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[WW] Recharge: Stay Connected and Be Shaped by the H.S. · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Word.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome into the Wesley Word, everyone.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hope you're doing great and wonderful wherever you may be.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're mixing things up here at Clemson Wesley and in the Wesley Word, doing a little bit different format.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: For many years, you've just been listening in as we recorded the sermons that would happen on a Wesley worship event.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: But want to speak directly to you, wherever you may be listening, whether you're in the car working out, or uh whether you are a friend or alumni of Clemson Wesley, or perhaps you just picked us up and found us somewhere.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: The goal is to shift this podcast more really speaking directly to you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um sort of giving uh the sermon, the message, conversations with people in around Wesley each and every week, but trying to give it a little more direct feel.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, just want to check out, see what you think about that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let us know.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hit us up in the comments, send me an email message somehow, and I would love to hear from you.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: But with that, let's get into where we're going today.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Our scripture today comes from Galatians 5, looking at the fruit of the spirit.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: We pick up in verse 16, where we hear Paul say, Live by the Spirit.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh, for what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: For these are opposed to each other, and to prevent you from doing what you want.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are led by the spirit, you are not subject to the law.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then we see in picking up verse twenty-two, we see, by contrast, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is no law against such things, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh and its passions and desires.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, or even envying one another.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So begin thinking about this image of the Holy Spirit, where last week we talked about the Spirit being our power source and wanting to tap into that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: This week I want to talk about what it might mean to be molded and shaped by the Spirit.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you were like me as a kid growing up, one of the coolest things that we got to do was open up a new can of play-doh.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there was nothing like the smell of fresh play-doh, and you'd hold it in your hands, you would squeeze it, you would form it into great and different shapes and pieces of artwork.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, like me, I was great at making snakes and worms and anything that involved just rolling the dough out.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: But my sister, my cousins, and my other siblings were great at creating these really cool designs.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: But more than play-doh, if you think about it, we are constantly being shaped by all kinds of things.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whether we like it or not, we're shaped by our family, both good and bad.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we were raised in a certain way and we think, you know, I'd like to continue this.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like for that to be a part of my story and to teach my own kids to live in this way.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're shaped negatively or we look back and we think, you know, I don't think that was such a great influence.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I want to switch things up and do things a little bit differently.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're shaped by our upbringing.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're shaped by the friends that we hang out with and spend time with.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're shaped by the circumstances that we find ourselves in, both things that we cause and also just life events that happen to us.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're shaped by the good things and the ways in which we see blessing after blessing, and that begins to change us and to mold us in certain ways.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And even tragedies and hard times can shape us and mold us.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: But surely we're not just left to what happens around us, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Surely we're not just left as these created beings to just sit in an environment and say, okay, environment, do what you will with me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be something more.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this in scripture.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: We see the something more.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love the imagery that we see all throughout scripture of the potter and the clay.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: We see this in Isaiah 64, and I love Jeremiah 18, the version of that, where God goes to Jeremiah and says, Go down to the potter's house, and I'm going to tell you some things.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so Jeremiah goes down to the potter's house, and there he looks at the potter who's at the wheel, and the scripture tells us that his his the pot that he's trying to make becomes marred and is kind of messed up, and and the potter is sitting there at the wheel and remaking the clay into the way that the potter thinks the pot should be, the way the pot is designed to be.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then we see again in Romans 8, we see, or Romans 9, sorry, we see in the the New Testament again the same image of the potter at the wheel and us being the clay, where God is molding us and shaping us into the vision and into the tool that God is calling us to be.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this, friends, is where we get to the Holy Spirit.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit is a person in the Trinity that is responsible for this stuff for taking us the clay and shaping us and molding us time and time again.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Just in the New Testament, there are over 250 times we see the Holy Spirit mentioned.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned last week this Greek word pneuma that means spirit, breath, wind, that is mentioned over 300 times in the New Testament.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And without getting fully involved and spending hours upon hours listing out every single scripture, just a brief list of things that we see in the New Testament that we see the New Testament writings telling us about the Holy Spirit.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: We know that the Holy Spirit is something that calls us to God.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that changes our heart, the New Testament says.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: It empowers us and encourages us, it guides us when we're trying to make decisions when we listen to the Holy Spirit.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit comes to us as a great comforter.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It whispers to us.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It can help us lead us to repentance and a stronger faith.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit reminds us and assures us always that we are a child of God.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit is what teaches us.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit is what convicts us.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit can fill us with joy and peace even when it seems like it may be impossible.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit is something that can indeed transform us.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It gives us different gifts and abilities to serve others as we see Paul writing in the epistle letters.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that it works through us to do God's work.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the things that we see the Holy Spirit working and shaping in our lives.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is important because something big happened at Pentecost.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we've talked about this before.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: This celebration of the birth of the church, but more importantly than a birthday, this is when the Spirit came down.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit came down and this gospel message went far and wide, and thousands of people came to the faith.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what's important about this time, and I love how N.T.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wrights talks about it, he says, this moment is where we find the intersection of heaven and earth, where the person of the Spirit comes down into the here and now, and we begin to see God's kingdom being built here and now, the intersection of heaven and earth.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the Holy Spirit wakes us up to that, shows us, opens our eyes that we might see, gives us ears that we might hear, and we get to seek and be a part of what God has in store for us.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting if we are clay and we simply sit on the shelf or stay in our bags, or if we go back to the Play-Doh image and we simply stay in the container, never opening it up, there's little chance that the dough is going to become something magnificent.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's little chance that the clay on its own will mold itself and to shape itself into being something miraculous and amazing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, we have to take the lid off.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have to allow ourselves to be placed on the potter's wheel, and then and only then we begin to feel and know and be shaped and molded into what God is calling us to be.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this can happen in big ways, but often this happens in small ways, day after day, moment after moment.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you don't know I'm a big Clemson football fan, tough times right now.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I heard Dabo talk the other day and he says, you know, I tell my players all the time that if you were to dump a huge gallons and gallons of water on a rock, that, you know, you'd have a big splash, but nothing really would change to that rock.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: But he says if you were to take that same lots and big amounts of water and simply allow drip after drip after drip, eventually that rock will be shaped.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen landforms out in the in the in the west that that major things that have been shaped and molded by water and streams just running over a constant force that eventually shapes and transforms.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't encourage you to think about ways that you might um you might grow, places that you might be able to place yourself on the potter's wheel.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I often say that the biggest moments I have in my faith growth have not necessarily happened with me on my own studying scripture.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But more often than not, is when I'm doing that in a community of other believers.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: The times that I've spent in small groups, intentional small groups, not just, you know, showing up here and there, but being able to say, I'm making a weekly commitment here.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Each week I want to sit down with you and I want us to study the word together.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want us to question the word together.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want us to grow in our faith together, and little by little you begin to see transformation happening.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not enough just to open the scripture once in a while, but to daily be transformed by God's word, you begin to see a difference and to know a difference.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Many of you out there maybe have gone on mission trips or service trips.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Here in the state of South Carolina in our United Methodist world, we have this great ministry called Sokahatchie.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Sokahatchie, you go out and you you spend a week in the summertime.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times there are youth from local churches which come and you spend a week and you help folks with dilapidated housing.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You help them to experience a dry home and a warm home.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes you're there fixing uh a roof that has long since been abandoned.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're repairing the floor that they walk upon, you're doing plumbing, you're doing this hard, difficult work.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: But everyone that goes on those trips, and I've been multiple years, every time you come back from that trip, you come changed.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you spend time with the least of these, you meet God and you experience the Holy Spirit and you are shaped and molded into something new.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think of my own story.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the Island of Eleuther with Clemson Wesley many, many years ago.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I thought I was going to be a math teacher.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: I already had my job lined up.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: This was my senior year of college.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was there on this trip that I found myself in a Haitian refugee church.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea the language they were speaking.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't quite make out what was going on, but I know I could feel something in my heart.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it was almost as if I heard a voice saying, Steve, I need you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, I'm calling you.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was there that I first experienced my call to full-time ministry and I had later conversations with my campus minister and other folks and really discerning that call, but it was there in that stepping out on that service trip, that mission trip, that I first felt the spirit nudging and molding and shaping me.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: There are many other ways that this can happen through other people and through getting out there and talking with folks.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the spirit of God is amazing in that it doesn't just look for these perfect people, for these perfect beings, for this perfect batch of clay that has you know zero faults with it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned going back to Jeremiah 18, right, that the potter was at the wheel, sort of reworking and reforming this pot that had been marred into something new and beautiful.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit can use our broken pieces and use us and work through us for good.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Again, he's not looking for for perfect people.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: One of the images I love when I think about this, you think about the the ancient Japanese pottery, uh the Kinsakori, right, where they would take these broken pieces of pottery and turn them into something beautiful.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: What they would do is that the the lacquer, the the the glue that they would use, they would they would put bits of gold in it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And as they piece these bowls back together, as they piece these broken pieces of pottery together, they would they would fill them with this adhesive that had the the gold on them, and you end up with these beautiful works of art, and you have these gold stripes, these gold lines running through it where they were once broken.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what I love about this is that that it the image here, we see that that it takes the hurt right from the past, and the Holy Spirit can make it beautiful.
• 12:57
  unknown: Right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about this artwork here is they don't hide the past, but instead it becomes a part of someone's story.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm getting at here is that if we allow the Spirit to mold us and to shape us, even in our most broken states, the potter can put us back together and could use our trials, can use our hurts, can use the things that we have been through and use them for good.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think about the people who have suffered loss in their lives unexpectedly, and even maybe a long-term illness that led to a death.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But how over time God is able to repair those wounds and to heal those wounds, and not that they that they go away, but they are then lined with this gold lining as we see in the the old Japanese pottery.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the spirit is able to bring them to a place of healing enough that they can then speak to someone else who's going through something and to say, Hey, I've been there, and God's going to get you through it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: There is the other side.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: It might be tough now, but God will get you there.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: God can use the pain of separation, God can use the pain of divorce, God could use the pain of our mistakes and our blunders, and when we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, we can be reshaped into something beautiful that can speak a story to someone else.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: We don't start as much, but when we allow the spirit to work within us, indeed we can become something beautiful and fruitful.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of fruit, as we think about this, right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, how how do we know if we are being formed by the spirit or something else?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned at the outset that we are constantly being formed, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: We we're formed by the algorithm, we're formed by our upbringing, by our friends, by our environment.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we also believe that we are being shaped and molded by the spirit.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do we tell, though, if if what we're being shaped by is indeed the spirit?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thankfully we have the fruit test.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: You say the fruit test, yes, the fruit test.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: The scripture that I read at the very beginning in in Galatians chapter five, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: As Paul mentions, it says, by contrast, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my friends, what I'm getting at in the fruit test is to think about who's shaping us.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and to think about, you know, are the people that we're spending time with is the media that we're consuming is what we're reading, what we're saying, is it causing us and helping to shape us to be a people that is about love?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is it shaping us to be a people that are about kindness and patience and joy and gentleness and self-control?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if they are, then perhaps we can say, Yeah, we're on the right track, the spirit's forming us, and we lean more into that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if what we're watching, if what we're scrolling through, if what we're typing on our social media, if the conversations we're having with friends or family, if it's not leading us to be a people of love, if it's not leading us towards kindness, if it's not helping us to be more patient, if it's not leading us to be a people of generosity and self-control, then perhaps we need to take a second look at what we're doing and who we're hanging around and what we're about and what we're allowing to to shape us and to mold us and to instead go back to God in prayer.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what would it look like if you were to take that that verse Galatians 5, 22, and and write out those fruits of the Spirit?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I encourage you maybe to place them, uh put them in the notes app in your phone with a reminder.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Put them maybe on your car dash, put them on your bathroom mirror.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what would it look like for you to wake up and pray every day?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: God help me.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: God use me.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: God, mold me, God, fill me with your Holy Spirit that I might be an agent of patience, that I might be an agent of love, of goodness, of kindness, of peace in a world where that oftentimes seems hard and tough to find.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you to do that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And friends, as we think about it, the big question is are we willing to place ourselves on the potter's wheel and to be formed by God through the Holy Spirit?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: We talk all the time about a God that is a great creator, that created the heavens and the earth, a God that created the universe, a God that took the time to form us and to breathe the breath of life into us.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to trust that God to continue that good work in us and to release ourselves and to find the freedom of not having to always do what we want to do or be what we want to be, but instead pray the same prayer that Jesus prayed, God, not my will, but yours be done.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to end with a story.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: You may have heard, I heard this um several years ago from another pastor, but uh story of Adelaide Pollard.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Adelaide was someone who had a strong desire.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: She wanted to go to Africa and be a missionary, is the way I understand it.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and she struggled and not being able to raise enough money.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: There was always something that came up that kept her from going and fulfilling her her dream of being a missionary in Africa.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think she was getting down on herself and wasn't really sure what to do, and was kind of just stuck and not being able to get where she wanted to go.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the story goes that she went to a prayer meeting, and on the first prayer meeting that she went to, someone prayed this prayer towards the end of the meeting.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: This person prayed over Adelaide and whoever was there and said, said, It doesn't really matter what you do with us, Lord.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just have your own way with our lives.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter what you do with us, Lord.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just have your own way with our lives.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'll confess this is a bold prayer.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: This takes courage to pray this prayer and to say, God, not what I want, but whatever it is that you want to have with my life, oh God, take it and do it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this prayer had such a big and profound impact on Adelaide Pollard that she went home and she pinned this hymn that perhaps is familiar to many of us who have been around the church for a while.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: She pinned the hymn with the words, Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the last verse, have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Wounded and weary, help me, I pray.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Power, all power surely is thine.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wherever you may be, I I hope and pray that you might find the courage to answer the question Are you willing?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to make this our prayer today?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: To allow ourselves to be molded, to allow ourselves to be formed and shaped, to pray with all humility, Lord, you are the potter, and we are the clay.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Mold us and make us after your will.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Help us, we pray.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, hit up there and love your name.