Notes

Introduction

God introduces himself to Adam and Eve, then comes to earth in human form as the Savior Jesus. Jesus was perfect: a beautiful person, humble, kind, caring, patient, loving, and peaceful. Still, the established religious rulers of the day wanted to get rid of Jesus due to their envy and evilness. The religious rulers temporarily got their way, crucifying Jesus. Still, he rose from the dead as Lord of all and presented the Holy Spirit, who dwelled inside the disciples first, then every follower of Christ. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is inside us and has power. Instead of just one God and one Savior, everyone who repents and is saved becomes a residential vessel for the Holy Spirit to dwell, equipping that vessel (you and me) with special abilities to share with fellow believers and sometimes non-believers to present the saving grace of our Lord. We glorify (present positive attention) toward God in the process. But wait. That is not all. When you exercise that Spiritual Gift, you will experience incredible personal fulfillment like never before. You will understand the privilege it is to serve others through the gifts God has given you. To achieve and experience all this, we must self-discover and discern the gifts the Holy Spirit has placed in us. When you find this groove in your life, it will be the second-greatest day of your life. Why? It is because you will be centered in God’s will for your life. and will be the motivation and personal fulfillment you will achieve for the rest of your life. The Holy Spirit is multiplied dramatically through each of us followers giving God the ability to cause us to change the world through Christ. P.S. Our world needs this now.

The Start

Acts 1:3 – During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God. 4 Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. 5John baptized with* water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 6 So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” 7 He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him.

1. Jesus puts the Holy Spirit inside His followers – Acts 1-6

Acts 1:4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Acts 2:17 ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.

Miracles, healing, giving of money, evangelism, – crowd building;

Evil plotting Temple Guards and Sadducee’s. Ananias and Sapphira lied about the Holy Spirit and died! Acts 5:4-5 – You weren’t lying to us but to God!” 5 As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. (Holy Spirit power! Rose Jesus from the grave. Put these two in a grave and that Spirit is in you and me!)

2. Paul comes on the scene-the bad, the good

Temple Leaders, who were jealous of Jesus and killed him, sought to snuff out the new church, borne out of the Holy Spirit post-earthly Jesus. Enter Saul, highly educated, knowledgeable of all Temple rule enforcement and death watcher – doing the Temple bidding – watches the stoning of the Godly Stephen and jails many others following from this new upstart church, born out of the work of the Holy Spirit. Temple warlords had wiped out other efforts, and their objective was no different.

Acts 8:1-3 Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen. A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. 2 (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) 3 But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.

Jesus says nay, nay, and meets up with Saul en route to his next terror job, blinds him, scares him half to death, and turns him into the greatest missionary ever.

In the years that followed, Saul became Paul because and became a different person – a Christian. He visited or wrote letters or connected through others to nearly 60 towns and cities, presenting the resurrection of Christ, convincing fellow Jews that Jesus is the Messiah, and introducing Gentiles to this Christ who was a Savior who died for them.

Colossians 3:11 – In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

He also influenced the other disciples since Paul heard directly from Jesus. Galatians 1:12 – no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.

He not only got it, but he was intellectually sophisticated and mentally honest enough to see Christ as the fulfillment of Jewish history and an incredible gift to Gentiles. Romans 12:3-5 – Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning

He wrote at least seven letters; some think it could be 14. 1 Corinthians letter was an early one and the longest of all his letters. He wrote more about spiritual gifts than any other subject. So why do churches not give it that same attention? Their church would be larger. Their people would be happy and fulfilled, and God would be glorified as never before, reaping church benefits like never before.

As for measuring a man or human, Paul is great in God’s Kingdom.

3. The church gets supercharged with spiritual gifts to operate a growing, energized, powerful Holy Spirit empowered church

Peter Wagner. Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow . Baker Publishing Group. (August 15, 1930 – October 21, 2016)

We have been living in a period of history, which, if anything else, is characterized by rapid change. Many enormously significant changes have shaken the world, the Christian community and my own ministry since the first edition of Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow was released. But one thing has not changed: God continues to say to the Body of Christ worldwide that the ministry of the Church must be placed in the hands of the people of God. And, in order to bring this to pass, He continues to steer the Church toward the biblical teaching on spiritual gifts as the essential foundation for the ministry of believers. This is directly related to known principles of church growth.

One thing that I have learned over a career of studying and teaching on the health and growth of the Church is that church growth carries a price tag.

My friend Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, when he was teaching with me in Fuller Seminary years ago, said it as well as anyone I have heard: “For the church to grow, the pastor must give up the ministry and the people must give up the leadership .”

To put it another way, smaller churches will become larger ones only if the pastor does the leading and the people do the ministry.

If you have had much experience in traditional churches, you will recognize this as quite a radical thought. It is my expectation that this book will help that to happen. I can say this with considerable assurance, because feedback I have received over the past 25 years has indicated that these ideas about spiritual gifts actually work in practice.

By far, I have received more sustained, positive response to this book than any of the other books I have written to date.

“We need a 21^st-century church that’s based on all the biblical principles,” Wagner told Ministry Today magazine. “Every time God has moved in the world through history—through the early church, through the Constantine time, through the Roman Empire, through the British colonization to our present day—He has always provided new wineskins. What we need to be tuned into is the new wineskins.” – https://www.charismanews.com/us/60747-apostolic-pioneer-c-peter-wagner-goes-on-to-glory /Amazon has many of his books.

Ray C. Stedman, Body Life: The Book That Inspired a Return to the Church’s Real Meaning and Mission. Discovery House.

Billy Graham wrote in the book forward, “It depends, of course, on how one defines the “church.” In Body Life, Ray C. Stedman uses the leverage of the Word itself to bring us back to the church’s real meaning and mission. With strong, convincing argument he points to the weaknesses within the institutional church, and clearly reminds us of the strength inherent in Christ’s body, the true church.”

Publisher note: The church must become the church God intended it to be. We must become the kind of Christians God intended us to be. We must learn again to practice deep koinonia-fellowship, carrying one another’s burdens, sharing one another’s hurts, confessing to one another, rejoicing with one another, encouraging one another, celebrating the diversity of our gifts and abilities while maintaining the unity of the Spirit.

The book provides 6 biblical patterns Minister Stedman operated his church. Here, we will provide the first three of six biblical patterns of a “Manifest Life.” We encourage you to purchase the book to learn the full plan. 1. A pervasive spirit of love and unity. 2. Celebration of spiritual Gifts. 3. A horizontal church structure rather than vertical.

Chapter 1: “This book is about the church. Not the church as it often is, but the church as it originally was. The church as it can be. And yes, the church as it must be again.”

Cousins, Don. Experiencing LeaderShift: Letting Go of Leadership Heresies . David C. Cook Ministries

The body of Christ works as God intends only when every believer sees himself or herself as a contributor, not a consumer.

Nowhere in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, or 14 is the word leadership even mentioned. Neither is it found in Ephesians 4 or 1 Peter 4, other key passages on spiritual gifts. In fact, in the primary passages on the gifts, the only mention of leadership is Romans 12:8, which exhorts “he who leads” to do so “with diligence.” If the spiritual gift of leadership were as indispensable as some would have us believe, then the apostles would have placed more emphasis on it than those five words—“he who leads, with diligence.” Truth is, in reading the passages on spiritual gifts, we find that the writers barely mention the gift of leadership.

Start Listening Today!

After listening, share the podcast with 10 others. Do this every week for 10 weeks and  encourage each person you tell to do the same, in 10 weeks, we could reach 10 billion people. If those 10 billion people knew Christ and knew the Holy Spirit was in them and they knew how God had spiritually gifted them and they used that gift to serve their neighbor and glorify (give positive attention) to our King, Christ, the world would be transformed into the Kingdom of God !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Are you ready?