Pentecost

good morning Welcome to Midweek Insights

This is Pastor

John Today we're going to talk

about the last thing Jesus said before

he ascended into heaven We're coming up

on the uh holiday of Pentecost It's the

birth of the church It's the day the

church started And prior to that we need

to take a little look at what Jesus said

in

uh it's in Acts chapter 1 It's four

verses verses 4 to8 And it says this It

says "And being assembled together with

them commanded them that they should not

depart from Jerusalem but wait for the

promise of the Father which saith he ye

have heard of me." For John truly

baptized with water but ye shall be

baptized with the Holy Ghost not many

days hence When they therefore were come

together they asked of him saying Lord

wilt thou at this time restore again the

kingdom to Israel And he said unto them

It is not for you to know the times or

the seasons which the Father hath put in

his own power but ye shall receive power

that after the Holy Ghost has come upon

you and you shall be witnesses unto me

both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and

in Samaria and unto the uttermost part

of the earth You know one of the things

that happens a lot especially with

uh churches that

are experienced times where they're no

they're not growing or the congregations

have shrunk or they don't have any new

families coming in and uh what they call

being

plateaued and they're seeking answers

They're trying to get their church going

again And one of the things that has to

be taken into

consideration and fully realized is that

Jesus never said go sit in the

church What Jesus said was take my

message and go into the whole world And

when you have to make the

decision that as a church if you're

going to continue to grow if you're

going to continue to do what God's

called you to do if you're going to

continue to reach into the communities

that you're sent there to mi uh minister

to then you're going to have to do

something that may not be comfortable

and it may be hard You're actually going

to have to get outside of your comfort

zone

and you're going to have to invite

people to come to church Um it happens

to churches all the time They quit

growing Um and the thing

about the enemy is he likes to get

people to a place of comfort He wants

them in their comfort zone because if

you're comfortable you won't move Stop

and think about when you're sleeping If

you're comfortable you don't move You

don't toss and turn and you fully sleep

You you sleep all night long

And we have a tendency as human

beings to try to find that place where

we're

comfortable Paul said to be content with

such as you have In no way does that

mean to be

comfortable because being comfortable

is going to cause you to be complacent

And complacency is a death

null for a

church Uh the definition of insanity is

doing the same thing over and over again

expecting different

results And if that's where you're

at then you have to realize there's some

changes that need to be made

uh if you've done the same thing if you

sang the same songs if you've done the

same service I and people aren't coming

in or if you do get a visitor in your

church and they don't come back it's

because they didn't

feel either welcomed in the church or

they didn't feel that there was

something vital in that church something

lifegiving in that church uh or they

didn't feel they were welcomed there by

the

congregation And uh it it's a difficult

thing to overcome But if you go through

the the the steps and look at it when a

church gets to that place where it's

been plateaued that way

um you have to change the culture of the

church And when you change the culture

of the church it begins to grow again

And nobody likes change And that's the

problem Well we've always done it this

way Why do I have to do it different

well because what you've always done in

the past no longer works So now you have

to find a way to do it better or

different Uh the mission is still the

same Go into the world Um the vehicle

has changed and you have to change you

with it You have to adapt You have to

overcome You have to do things

differently in such a way that it

impacts

people And if you if you either refuse

to do that or if

you can't see the necessity of doing

that then you're going to stay stuck

doing exactly what you've always done

Um and it's hard especially when uh you

have a church that's had the same pastor

for decades and then that pastor either

retires or they pass

away and then you get a new

pastor and the new pastor has a

different vision than the previous

pastor

And

um part of getting that vision out to

the people is being able to effectively

communicate what you're trying to

do And then you have the difficulty of

once you've communicated it getting

people to back it and do what you want

them to do

Um learn how to be open Learn how to be

accepting Learn how to realize that if

what you've been doing doesn't work you

have to do something different And until

you do that you're going to stay stuck

at the same place you're at

And at the bottom of the

day at the end of the day the most

important thing you can

do is to share your actual

testimony with people in a way that

impacts their

lives I tell people this all the time

You don't have to don't when you want to

talk to someone about God don't be a

Bible

thumper Bible thumpers alienate

people But if you're talking to

someone and you're sharing with them

your actual real experience with Christ

things that he's done for

you you're going to find out people want

to hear that message They don't want to

hear about your dos and don'ts and all

of those things They want to hear how

Jesus can make their life better than it

is right at that moment And people are

going through things all the time

U and it's important to understand that

your mission is to make a difference in

their life uh with the gospel with the

message of Christ And Christ's

message is fully wrapped up in John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave

his only begotten son that whosoever

should believe in him should not perish

but have everlasting life And we tend to

get very

uh religious after we've been saved for

a while Uh we become intolerant towards

new ideas We become intolerant towards

people But when you run into someone who

who has only attended the one church

they're in their whole life with only

one pastor they've never had a new

pastor come in They've never done

anything new They the resistance from

them It reminds me of Star Trek You know

the the next generation they run into

the board and the board's message is

resistance is futile

Well resistance isn't futile if it's

directed the right

way Um and the biggest thing that we

have to do in in this world as

Christians is reach the lost with the

message Not everybody's going to accept

it In fact you'll probably find out you

get rejected more than you get

received But at the same time the

message hasn't changed You still have to

go and deliver the message You still

have to do what Jesus

said And and the thing that they miss is

what he said to begin

with Terry in Terry in Jerusalem Wait in

Jerusalem until you're empowered from on

high and you're baptiz baptized with

fire and the Holy Spirit And it's given

to you for one thing to be a witness

That's what it's for for you to be a

witness of God And then he says "Then go

into Jerusalem Judea Samaria and to the

uttermost part of the earth." So we're

we're past the Jerusalem Judea Samaria

uh action of the church and into the

part where the church

actually is supposed to be reaching the

whole world And coming in full circle

back to also reaching Jerusalem

And

uh

so we're coming up on Pentecost It's on

June the 8th of this year And on that

day we should be remembering how the

church started We should be looking to

the scriptures to understand how God

increased his church People failed to

see what's actually written there The

first day on the day of Pentecost 3,000

souls were added to the 120 Over the

next several days God added more and

more

people Peter's second

sermon when he healed the line the lame

man at the front of when James uh Peter

and John went into the temple and and

Peter and John that they healed this man

He went into this temple wall uh

shouting and leaping and praising God

And there were 5,000 added to the church

That's just men That doesn't include the

women and children that were added And

the church in a matter of days went from

120 believers that were left out of the

500 that saw Christ

ascend has now grown to over 13,000 just

a matter of days

And that's how God moves when people are

willing to be uh led of the spirit to

allow the spirit to work through them

and flow through them And if you don't

if you can't do that you're going to

find that you don't have

success Um and people

resist believers and

non-believers because it's not

comfortable And if I could tell you or

encourage you in any way would be this

If you're

comfortable you're in

trouble Get out of your comfort zone

Allow God to work through you and go

forward and become content with being

uncomfortable We'll see you next week

You guys have a blessed week