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[WW] Recharge: Knowing the Source, Holy Spirit · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Wear.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We are right in the middle of spooky season.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have Ghost and Goblins, which is just a couple days away from Halloween, where we'll be looking at and and uh dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating and having parties and all that good stuff.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: As we start thinking about ghosts and such, it got me thinking about a ghost that oftentimes is uh sometimes ignored in the church, and that would be the Holy Ghost.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes we talk about it at Pentecost and then sort of put it away for a little while.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's important to spend some time looking at the Holy Spirit and what it does for us, who it is, and how might we be formed and shaped by it, how might we be recharged by it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned Pentecost sometimes, um, often joke.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's almost a synchodema of the church, right?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like we know we're supposed to celebrate it, but we're not quite sure what it is, or maybe how we're celebrating it, or what it is that we are called to do.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're gonna be looking at what is the Holy Spirit?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do we describe it?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: What is it all about?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then come back next week for our second and final part of Recharge, and we'll look at how are we formed and shaped by the Holy Spirit.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just a quick little seminary lesson here.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um we are not gonna be talking about water in its different forms where you've got ice and steam and and the water itself.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be getting into modalism.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, when we talk about the spirit, we're talking about it in Trinitarian terms.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so we would say that that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in essence, they are the same essence.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: They are the same stuff just in three different hypostases, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or or three three the same stuff, but in three persons or three names, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we say that God is of one mind, that means that when when God is thinking something, the Holy Spirit's thinking the same thing, that Jesus is thinking the same thing, they're not different beings.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: They are all made of the same stuff, but again, in three different um, three different persons, so to speak.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: I learned one time uh back in the seminary, I remember a professor saying, you know, imagine if if God wanted to order a pizza, right?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: God the Father wants a pizza, and all of a sudden he's thinking, you know, I need pepperoni pizza at the same time.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus and the Holy Spirit, those two persons are also thinking, Oh, yes, pizza, pepperoni, that'd be fantastic.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like when with my family ordering pizza and you've got to order three or four different toppings on two different pizzas to uh accommodate everyone.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're all of the same mind.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I admit this could be confusing, right, as we think about it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes we use the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And again, this those names sort of talk about the relationship between the three hypostases, right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Father, son, Holy Spirit.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think more helpful for me, at least, is to think about the language of creator, redeemer, and sustainer, which speaks more to the Trinitarian relationship to creation itself, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, God the Father, God the person that is the creator is out there creating.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: We see the Redeemer.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then the sustainer would be where we get the Holy Spirit to sustain us in our journey, to sustain us in the here and now.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: After Christ has been resurrected, the Holy Spirit comes to us now.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, the Holy Spirit is something we talk about often in Pentecost.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you remember the story from Acts, the the flaming tongues of fire come down and it emboldens Peter to speak, and all thousands of people come to Jesus there at Pentecost, and as the people are inspired and filled with the Holy Spirit.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk a little bit more, though, and know how the Holy Spirit comes to us today.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, sometimes we we think the Holy Spirit is something that just shows up late in life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: But if you recall as biblical scholars, we don't even get through the first couple of verses in our scriptures before we see this language of the Spirit of God.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, even in the Hebrew, we see the Spirit of God.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: The word there for the Hebrew would be Roach, meaning spirit, wind, breath, spirit of God.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, this is also a feminine word for whatever that may mean for you, but but here we see there's the Roach, the spirit, this wind, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this in the first couple of verses.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Early on in creation, as God is there, as the Son is there, we see also the Spirit of God hovering over the waters.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we would see this same spirit that we hear and read about in the scriptures would come upon the warriors and prophets and empower them and embolden them to do big and great things.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, in the Greek we hear about the spirit as well.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: There, that word would be pneuma, but that same idea, right, of spirit, of breath, of wind.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if we think about wind in particular, as it relates to the Holy Spirit and wind itself, wind can be a powerful, powerful force.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think about a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to fly out into the to the Midwest.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh shout out to my Midwest folks.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember flying in, and I would pass as we were flying fields and fields filled of these giant wind turbines that were that were towering above, but were collecting and harnessing the power of the wind and the ways in which they were able to power local communities by harnessing this wind.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Friends, we're talking about the Holy Spirit today because I think that this same spirit can empower us, or the spirit can empower us in the same way as this wind can generate huge amounts of power through these big turbines.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're reminded in in Acts chapter one, verse eight, if you recall, Jesus talks about, talks to his disciples and says, Listen, when I am gone, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and it will empower you, and you will go and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and all the earth.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit will come upon you and will empower you.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then later on we see, or earlier in the Gospels, we see in John 14 more language where Jesus says, If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's another word for spirit there, to be with you forever.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: He says, This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: But you know him, Jesus said, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Leonard Sweet, a great Christian author, wrote a book called Eleven, and in it he talks about the eleven different relationships that he believes that uh Christians should have.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he talks about the importance of having mentors like a Peter and a Paul, and and also to be reaching out and mentoring other people like a Timothy, and goes through all these different relationships.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he ends by talking about the relationship that everyone needs a paraclete.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about paraclete, a paraclete is someone who will speak for you, who will stand with you, someone who can be a friend, a comforter, a guide, a counselor, a helper, an advocate, and all these are words that we would use for the Holy Spirit.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we're reminded that the paraclete, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit will be with you every step of the way, even when all the other relationships fail you, your mentors, your friends, your family, the people that you think you can count on, even when they fail you, we're reminded that we will have an advocate.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're reminded that we will have someone who will speak for us and step up for us.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the Holy Spirit.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do we get the Holy Spirit?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I know as Christians, when we are baptized and confirmed in the church, we are we receive the Holy Spirit.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know as as I get to baptize, whether it be adults or infants or or confirm, um, confirmants, they come through the confirmation process, we lay hands on them and we remind them and we say these words that that being born of the water and the spirit, being born by water and the spirit, we pray the Holy Spirit may work within you that you may grow into a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: When you are baptized in the United Methodist Church, when you are confirmed in the church, hands are laid upon you, and prayers are being prayed, that the Holy Spirit might indeed fill you and work within you, that you may live as a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit is available to us.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus reminds us of that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: We hear that in our baptismal liturgy, we hear it in our confirmation liturgy, we hear it over and over again.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yet sometimes, sometimes we're unsure or or not quite sure how to harness this power.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I talked earlier about the the wind and the and the wind turbines and how do you collect them?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we get we feel like we're not quite connected to this power source.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the example that another pastor used.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna borrow it because I can, it's a great example.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he uses this idea of a car battery, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And how um, you know, sometimes even if you have a fully charged battery, it still can't get the power to run the car in the way in which it's called to be.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know one year, a couple years ago, I had a battery issues, and and I noticed that that my my AC wasn't working right in the summertime, the radio would glitch out, and finally I realized that that it was the battery that was the problem.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And less so than the battery, it was my connection to the battery that was causing that problem.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so looking at this example, one of the big things that keeps us from harnessing the power and being connected to the power if we use this battery image is that sometimes, sometimes there is corrosion around the terminal.
• 10:11
  unknown: Right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: That that that green, that white, that fuzzy stuff that gets in the way and doesn't allow a clean connection and allow the electricity to flow where it needs to flow or in the manner that it's called to flow.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we're not pieces of metal connecting to an actual battery, but we are human beings.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: We are created beings who are striving to be connected to the spirit.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so the question I might have for us to ask and to consider on this day, what corrosion in our life keeps us from the spirit?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: In what ways have we allowed sin to get in the way of our connection to the Holy Spirit?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: How might we allow pride or anger or laziness, or perhaps we are jaded and bitter, and it causes corrosion around our hearts, and we feel like we can't be attuned to the spirits that we once was or that we so desire to be.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's not corrosion, though.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's just a loose connection.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know I've had my battery replaced before, and I'm driving down the road, and all of a sudden it stops, and I realize, and I go, and I realize they didn't tighten it up.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't tighten the bolts around it and make sure that I was strongly connected to the terminal.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so, on the one hand, as we think about harnessing the power of the Spirit, I would ask you to consider ways that corrosion might be keeping you from there, things in your own life.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: But also in what ways have we allowed our connections to God to become loose?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: What ways have we not tightened them in the ways in which we once did or we would like to?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And how might we spend time reconnecting and making sure that we are there to harness the power?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I meant next week I want you to come back and we're gonna talk about how we're formed by the Spirit, how we're shaped by the Spirit, and how we might indeed do do some things, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But but getting back to this idea of power, right?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Things are so much better when we are able to tap into the power and the resources that we're given.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Not just in in in in in l in you know spiritual life, but even thinking in in terms of um, gosh, I remember when I was 16, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I went out, went to visit my dad in Mississippi, and I was so excited to go see him, you know, spend the week, see some family, and I show up and he's like, hey, Stevie.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hey, what's up, dad?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, we're building a fence.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, we're building a fence.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, we're building a fence.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, cool.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'll learn something.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And man just hands me a postole digger, shows me the line, and I dig and I dig and I dig.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I dug what felt like 50 holes.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There were probably 25 holes, but it took me all day just going through the dirt and just, you know, kaklunk, kick-klunk, just getting there digging with the post hole digger.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And while I felt like I accomplished something, I was worn out after that day.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember a couple of days later we went to my stepgrandfather's house and learned once again that we'd be building a fence out there.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Who knew?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: You wait till your 16-year-old comes into town, and that's when everyone has projects.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I go out there and my grandfather pulls up with his tractor, and on the back of the tractor is this big um auger type thing, and he just starts zipping it into the ground, and I tell you, it's like a hot knife going through butter, just zip, zip, zip, creating these holes, and we got the fence built so much faster.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, adrill and post hole diggers are not the Holy Spirit, but what I'm getting at is when you are connected to a power source, it can make the jobs that you attempt to accomplish a lot easier, a lot more efficient, and a lot more powerful.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or another way to think about it, I love to go to the beach and when I'm walking on the beach, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: When you are you think about the times when there's been a fierce wind blowing on the beach and you decide to walk into the wind, it takes all of your might and force to kind of push your way down the beach.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: But when you turn and come back and you have the wind at your back, it almost feels like you are flying as you go down.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Our friends, God has gifted us with the Holy Spirit, it's something that is offered to us, it's part of our faith life.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And next week, again, we will talk about how we're molded and shaped and what the New Testament says often about the Holy Spirit.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: But one final question, perhaps, that I would encourage you to think about.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing that we have this power source available, knowing that God has gifted us, God's self in the person of the Holy Spirit, are we willing to be filled by the Spirit?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, to shape us, to mold us, to fill us, that we might indeed be agents of God's love and mercy and compassion out in the world.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Want to celebrate uh the sacrament of holy communion, talk about baptism, now we talk about communion, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: We we lay hands over the elements and we pray, we say, Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And pour out your Holy Spirit upon these this wheat of the field and fruit of the vine, that they may be for us the body and blood of Christ, so that, right, fill these elements, pour out your Holy Spirit upon them and upon us, so that we might be one in ministry to all the world, that we might indeed walk in the spirit with greater courage, with greater strength, that we might indeed be witnesses in our own Jerusalem, in our own Judea, in all places on earth.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: But as we're filled with the Holy Spirit, oftentimes we think of these big loud things that go on, but most often when we are encountering the encountering the Holy Spirit, it's through these little gentle nudges.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I would encourage you to think through what it means to listen to that gentle nudge.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: The times where you feel something kind of tugging in your heart saying, Oh, maybe I should stop.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should stop and talk to this someone.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think about an example, and there are multiple examples, but one of my favorites, uh Clemson students, you know, again, we're here at Clemson Wesley.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right after Hurricane Katrina, we began taking several trips down to my hometown of New Orleans and helping out.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this one student in particular that went on several, several trips and felt that gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit reminding him to sign up for uh these trips and to go on there.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then after a while, he felt these nudges that, hey, Wesley's taking these trips.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can get some friends together.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: We should go down to New Orleans.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so he would gather up friends and began leading his own trips down there by the nudges of the Holy Spirit.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then he came back to the upstate and said, you know, there's a lot of homes down in that New Orleans area that need repair, but gosh, there's a lot of homes here that could use some help.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so he began doing some work here and around the upstate.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And years later, well, or 21 years later, someone listening to the gentle nudge of the spirit to sign up for a mission trip to Katrina helped found this new organization up here that's now called Rebuild Upstate that spends time and has helped hundreds of families uh with new roofs on their homes, has helped hundreds of families be able to access their homes by building wheelchair ramps.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's this incredible nonprofit going on in the upstate that started all because a student way back when listened to the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit and said, Yes, Lord, use me.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to be filled by the Holy Spirit?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to listen to the Holy Spirit?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Are we willing to say yes where it might lead us?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And knowing that we might indeed find life and bring life to others in the process.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I said earlier one last question, and maybe I deceived you, not intentionally.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But why bother?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why bother with the Holy Spirit?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Why even figure out are we connected?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why why should we be connected to the Spirit?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Next week, why should we be formed by the Spirit?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because friends, I don't know about you, but we're not done yet.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: We are not finished.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Many of you are in college that are that are here tonight and listening to this on our on our podcast.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and look, just as your birthday, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you when you're when you're born, that is not the end of your life.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: That is only the beginning.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my friends, as we grow in our faith life, as we seek to follow the God who redeems us and who created us and sustains us, there is so much more out there that God is calling us to do.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So much more that God is calling us to be.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: In order for us to truly fulfill our calling and who God wants us to be, desires us to be, in order to find the wholeness and the fullness of the you and me that God is desiring us to be.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: It requires a power source.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that power source that God gifts us freely and willingly is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that and that alone can move mountains and do wonders.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I pray that we might indeed be led uh to the Spirit, that we might indeed have softened hearts, that we might indeed ask God to give us eyes to see and ears to hear all the ways in which the Spirit is moving around us.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And may the God who saw fit to create us, may the God who saw fit to show us grace and mercy and redeem us, may God continue to see fit to pour out God's Holy Spirit upon us and sustain us and empower us and challenge us for the journey ahead.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, get out there and love your name.