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Can These Bones Live? Finding Renewal in the Holy Spirit | David Young · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Welcome back, everyone, to another episode on the Real Life Theologic Podcast.
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  Thank you guys for joining in.
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  We've been on a series going through some really incredible content from past gatherings.
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  And today we get to feature David Young, who's going to talk to us about renewing and the
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  Spirit.
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  I hope you guys enjoy this episode.
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  Well, I'm going to try not to internalize that last prayer, Jason, in which you said,
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  and I quote, even if the speakers aren't good, may they enjoy it.
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  So almost every pastor, minister I speak to right now, says the same thing.
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  I'm tired, bone tired.
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  The elections, the racial issues, the shutdowns, COVID.
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  If you work for a church, everything changes, it feels like, every week or so.
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  You know that when you work for a church and something changes.
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  Every time you make a change, somebody falls off the merry-go-round, and they're usually
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  mad at you.
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  Many of us are just tired.
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  It's a really hard time to do ministry.
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  So I had this thought of how I might talk about what it means to be renewed by the Holy
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  Spirit.
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  I just can't get it off my head that a lot of us are tired, and maybe we need a pastoral
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  word instead of a prophetic word.
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  So here it is.
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  The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit and set me in the middle
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  of a valley, and it was full of bones.
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  He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the
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  valley, bones that were very dry.
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  And he asked me, son of man, can these bones live?
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  There are two kinds of dogwood trees.
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  If I told you that you could have a dogwood tree that never got sick, never had a blight,
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  that was always in bloom, you could pretty much decide what size of tree you wanted,
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  and it would always stay that size, and it would last, goodness, probably half a million
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  years.
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  That might have been an attractive option for you until you realized that it's plastic
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  and it was made in China, that it will never die because it'll never live, it never gets
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  sick because it has no life, it'll never put out its beautiful scents, it'll never
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  have baby dogwood trees, whatever they have.
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  Isn't the real thing better?
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  So when God takes Ezekiel out to this valley and shows him all these dry bones, his question
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  in the Spirit, can dry bones still live?
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  Jesus comes in John 6, and he gives some of the hardest teaching in the New Testament.
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  In fact, the teaching was so hard that he did what some of us have experienced, he ran
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  off most of his church.
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  And the disciples were questioning him about his teaching, and his response was to say,
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  are you going to leave me too?
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  And then he explains what he's doing.
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  He says this, he says, the Spirit gives light, I'm in John 6, 63, the Spirit gives life and
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  the flesh counts for nothing.
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  The words I speak, they are Spirit and they are life.
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  I want to encourage you to do something right now.
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  For a lot of us, we really are tired.
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  I think there might be even an epidemic of pastors and ministers dropping out of ministry
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  over the next year or so.
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  I want to ask you to do something.
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  I want to ask you to go to the Lord with this question.
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  Can these bones live?
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  We live in a difficult age with respect to the Spirit.
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  Some of us are afraid of the Holy Spirit.
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  We grew up in churches where we didn't talk a lot about the Spirit.
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  I've often used this illustration, the church that I grew up in, if you were walking down
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  the adult classroom hall, and on this side there was a room that said, a study of the
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  Holy Spirit, and on this side was a room that said, the Holy Spirit's in here.
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  We would pick the study of the Holy Spirit over the Holy Spirit himself because we don't
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  really want that experience of him.
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  We would like to know about him, but we don't want to experience him.
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  But others of us, we just live victims of a secular age where up until recently, the
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  only question was, which spirit is this?
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  And now we have to ask the question, is there really such a thing as spirit?
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  I want to ask you to go to the Lord and say, can these bones live?
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  Can they live?
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  And the answer is going to be found, not in a plastic, humanly designed program, marketing
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  scheme, our strategies.
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  The answer is going to be found the same place that it was found for Ezekiel.
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  It's going to be found in the Holy Spirit.
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  Because it's times like these that I think God is calling us to go back to the fundamentals,
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  like find the Holy Spirit.
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  Let him be the power.
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  Let him be the convicting force.
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  Let him be home base, the place where you can come back to.
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  Let him be that which quenches your thirst, as Jesus says in John 7, these fountains will
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  come out of you of the spirit.
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  When we go back to the spirit, here's how Paul puts it, 1 Thessalonians, the first chapter
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  verses 3, 4, and 5.
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  He says, I know, brothers, that you're chosen because when my gospel came to you, it came
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  to you not only in word, but it also came to you in power and the Holy Spirit and conviction.
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  When we find the Holy Spirit, what we will discover again is this power that really launched
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  most of us into our ministry careers anyway.
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  We rediscover the thing that connects us to God.
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  We rediscover the power, the energy that's necessary to get up and face all the changes
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  that we have to face every single day in the middle of this pandemic.
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  When we go home dry as a bone, when we're not really sure that we want to carry on,
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  when you come out of a meeting and you have the mask bellies, Matt, the no mask bellies
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  in your church, and you have all these people who are taking sides, whether it's political,
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  whether it has to do with race or whatever it is, and you're wondering, man, I just don't
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  know.
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  I don't know if I want to keep doing this.
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  How many more people's burdens can I carry?
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  Come back to the Holy Spirit.
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  Ask him the question, can these bones live?
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  Ask him that question because the answer, according to this text, is not only can your
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  bones live, but God can take a valley filled with dry bones, reattach them, give them their
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  tendons and ligaments and cartilages back, raise them up, point them in a direction,
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  and turn them into a grand army of God.
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  That's what he's doing right now.
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  He's walking us through this pandemic.
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  He's walking us through a pruning period.
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  He's walking us through all this hardship because he has some plan that is awesome,
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  and we have to go through this in order to see the plan he has.
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  It's a time of pruning.
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  It's a time of purifying.
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  It's a time of going back to the fundamentals.
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  When your church gets back into full swing, there are odds that some of the people who
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  weren't really all that serious won't be back, but here's who will be back.
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  The people who come back will be the people who say, we're serious about this.
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  What do we do now?
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  And so I just want to get you to ask this question.
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  Let's start the conference, but go back to your life asking the question, the Lord, God,
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  tell me, can these bones live?
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  And the answer will be found in the Holy Spirit.
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  That's right.
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  The answer will be found in the Holy Spirit.
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  So the Holy Spirit comes and he brings us conviction.
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  He comes and he brings us power.
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  One of the cool things that I've experienced in the last few years is how the Holy Spirit
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  will give you the power that you need just when you think you have no power to go on.
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  So I was on a retreat not too long ago, a spiritual retreat, and the COVID has gone
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  about halfway through, and I really was just dry as a bone.
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  I had decided I didn't want to leave the church, I didn't want to go out of town, so I just
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  gone away for a night or two, and I was just saying to the Lord, man, I just want to retire.
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  Can you get me to retirement faster?
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  This is hard.
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  And the night that I was praying, I was talking to the Lord, I was asking him a question like
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  this, can these bones live?
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  The Lord just sort of showed me this image.
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  And you may have heard this before, but it was an image of going to God's library in
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  heaven.
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  So if there's a heaven, there's going to be a library.
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  There's also going to be a dining room.
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  So I'd gone to God's library, and as I was in the library, I walked up and I saw a set
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  of books.
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  And they said on there, North Boulevard, Church of Christ, my church.
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  And I pulled the books off, and I started thumbing through the pages, and it described
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  the craziest accomplishments you can ever imagine.
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  Churches planted all over the world, thousands of people baptized, marriages saved, addictions
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  healed, people coming to Jesus from every conceivable background, Muslims professing
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  Jesus' name as they went into the water.
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  And the more I read about the book, the more astounded I was at my church.
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  And I mentioned to the Lord, I said, Lord, this is amazing.
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  There's just one problem.
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  I was at North Boulevard, and none of this actually happened.
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  I don't remember any of this.
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  And the Lord says, oh, no, no, no.
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  He reaches over to a filing cabinet, he pulls out an old tattered manila folder, it's got
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  about two pages of scratch notes in it, and he hands it to me and he says, this is the
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  history of the church that you had.
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  This is the church that you asked for.
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  This is the church you got.
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  These volumes, that's the church I wanted to give you.
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  If you had just asked for my spirit.
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  And so I'm just giving you a charge.
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  Ask God, can these bones live?
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  Ask God to fill your church with the spirit.
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  This is the time.
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  Ask God to fill your life with the spirit.
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  This is the time.
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  Say to the Lord, I'm out of energy, I'm tired, I can't do this anymore.
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  Now will you take over?
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  And the awesome thing is that that's exactly what he wanted anyway.
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  He wanted to be in control.
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  He wanted to be the driver in the seat.
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  He wanted to be the king.
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  And now he has us where he wants us.
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  Now we're ready for someone to be our king.
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  Now we're ready for someone to lead us.
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  Now we're ready to be filled with the Holy Spirit, as Paul says.
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  And so if I'm going to pray for this, Lord, can these bones live, I'm going to at least
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  do a couple of things.
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  By the way, I'll just throw them out.
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  One thing I'm going to do, well, I'll just give you a text, actually.
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  This just dawned on me.
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  This one, Ephesians chapter five, beginning at 18, Paul says, don't get drunk on wine.
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  Don't let wine be in control of you.
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  But instead he says, get filled with the Holy Spirit, which by the way, is an odd thing
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  to command me to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
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  It's odd because I didn't think I had any control over the Holy Spirit.
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  Turns out I do.
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  If I can be filled with him, if I can be commanded to be filled with him, I must have some power
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  over him.
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  So that's the main command in Ephesians chapter five, 19.
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  But then there are four participles that follow that.
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  So he says, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
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  The first participle is speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.
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  So that's one way you get filled with the Holy Spirit, is by speaking to each other
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  in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
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  A second participle follows.
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  He says, praising the Lord or making music in your hearts to the Lord.
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  So you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
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  The second thing he says, start singing, which is really awesome.
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  If you're a worship pastor, you know that there's something happens when you sing.
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  The third participle in that text is giving thanks to the Lord for everything.
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  And then the last participle down in verse 21 is, and submitting to one another out of
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  a reverence or piety towards Christ.
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  So that's the point I want to make.
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  Go to the Lord and say, Lord, I want to be filled with the Spirit.
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  I want you to make these bones live, and then start doing what those participles say.
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  Start speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
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  Start singing and praising God.
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  Start giving thanks to God.
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  Start submitting to one another out of devotion or fear or piety towards Christ.
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  Look for Him because He's already here.
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  In just a minute, we're going to pray.
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  Now I want you to know that a text that is easily missed, or I should say a theme because
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  it's a collection of texts that are easily missed in the New Testament, have to do with
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  praying in the Spirit.
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  So if you have a charismatic background, these texts are very familiar to you.
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  If you have a cessationist or non-charismatic background, these texts might have just kind
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  of gone right past you.
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  Let me share them with you.
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  One of them is Jude 20, where Jude says, pray in the Holy Spirit at all times.
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  So he says, pray in the Holy Spirit.
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  Have you ever noticed that, that you're taught to pray in the Holy Spirit?
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  Paul says the same in Ephesians 6, in verse 18, pray in every circumstance in the Holy
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  Spirit.
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  And then Jesus says this in Luke 11.
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  So you remember how at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, if you being evil know how to
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  give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts
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  to you?
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  Luke's version of that doesn't say the same thing.
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  In Luke's version, Jesus says, if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
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  how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?
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  So here's my challenge.
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  We're gonna pray that God gives us the Holy Spirit, that He pours the Holy Spirit out
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  into our hearts, and that we discover His power, we discover His presence, we discover
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  that He changes our hearts and convicts us.
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  We discover His peace, and we discover His presence.
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  We're gonna pray.
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  We're gonna pray, God, will you make these bones live?
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  So I wanna have a prayer with you now.
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  Lord, it is in the Holy Spirit that we pray right now.
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  We pray, Father, that the Holy Spirit will fill us up.
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  We confess to you our weakness.
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  I personally confess to you, Father, my exhaustion.
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  We confess, Father, that sometimes we're so weary.
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  It's been a very wearisome time for your people all over the planet, and we need, Father,
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  we need your Spirit.
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  We need you to come and make us alive.
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  We need you to sustain us right now, and we have men and women here in this room, some
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  of whom are probably just barely hanging in there.
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  I'm asking you, Father, to give them your Holy Spirit right now.
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  Let your Spirit be our strength.
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  Let your Spirit, Father, give us the life that we crave.
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  Let your Spirit, Father, open up the eyes of our hearts so we can see what you're doing
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  so we don't lose faith.
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  So we're able to see that there is still a God who is still in charge, who still has
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  a master strategy, and that we're still part of it.
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  We pray, Father, now, fill us up with your Holy Spirit.
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  It's in the holy name of Jesus that I pray, amen.
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  Thank you guys for listening to this episode on The Real Life Theology Podcast.
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  Hey, coming up literally just next week is the 2026 Renew.org National Gathering.
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  I don't know if you guys are coming yet, but we would still love to see you guys there.
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  You can still get tickets at renew.org forward slash events.
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  We would love to see you there.
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  If you can't attend in person, we also have a live stream option.
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  Stay tuned on this podcast for more great content on disciple making and theology down
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  the road.
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  I hope to see you guys on the next episode.