Michael Todd - Where's the Evidence - Part 3
Hey, what's going on friends? I am so grateful that you're tuning in today. And we are talking about the evidence of a transformed life. And I can't wait to share from my own experiences of what it means to live a life empowered by the Holy Spirit. See the Holy Spirit is much more than just speaking in tongues. The Holy Spirit enables us to live a fruitful transformed life. Yeah, it's about to get juicy in here. I need you all to buckle up and get ready for this message. Where we're going to figure out where's the evidence.
Do you all want to know what the evidence is? That the Holy Spirit actually has taken up residence and you've released him in your life. It's found in Galatians. Galatians 5. They're called the Fruits of the Spirit. For these are the fruit or the evidence. You only get fruit if something was actually planted there. I'mma walk you through this. You can't get an apple if an apple seed was never planted. It can look like an apple tree, but the only evidence that there was an actual apple seed put there, is the fruit. So can I tell you that there is evidence if the Holy Spirit really does live in you and it's the fruit of your life. And the fruits of the spirit are what? Help me: love, joy... Huh? Peace, now you all, let's read it. They don't even get it. Go to Galatians 5:22 but the fruit or the evidence of the spirit that you have them is what? Love, joy say it out loud. Peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law.
Can you write this point down? If you really have the Holy Spirit the proof is in your fruit. I've met more mean tongue talking Christians. You ain't got no evidence. You're selfish and mean, but you can speak in tongues. There's no proof that you have the Holy Spirit. You can prophesy, but you're not kind to people? Ain't this what it says? You can speak mysteries but you're not faithful. You don't keep your word. We can't trust you at all. But you know what thus says the Lord, there's no fruit! Stop telling me cause you can shout, you got the, I feel the spirit! No, you're mean. And because you're mean, and you're selfish and you do not keep your word, there's no evidence of the Holy Spirit being in you. It's the Bible. If the Holy Spirit is in you. It should produce fruit in your life. And if there's no fruit, don't check the seed, check the soil. It's tight, but it's right.
Let me just prove it to you with one more scripture cause I just need you to know that it would be better for us to display love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control it would be better for us to do that. That would prove the spirit actually controls us. Than dancing, speaking in tongues, prophesying to everybody. All of that stuff is good. But the proof, the evidence that people see in your life do you know who the greatest testimony is or the greatest witnesses are? If you actually have the Holy Spirit, your kids and family. You can fool everybody out here. But the fact that your kids don't love God, the fact that people around you can't stand to be around you. They feel forced to celebrate you. There's no fruit. What I'm trying to come and tell you is, it's time for the fruitless church to get planted again. And to come to a place where you say, Holy Spirit fill me again, fill me up.
Let me not just be able to prophesy and speak in tongues and do this. Let me love people who look, nothing like me and have done me wrong. God, let me be long suffering with that youth or that child or that team member that gets on my last nerve. You know the one that's back here and only got three nerves and they're dancing on this last nerve. Let me be long suffering. Remember the Holy Spirit comes to empower you to do what you cannot naturally do on your own. It is hard for me to love people I don't like. It is hard for me to have joy, when you all make me mad and I'm depressed. It is hard for me to have peace when everything's going chaotic around me. It's hard for me to be kind, when I was raised in a toxic household. It's hard for me to see goodness in others, when I don't see goodness in myself. It's hard for me to be faithful, when I'm suspicious of everybody leaving me. It's hard to be gentle when I've only been handled harsh. It's hard for me to have self-control when I'm used to doing whatever I feel. But the Holy Spirit.
Oh I feel that thing right now. But, everybody say, "But the Holy Spirit". You can put that in front of anything. I used to do this, but the Holy Spirit. I can't usually stand people like this, but the Holy Spirit. I usually would fall right here, but the Holy Spirit. You better put a but the Holy Spirit in front of everything you're going through. I would have left this marriage but the Holy Spirit. Transformation Church would have been another one, hit three years success story but the Holy Spirit. Somebody say, "But the Holy Spirit". And that's why I'm just trying to get us to understand, don't leave eight of the nine gifts on the table. Get the benefits and have the evidence, get the benefits and have the evidence. Have the nine gifts that we get because we have the Holy Spirit, but then have the evidence of the fruits of the spirit.
I'll sum it up at 1 Corinthians 13. There's a lot of Bible, but it's so good, I don't even want to add no words to it. If you speak in the tongues that's what we just talked about, of men and angels. So you got your heavenly language together and you got your language to people together, okay? But do not have love. I am only a resounding gong or a clapping cymbal. Is this what we look like to people? A church full of cymbals? Who when you come to your church, when you open your mouth, just a bunch of noise. You go to your workplace. Well, I have an idea. Let's hear your ideas. Go to your family reunion cause you don't have love, and you think you're better than them when you walk in there. So what have you been doing Johnny? Oh, God's been good to me. You get on a platform in front of a bunch of people. God gave me a word for you today. And that's the sound of many churches. As the praise and worship leader, we don't hear his presence. And this is how your small group looks. This is how our family pictures look. A bunch of noisy believers. Why? Cause we can prophesy, we can use all the gifts but there's no evidence.
If you don't have love, just like a noisy cymbal. And if you have the gifts of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all the faith, these are all the things that we just talked about, that can move mountains but do not have what? Love, evidence. I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it's not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And that love can only be empowered by the Holy Spirit. But where there are prophecies, they will cease: where there are tongues, they will be stilled. You all this is the Bible. Where there is knowledge it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child. Look at it, we're going back to maturity.
See, we always quote this scripture, but we quote it out of context. We don't know where it comes from. This is talking about us being spiritually mature because we have evidence in the fruit, in our lives. It says for when I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. I'mma add one. I sounded like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish things away. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror: then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. And now these three remain. My dad used to say this scripture to us all the time. Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. It's the evidence that the Spirit of God works in you, that you can love people. Your heavenly language without love is just loud. These gifts, all nine of them are from the Holy Spirit. And he wants you to take advantage of every single one of them. But some of you have ignored these gifts.
You know about them and there's nothing worse than a ignored gift. Something that somebody paid for and it's available, but you didn't, you just ignored it. And then others of you have neglected this gift. And some of us have been products of people who perverted these gifts. But the Holy Spirit is here, to empower you in everything that is hard in your life. Write that down. The Holy Spirit is built to empower you in the hard. Whatever is hard for you. The Holy Spirit said, "Let me step into that, let me help you with that. Let me give you, let me give you proof that I'm real". And today all I want you to do is receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. He's the gift and he comes with gifts. Remember, I don't know if you've ever seen those little things that open up and then there's another one. Then you open them up. There's another one that you open them up. There's another you all know what I'm talking about.
My family used to travel and it'd be like this weird looking man or woman on this little thing. And then you take one off and then there's another one then you take one off. And it just keeps building. Jesus left us the Holy Spirit. That was the gift. But when you open that up there is more, and you open that up, there is more and you open that up, there's more. Today, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. "Pastor Mike you've been going on this for four weeks now". It's because I don't know how you're living without the empowerment of Holy Spirit. I can't do it. I can't be a good husband. I sure can't be a pastor. I can't be a good son. I cannot, I don't have it within me to be able to do what I know God's called, unless I have the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
This is why people turn to substances. It's because they buckle under the weight of life and they need something to empower them to stay consistent even if it's killing them. We have many relationships that we go to. Success that we go to. Alcohol pills, whatever it is. The Holy Spirit is saying, "Could i, can I come in and give you the empowerment that you need? And can I make it evident to people through love joy, peace, patience, kindness. Can I make it evident that I changed you"? You know, one of the craziest things that people say about me that knew me back in the day when I was walling? And now that know me now they say, "Something's changed in you, I mean, you're the same person, but like you've but something's different about you".
And all I can think in my mind is, it's the Holy Spirit. Like the only thing that took me from being a liar and a manipulator and addicted to pornography, was not that I had enough will not to look at the website. You know how many times I failed that, I tried that. It was like, well, since I've done it, let's make it a week binge of being in the wrong space. And the enemy says, "Yeah, that's the good idea, go further and further down the hole". But when I get the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, I can want to and not do it. Ain't nobody that real with you. I can literally be in the place where I want, like I don't want to do this. And the Holy Spirit will rise up on me.
Say there's so much more in you. All you have to do is call somebody right now, call them. And may be he'll let somebody call me, the person that he told me to call 'ring' why are they calling me? Pick up the phone. "Hey I just heard", they don't call it this, but they'll say, "I just had a word of wisdom". Because the Holy Spirit that was fighting with me in the temptation is the same Holy Spirit that speaks to them. And if they listen to the Holy Spirit and say, "Call mike right now, why would I call mike right now"? He was trying, "I have a solution for something that he has a problem with and I want it to come through you".
And it's not Sunday morning and it's not in the board meeting and it's not but you don't even know that I'm working major things out. And that obedience to give me a word of wisdom was the same thing that kept me from giving into my temptation. And those were two gifts working, but it was all the Holy Spirit. That's a real story. That really happened to your pastor. And it continues to happen in different areas of our lives. If we would receive the person of the Holy Spirit. Today, today you can ask God to fill you. Well, what happens? Is there a ritual or a ceremony? No, how did you get saved? By faith.
When you get water baptized, that's 15.000 of us are going to do in two weeks. How does going down signify that my old life has gone and then coming up means that I'm a new creation? By faith. How do you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit? By faith. Will everybody just puts your hands out like you're getting ready to receive a gift. Just close your eyes. Just blackout everybody else right now. It don't matter who else is there. God has a gift for you. And it's the gift of the Holy Spirit. And I'm just going to pray. And if you want the gift of the Holy Spirit if you want to be able to have access to these gifts and have evidence in your life, I'm going to ask you in just a moment, not out loud, like a trumpet to prove to somebody that you're saying, I want the Holy Spirit.
I mean, just in yourself, even out loud I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to fill you. Yeah, that's all we're going to do. We're going to ask the Holy Spirit to fill us from the top of our heads, to the soles of our feet. And we're going to ask him, I feel the presence of God wherever you are. Whether you're watching this live on rebroadcast. The Holy Spirit is there and he's coming with nine gifts and so much more that he wants to give you. And if you're watching and you've been filled with the Holy Spirit, but you want a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit. You want to be in endowed and empowered. You want that dunamis, to come back to your life. I want you to ask him. You can prophesy, it said we all can prophesy. All nine of these gifts are usable for the edification and the Holy Spirit can allow the fruits of the spirit to be evidenced to everybody around us. Today let's pray.
Father I thank you. I thank you that today you would fill us with the Holy Spirit from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet. The same way that you did in Matthew, the same way you did in Mark, in Luke, in John, in Acts. The same way you did with the disciples in the upper room. The same way, Father, God, you did in Sumeria in Acts 8. Father I'm asking you right now that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit. Father God, I thank you that you would come and make yourself real to each of us right now. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. In our hearts, in our minds, in our thoughts. Father God this is not weird, this is not strange. This is our benefit Father God. Today I thank you that you would do what you did for the gentiles, in Acts 10 and in Acts 19. That you would allow us to fully receive the Holy Spirit.