to this group of Jews and they said that they were of noble character, and that they would receive the Word of God with eagerness and then they would go study what it was that Paul said. They would examine the scriptures every single day to see if what Paul was saying was accurate to understand more about what he was saying. And so, I'm encouraging the same thing as we continue to play around here with the scriptures and as we continue to dig into our relationship with the Holy Spirit. I'm encouraging you to receive the Word of God with eagerness, but I'm also encouraging you to, day to day, take some of the scriptures, take some of the thoughts, and go and examine them and make sure you understand in fullness exactly what I'm saying.
It's what they would call exergy, the scripture, that's just an objective understanding of the scripture. That means I take a text, and I objectively look at it and think through, what is it saying? What did the author mean to say? And I move in, and I move out, and I move in and I move out. The opposite of exegeting the text is to eisegete the text, and that means to be subjective in reading, and that means I take my preconceived ideas and notions, and I impose them on the text. I don't really care what the author meant or what it says, I care what my preconceived idea is more than what the author actually meant.
And so, we are doing our best to do what the Bereans did and say if I'd never read the Bible before and I was reading it for the first time, not approaching it with tired eyes, but taking a fresh look at the scriptures I would say this, that we would all walk away from reading the Bible, and we, without any question would know that you do not want to love the Christian life without a active relationship with the Holy Spirit. You would walk away with the conclusion that the Holy Spirit was essential for everyday life for the early church. You would walk away with the awareness that you probably don't wanna try to live for God, apart from the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.
And so, any prejudice against the Holy Spirit is the product of a lazy mind, and so I'm challenging the church in this next season to hey, let's take a fresh look. Let's not have any preconceived ideas. Let's just simply say, "Okay, God. Let's go at your word and see what you would say to us". So, Romans 8:26, "In the same way, the spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with wordless groans. He searches our hearts and know the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. And we know in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, and have been called according to his purpose".
Number one, four quick thoughts. Number one, he helps us in our weakness. Verse 26 says, "When he prays, he helps our weakness". The spirit helps, plural. It's not help, it's not a one time thing. He helps. This is ongoing, this is a continuing, never stops, never seizes, never pulls back. He helps us and he keeps on helping. So, he is always actively pursing us and helping us. It's not just speaking of the ongoing nature of the Holy Spirit's help, it's also speaking of the fact that in any area of your life, in the multiple areas that make up our life, any area where there's weakness, the Holy Spirit helps in that area. One translation says he pulls together the weak areas of our lives, he pulls the areas of our life together that we can't.
Weakness in the Greek includes weakness in your body, weakness in your mind, weakness in your flesh, weakness in your emotion, weakness in your relationships. And so, the Holy Spirit helps us in the multiplicity of areas that we might find ourselves in weakness. All of us in this room right now are struggling internally with one area or another. No one is absent from an area of your life being weak. And so, the Holy Spirit helps us in those unseen, maybe unknown, maybe even secret hidden areas of our life, and he enters into those areas. Because if the Holy Spirit doesn't help us in our weakness, then our weakness just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger, and the enemy knows what that weakness is and he takes advantage of us, and he gets out the proverbial bat and he beats that area of our life, and he beats us with that weakness.
But the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, helps us. And that the Holy Spirit doesn't just sit back and watch the enemy beat us, he grabs the bat from the enemy, hands the bat to us, and says, "Do you want to keep letting him beat your brains out with this weakness or do you wanna take the bat back and do you wanna make a decision to say, 'hey, the Holy Spirit isn't gonna just let me suffer for the rest of my life with this weakness. The Holy Spirit can give me victory in this area and he can help me in my weakness'".
So, every one of us have the opportunity to invite the Holy Spirit in to help, "Help me. This is an area I'm weak. All is not lost, you're not too far gone, it's not too late. Holy Spirit, I need your help. If you don't help me, this weakness is going to hurt my life, it's going to hurt my relationships, it's going to hurt my future. But I don't have to go at it on my own. I don't have to sit there in silence alone, letting the enemy beat my brains out. I don't have to because God's given me the Holy Spirit and he helps".
Number two, he speaks to our blind spots. Verse 26, "We do not know what we ought to". So, all of us have blind spots. You do not see your blind spot. There's no way you can see your own blind spot. It's not a discovery spot, it's a blind spot. If you could see it, it wouldn't be a blind spot, and we all have blind spots. The biggest fool in the world is the person who believes they fully see themselves. You cannot, I can see Michael way more than I can see myself. Michael can see me way more than I can see me, right? So, as much as that's true physically, people can see a lot more about us than sometimes we can ever see about us.
Now, let's take that one step further. How much more do you think God can see about us than we can see about us? So, God knows way more about you than probably you even know about you. And so, the Holy Spirit speaks to our blind spots. You ever heard of the legend of the blind men and the elephant? The first blind man wants to help people understand what a elephant is like, so he goes up and he feels the stomach of the elephant and he says, "The elephant is like a wall". And then, another blind man goes up and he feels the tusk of the elephant and he says, "An elephant is like a spear".
Another one goes up and he feels the trunk of the elephant and he says, "An elephant is like a snake". And all of them believe they knew what an elephant looked like. This is the point, we have to operate under the assumption, "I'm missing something". We have to operate under the assumption, "There are areas of my life where there's a blind spot". And humility says I need to use someone else's eyes. Humility says I need eyes on the areas I can't see. What do you see that I don't? What's it like being on the other side of the table from me? What do you see? I need your eyes, God, I need you to help me see the things that I'm blind to.
If you were to jump in the car with me and I'm driving the car, I might have the steering wheel, I can have access to the gas, to the brakes, to all the controls of the car, I have the mirror, I have the windshield, I have the side mirrors. Maybe you even have technology. Some type of cameras, some type of light that flashes on your mirrors, some type of buzzing that happens in the car that tells you the things that are going on around you. Whatever technology you might have. You can look over your shoulder to look at your blind spot. All of that being true, we've all experienced being in the car, having access to everything I just talked about, and yet somebody in the car sees a danger you could not see. And are you thankful that they spoke up and said, "Hey, watch out. Hey". And what do you usually say? "Man, thank you. I couldn't see that. I didn't see that".
Now, when Sara is in the passenger seat, she's always saying she sees things that don't exist. "You're too close, too far away, too slow, too this, too that, too whatever". Another thing. But are you glad that the Holy Spirit doesn't just in the passenger seat and stay silent? He speaks to your blind spot. He's not gonna come along side of you and not speak up. It says he speaks up when we cannot perceive, we cannot comprehend, and we cannot understand what the mind of the father is. The Holy Spirit will intercede for you, he'll jump into your life, and he knows the perfect mind and will of the father. It's because the Holy Spirit knows life is not simple, life is not black and white.
It's sticky, it's messy, it's confusing, it's complicated, and there are things that are beyond our wisdom, there are things that are beyond what we are able to conceive, or see, or understand. And the Holy Spirit comes in and he speaks to those things. Some of you are here and you're in a great place in life, you're in, just, an incredible season of life. And that's amazing that you're there, but others of you are in a painful place, you're in a unexplainable, maybe even unprayable place. You're facing serious life-threatening situations, you're facing a life altering issue in your life, and you don't know exactly what to say, you don't even know what to do. Maybe you don't even know exactly what to pray because there's just a blind spot you just can't see.
That's when the Holy Spirit jumps in and he does the work, and he starts to pray the perfect will of the father. This is why I challenge you to step into learning more about what it means to receive your prayer language, because your prayer language is important because sometimes, you just don't know what to pray, and that's when the Holy Spirit makes intercession through you, he gives you the utterance. Because if you pray with your understanding, it looks something like this. "God, I'm tired, I wanna quit". But if you let the Holy Spirit pray through you, he says something like, "God, we're excited, give us another mountain. We're ready for a new challenge".
If I pray, it looks something like this, "God, I'm gonna jump off a bridge, I can't take this no more". But if you let the Holy Spirit pray, he says something like, "Let's build a new bridge, let's go to new territories". If you let yourself pray, I'll pray something like this, "God, I'm done. I'm leaving". The Holy Spirit praying through you, "No, you're not done, you're just getting started and you're staying". Me alone praying with my understanding, I pray with preconceived ideas and mixed emotions, but when I pray, they spirit gives me the utterance, he bypasses my confusion, my worry, my doubt, he helps me with my blind spot, and he prays the perfect, the absolute very best that God has for me over my life.
And thankfully, God did not give us Michael the Archangel, he didn't give us Gabriel, he gave us the Holy Spirit himself so when the enemy comes in like a flood, what the spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against it. And it says that he does this through wordless and unspeakable things. Meaning there are some things that you can't even talk about. There are some things you don't even know how to articulate, there are some things you don't even wanna talk about, areas of your life you will not talk to nobody about 'em, you don't even know what to say about 'em.
That's the area that the Holy Spirit knows how to speak to. The groanings refers to hunches, gut feelings, areas there's no evidence, no words, blind spots, things you cannot see. The Holy Spirit does not need you to know the details when he prays for you. As a matter of fact, he probably already knows he can't show you too many more details because you can't handle them. So, the Holy Spirit knows exactly what to pray when there are things that need to be handled that are unspeakable.
Number three, he spotlights the heart. Verse 27, it says, "He searches our hearts". One translation says, "He investigates your emotions". We're professional actors, we're professionals that make everything seem good on the outside, but when the Holy Spirit prays, he wants to bypass all the surface stuff and he goes on the search. He goes on an investigation, he goes and grabs a spotlight to your heart, and he is going to get to the heart of the matter.
He wants to put the spotlight on, why do you quit so easy? He wants to put the spotlight on, why do you gravitate towards fringy, divisive, bitter people? He wants to put the spotlight on, why is it that you keep isolating yourself? He wants to put the spotlight on, why do you think an addiction is gonna fix the thing in your life? Why do you lie? Why do you exaggerate the facts? Why do you manipulate the facts? Why are you so insecure? You have so much going for you. Why do you have a problem with authority? Every time authority comes, you buck, you push back, you just, you know, everything's the man. Why put the spotlight on that?
And the Holy Spirit will do that. He'll say, "I wanna go in and I wanna shine, I wanna shine, I'm gonna put a lot of brightness on the uninvestigated areas of your heart". And my question is, why would anyone not want that kind of a relationship? Why would anyone want to live their Christian life with all these areas that God wants to surface, and he wants to heal, and he wants to fix, and he wants to correct, and he wants to improve your life, he wants to make you better, he wants to make you the best possible version of yourself you can be. And he knows you can't do that on your own 'cause you're never gonna answer those questions, you're never gonna spotlight those things on your own.
Matter of fact, even when the Holy Spirit comes in and starts to do stuff, you're like, "No, nope, nope, nope". You're like, we don't, by our nature, want those things, but Jesus said, "Hey, it's gonna be better that I send the Holy Spirit. It's gonna be better that I send him, why? 'cause he's gonna take a spotlight and he's gonna take it to your heart". Every single day, he's gonna get that, you come to church right now, spotlight's on, I'm just talking. And you can blame me for the spotlight, but more than likely, it's the Holy Spirit just gets in there, put the spotlight on it. It's the gift of preaching, 'cause I'm talking to everybody. I couldn't possibly know the individual situations in this room, nor am I even thinking about them.
I had people come up to me after a service, they say, "You were talking just to me". I've had kids blame their parents when they leave for calling me and telling me to talk about something. I've shook hands on my way out and I've had husbands and wives fighting because the husband knows I told, the wife told me to talk because her husband was gonna be there and they get mad at each other, and I don't even know these people. Let me just help you out. There's a reason I don't wanna know. You come try to tell me details about your situation, you know what I'mma say? "I don't wanna know". I don't wanna know. Why? 'Cause the Holy Spirit will put the spotlight on it.
And I'd much rather him put the spotlight on it and it's why God uses preaching 'cause the Holy Spirit is gonna individualize what I'm saying, he's gonna personalize it. And I'm over here talking about this, but the Holy Spirit's still talking to you about that one thing, he's still there, he's still working on that one thing. He's got the spotlight. Why would anyone not seek, and crave, and desire such a beautiful thing? We would know on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out, there was three reactions.
Number one, some were amazed. Number two, some doubted. And number three, some mocked. Same way today as it was then. Some are amazed, some doubt, and some mock. I want to say that we can't just stop at Bethlehem, right? God with us. We can't even just stop at Calvary and the empty tomb, or God is for us. We've gotta keep on going to Pentecost and the upper room where it's God in us. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I believe in Bethlehem that God is with us. I believe in Calvary and the empty tomb that God is for us, but I also believe in an upper room experience where God can come and dwell on the inside of you through the power of his spirit.