Holy Spirit Power!

So this morning I want to begin with a little story about power. In the early years of marriage, it’s a learning time. It’s a learning curve.

That was no different for David in April forest. It was a learning time. It’s a time to learn to trust.

It’s a time to come to understand when somebody says something, what exactly do they mean? How do you interpret what was just said? As in the following story. We were very young. I think it may have been into our third year of marriage, so we were learning.

And I learned a very hard lesson. You’re not going to be impressed with me by the time I’m finished, but you’ll get over it. So I was the assistant pastor in a very large church.

And it was my responsibility to do everything that the senior pastor did not want to do. And I’m very good at doing things that nobody else wants to do. It was Christmas time.

The church filled all these baskets of goodies, care baskets for people that were in unfortunate circumstances. And it was my job to drive all over the city and drop these boxes off. So I took a friend with me, George.

He’s somebody that I had introduced to Jesus, and we became fast friends. And so I said, George, I’ve got to do these deliveries, and we’re going to do it Saturday morning. You need to come along with me.

So we did. And we got to the east side of the city, and it was a very unique situation. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

But the driveway to this house led up to the front door of this house. So when somebody got out of their car, they had to walk across the breadth of their house to get into their front door. But as they’re walking up to the front door, they’re probably walking up the neighbor’s driveway.

I know that sounds silly, but that’s how it was. So I saw the address, and I pulled in what I thought was the driveway. But the driveway that I was in, the front door was right to my left.

The driveway belonged to the house next. I went up. I knocked on the door.

Somebody greeted, and I said, here’s a gift from our church. We want you to have a lovely Christmas. And as I came off the landing, there was a man there, and he’d been drinking something other than Kool-Aid.

And he was a little bit on the wobbly side, and he wanted a piece of me. And he was really adamant. You so-and-so, you parked in my driveway.

I said, sir, I didn’t know it was your driveway. I’m just delivering Christmas. I don’t want to hear about your Christmas.

He just kept on coming, and he kept on hitting my chest with his fist. I said, you don’t want to do that. Now, I was not afraid of anybody in those days, and he should have known who he was picking on.

But he just kept on coming. And George finally yelled, thump him. I said, I don’t want to hurt this little girl.

Yeah, I was actually egging him on. But anyway, I convinced him he needed to get into his house because he’d need dental surgery if I really engaged. So, but George on Sunday morning told Benny Lima, this all matters, he told Benny Lima in the church how Pastor Dave Prickner got himself thumped yesterday.

Now, Benny Lima was a professional wrestler who attended our church. And some of you men who were crazy for wrestling back in those days, he was known as the Sheik of Alley Bay. Oh, the ladies chimed in.

I didn’t hear any men’s voices. So, Benny approaches me at the end of the service. He says, I hear you’re having some trouble, Pastor Dave.

You better show up on my house tomorrow morning. I’m going to teach you a few things. So, I showed up at his house.

I had no idea that he had built a building behind his house, and in there was an authentic ring, you know, the mat, the whole thing. It was a real ring that he’d built there, and he was training other wrestlers. So, I had to get into the ring with him, and he’s slamming me down on the mat, and we’re doing this and that, and he’s showing me how to disarm somebody with a gun and with a knife and all the rest of it.

And then he taught me what I thought was really important. That would be to block a punch. Somebody’s going to punch you.

Here’s what you do. You block it like this, and you do this, and whatever. And we kept on practicing and practicing until he said, you got it.

You got it. So, I said, thank Benny. I said, I don’t think I needed this, but this is great.

I arrived home, and April, that’s my wife, for those of you who are new here. April wanted to know, so how did my training go? I said, it went very well, thank you. She was actually kind of crowding my manhood, you know.

How did it go? I said, nobody will ever lay a hand on me again. So, I got braggadocious now. She said, what’s that look like? I said, well, I’ll see a punch coming.

I said, I’ll just block it. I said, nobody will ever touch me again. I said, in fact, why don’t we demonstrate it right now? I said, you just make yourself a nice solid, don’t hurt yourself now.

I said, you just line up, and I said, you whack me in the face. You just give me all you’ve got. I don’t want to do that.

I said, okay. She said, I don’t want to hurt you. I said, you’re not going to hurt me, okay.

So, we actually had an argument. You’re not going to hurt. No, if I hit you, you’ll bleed.

I said, I won’t bleed. Come on. Come on.

You got to do it, and all of a sudden, she went, bang. I’m bleeding out of both nostrils. It’s running down my chin.

I said, what’d you do that for? She said, you told me. I said, but you said you weren’t going to hit me. Why didn’t you tell me what you’re going to do? She said, oh, say, okay.

So, Benny Lima taught you that if you meet somebody on the street, you have to engage them in this way. No, if you’re going to hit me, you got to tell me. Power.

I discovered she was only four foot eleven and a half, but she had a mean right hook. Isaiah chapter 11, verses one and two. There’s a prophetic promise, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.

Jesse was the father of the one we know as the shepherd boy, David, who became King David. So, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. The assumption there is that someone will say, well, that tree is finished.

That’s not going to do anything productive. That is just down to a stump. But no, there’s going to be a fresh shoot that’s going to come out of a very unique place that nobody would have expected it.

A shoot will come up from his roots, and that shoot will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. So, the shoot coming out of the stump is a person, and the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

The Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. So, here is a very distinct prophetic word about how Jesus, the Lord Christ, is going to come among us, and the root of his success, can I use that word? The root of everything that became known as his ministry was actually the outflow of a divine deposit called the Holy Spirit. Now, you and I know that he was and still is the eternal Son of God, and we would say he needed nothing.

But in fact, he made himself dependent upon the Holy Spirit, and he was thereby showing us the template for being successful in a Christian life. That you cannot be successful. You cannot walk the walk.

You cannot fulfill God’s purpose in your life, lest you are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. So, Jesus depended upon the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good things, good tidings to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of the vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for their ashes and the oil of joy for their mourning. He’ll bestow upon them the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. The Spirit of God is planted in every person who surrenders their heart and life to Christ, and that happens at the moment of what we know as conversion.

Pentecostal people are accused of not believing that the Holy Spirit is in you unless you experience this and this and this, and that’s not accurate. When a person surrenders their life to Christ, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, enters into them and abides within them. And so this passage, whereby Jesus, back in Isaiah chapter 61, he’s speaking these words, and then he repeats those words in his flesh, in his personhood, when he walked into the synagogue on a very, very famous day.

So let me read it for you again, that the Holy Spirit resting upon him is an anointing, and for those of you who are new to Christianity, there are some here today, you’re new in the Lord, and some of you who may be searching still and trying to grasp and understand. We use so many words. I like to call it Christianese, and we assume that people know what we’re talking about.

So when the Holy Spirit is applied to our lives, the biblical word is anointing. Now anointing has a very clear understood word. It speaks of a salve or of an oil, and so the Holy Spirit is identified as wind, as fire, as an anointing, as an oil that’s applied.

And so when we pray for the sick, we will follow through and we will put oil on the person, on their forehead usually, and there’s nothing magical about that. It’s our way of saying we’re depending upon the Lord. We’re depending upon the Holy Spirit.

The oil is significant in that way. So we can anticipate through the words of Jesus, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The concept is the Spirit of the Lord should be upon every one of us.

He anoints us to speak the good tidings, to be spokesmen for him. He sends us to heal up the brokenhearted. Don’t be afraid to speak to people who are mourning and are going through a time of brokenness.

They’re all around us, and God has put it in your ability sack. He’s put it in your temple, in your person, the ability to let the Holy Spirit who resides within you to flow out and touch another person’s life. I was in a Canadian Tire this week.

I had a wonderful experience in talking to people about Jesus right in the store. I was talking to the lady who was serving me at the cash register. There was nobody else around, and I spoke to a couple of people this week, and I was talking to a friend out west who I addressed just a few moments ago, Darrell, and he told me how he spoke to somebody this week.

Darrell himself is fighting a cancer, and he’s been told he’s got two years to live, maybe three. But in his dilemma and in his war with this thing that’s attacking his body, there’s an anointing on him, and he speaks to people about Jesus. The anointing is not hindered by physical infirmity.

He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to those who are captives. You don’t have to know somebody who’s in jail to find somebody who’s a captive, because people are captive to fear. They’re captive to all kinds of disappointment, and they almost feel like they’re in a jail.

To open the prison doors to those who are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God. Don’t be afraid to talk to people about there’s a judgment coming. That is one of the responsibilities, Jesus said, of the Holy Spirit.

When he comes, he said he will talk about me, he will teach about me, and he said he will teach and he will admonish about righteousness and sin and the judgment that is coming. And for those who can be comforted by the Holy Spirit who flows through your life, and people can experience the joy of the Lord for their mourning and the garment of praise when we experience the spirit of heaviness. It was back in the 70s when I was told that I was pastoring the fastest growing church in Canada, three services on Sunday, packed to capacity, people getting saved every service, people getting saved every Wednesday night, and my church never knew it, but I was in a depression.

Sunday night after Sunday night we would come home from church. I’d preach three times that day. I’d prayed with many, many people to accept Jesus.

I prayed for the sick. It was a wonderful thing, and it looked like everyone, to everyone, David’s just having a heyday. I was depressed, and April would find me on a Sunday night sitting in the living room after we came home from church.

She would go into the kitchen to make a little snack for us, and she’d come into the living room, and she’d find me sitting there crying, and she’d say, David, what is it? And my answer was, I don’t know. I don’t know. That gave me, that gave me the opportunity when I meet people who are struggling with depression.

It gave me the opportunity to say, I might have experienced some of what you feel, and in fact I talked to someone just this last week who’s going through a difficult time, and I said, I think I know. I said, I remember sitting in my office, and all of a sudden it was like somebody opened the door, and a black cloud moved in, and I learned, get out of that office. It wasn’t like the enemy came in.

It was that whatever was bringing about this depression, I just needed a place that was different, and I would go golfing. I’d just call my friend and say, I want to go golfing, and I seldom finished the golf game. I seldom finished it because I was too depressed.

I would putt the ball. It would go in the hole, and Jerry would say, that’s great, Dave, and I’d be standing there crying. He said, what’s wrong? I said, I don’t know.

The Holy Spirit helped me through that. Here’s what I discovered. This might help you.

We were a church that sang. Oh my goodness did we sing, and there was no song leader. There were two people that were on the keyboard, an organ and a piano, two ladies.

They would just play, and whatever they played, the people sang, and they were led by the Holy Spirit. The worship service would go on for half an hour, 45 minutes. I dare not make a move.

I just sat there loving it and singing with everyone else, and then finally I’d realize, well, we got to get into the sermon, and I’d make my move. So I had learned that there’s a release. There’s a release of the Holy Spirit in your life when you praise and when you worship, and so in order for me to deal with my trouble with this darkness that was shrouding me in the midst of success, in the midst of a growing church, I needed to be strong.

I was like a doctor who was sick and trying to help patients, and I felt demoralized because of that, and I felt like I was a failure, like I was hiding from people at times. I didn’t know how to deal with this thing, but I discovered that the songs that we sang on the Lord’s day became a source of refreshing for me, and I experienced the joy that would overcome my mourning. I put on the garment of praise when I experienced heaviness, and on this one occasion when I was with Jerry out, we were on the golf course, and the tears were running down my cheeks, and he knew I was in trouble.

Jerry started to sing a song from Sunday, not a happy jingle song, a song of adoration of the Lord, and I started singing with him, and it changed me. We finished the golf game. I know you’re excited to hear that part, but that was the change that came in me.

It was the Holy Spirit. Jerry ministered to me by singing, and I chimed in, and I sang with him. You see, ministry is not some hocus-pocus thing where we all feel shivers, and we deal with weird things.

Being used by the Holy Spirit is as common as picking up a fork and putting it into a piece of bologna and eating it. I hate bologna, but it’s a simple thing. It’s a simple thing to allow the Holy Spirit to minister to your heart and to help you.

There’s a power called the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, if you’ll drink of me, then out of your innermost being. Now wait a minute.

If you receive, you see, if you drink of me, then there will be a reserve, a reservoir within you. If you will drink of me, then out of your innermost being will flow rivers, not a river, but rivers of living water. We need to find a place in the day, in the evening.

We need to find a place of solitude by times just to get alone with the Lord. There’s somebody going to be coming and speaking to us in a few weeks time. He’s a good friend.

I’ve known him for a couple of years. I’ve been begging him to come and share his story, and he finally agreed. And I won’t tell you any more about him right now, but he and his wife experienced the Holy Spirit, each of them in solitude.

He went to one room in the house. They were brand new. They didn’t understand any of this stuff.

They had no understanding. She went to her bedroom. He went to his den, and they stayed there, each of them, for a time.

And when they emerged, they had experienced the same thing. You’re going to hear the story. We’re going to try and put that Sunday together in a way that you’ll want to invite your friends.

We’re talking about having a fellowship lunch. People need to hear this story. It will ring a bell in your heart, and in some way it will fortify the things that I’m sharing with you today.

That we are the people who believe in the Holy Spirit. So many churches will talk about God the Father, God the Son, and then they kind of climb up on the Holy Spirit because, oh, those people that are into the Holy Spirit, ooh, they’re kooky. And we deserve that at times.

We deserve that at times. But we need to allow the Holy Spirit to be expressed in our lives. So many people do not understand even how this all began.

Well, it began on the day of Pentecost, and in fact, it was promised back in the book of Isaiah, back in the book of Joel, back in the book of Ezekiel. It was promised all the way down. And I’ve read where famous people like Luther, he wrote about his experience in the Holy Spirit.

He wrote about that which would flow out of him as he would pray. He experienced a dynamic when he would pray when he allowed the Holy Spirit. That’s not talked about very much, because again, you know, these people in the Holy Spirit, they’re wacky people.

Do you know some of the most powerful people in the world, in the Christian world, have another life? They just don’t talk to you about it. But God is doing something in their hearts and their lives. I heard a wonderful story not so long ago that at the, I think it was the Billy Graham, it was something to do with, was it Billy Graham’s funeral, and Jimmy Swaggart was there.

Don’t get lost in this story now. It doesn’t matter what you think about Jimmy Swaggart, okay? But a couple of very famous, ultra-conservative, evangelical, on the TV with huge, vast audiences, a couple of very powerful preachers today on the TV, you might have watched them this morning, got in this big auditorium, and when they saw Swaggart, each one on his own went over and embraced him and said, Jimmy, I love to hear you preach, and I love to hear you sing. I sense the presence of the Lord, you ministering to me.

So you see, here’s these men who long for a freshness in the Holy Spirit. They long for experience in God. That church that I talked about in London, probably at least half of them were people that came to us from the Roman Catholic Church.

They believed in Jesus, but they wanted something more. They wanted, they longed for, and what’s that all about? The Holy Spirit was within them, and he was giving them a sense of thirst. He was giving them a sense of hunger.

We soon had five nuns in the first service every Sunday morning, came in in their habits, walked down the aisle halfway, knelt down, did a cross, and sat down. I had two ladies come to me after a service once, and they said, you’re going to do something about those nuns, Pastor Dave. I said, pardon? Well, they come in and they do that stuff.

I said, do you know what that stuff is? I said, that’s a very, very sacred thing they’re doing. I said, they’re acknowledging the Lord, and I said, they’re kneeling down when they do it. I said, it’s a form of prayer, but it’s strange.

I said, not to them. It’s normal, and I said, why do you think they’re here? They love the singing. They love the worship.

They love the praise. We soon had several United Church preachers coming to our church in the first service, several of them from our city, and they came and they spoke to me and said, don’t change anything. We love it here.

I said, what are you? Well, they were United Church preachers. I said, what are you doing here? The one spoke up and said, I’m at that place in my life now. He said, I don’t want to face my church at 11 until I’ve been here and have been inoculated by whatever’s going on in this church, and it wasn’t me, and it’s not me that’s freezing you to death.

I see people putting on earmuffs. There’s a lady over here, I just saw her put on a pair of Eskimo mukluks. It’s either dying heat in here or it’s freezing.

In a few minutes, you’ll all be fanning yourselves like this. David, are you trying to tell us how wonderful you were? Listen, listen, listen. I was a spectator.

I had some pastors of huge churches came and wanted to talk to me and said, David, what are you doing? The country’s talking about your church. I said, please don’t ask me that. Why? I said, I’m not doing anything.

I said, I believe I’m reading my Bible and praying like all the rest of the preachers in Canada. How do you prepare your sermons? I said, like all the other doughheads. I said, I’m not special.

I said, I put on my jeans one leg at a time. I said, I go through difficulties just like you. Well, what’s the answer? I said, the answer is allowing the Holy Spirit to do what He wants to do.

The answer is not to go in with a service all laid out, page by page, line by line. Let’s see what’s happening next in their service. And for the person standing up there saying, come on, you got to sing, you got to sing.

I said, we don’t do any of that stuff. I said, the Spirit of God is there. People would come through the door and they would stand there and they would speak and they’d say, yes, this is what I came for.

They weren’t in the service yet. When they walked into the building, Doug, they sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit. There were times I never got to preach.

I could not stop these people. Their hands were raised as they’re worshiping the Lord and tears are flowing down their cheeks. I would not dare step in their way.

They had moved into what the Bible calls the Holy of Holies. In our worship, we had entered in to a sacred place where everybody in the place was connecting with God. This was no time for me to get up and say, I have a sermon.

I would step back and just allow, allow the Holy Spirit who I began to, in my mind, in my heart, I began to see the Holy Spirit as a symphony conductor. He was leading the people and early one morning, five o’clock was when I would go to a place of prayer. When it was a summertime, I would go to a quarry that had been abandoned.

It wasn’t being worked anymore. I would drive my little car in there and I would sit and I’d sing and I worship the Lord and I just spend my time with the Lord out there in a quarry, no distractions. One morning as I was sitting there, I felt, I don’t know, I just decided, I’ll put it that way, I’m not going to get spiritual and say God told me to do.

I just got out of my car and I climbed up the side of the quarry, got my shoes filled with sand and stones. When I got to the top, here was a field that a farmer was still working and there was grain growing and it was about this high. I think it was wheat.

And as I stood there looking at this beautiful span, I wasn’t up there for any particular purpose. I just decided to walk up there. But all of a sudden, I saw something I’d never seen before.

I was raised on the farm, but I never noticed this. The wind, I could tell where the wind was blowing. I could, there were several streams of wind wasping over that field.

And let me describe it this way. Off in the distance, all of a sudden you’d see that wheat lean over like that. And then gracefully as it came by, came back up, another wisp went over here, and another one over there, and another one over there.

Pastor Peter, when I stood there and I watched that, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, this is how the Spirit of the Lord moves. He moves where He wants to. There’s a scripture that says He moves where He chooses.

But I got this picture that a maestro, a conductor was saying, violins, cellos, the timpani. And I stood there and I wept like a child. I cried, Lord, I see it, Lord, I see it.

And I shared with the church, I said, we’ve got to in every service allow for the great conductor, the Holy Spirit to lead us. Because people were driving from Rochester, New York to London, Ontario to be in our services. Every Sunday, car loads were coming from across the road from Michigan.

I said, why are they coming? Why are you here? I said, you’re here because you are experiencing the presence of the divine. There was nothing weird that happened. There were no chandeliers.

And if there were, see, I’ve shortened the chains here. So I tell people, come to our church. I said, we’ve shortened the chains.

We don’t swing from the chandeliers anymore. We don’t roll on the floor. We don’t do those things.

We don’t have to do anything. We have nothing to prove. We come here like spiritual peasants.

That’s how I feel every day. I’m not a big shot in God’s kingdom. Whenever I come to the Lord at any moment for any reason, I come as a peasant, just as I am.

Without one plea, Billy Graham used to have us sing, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. O Lamb of God, I come. That’s how I approach the throne of grace.

I never walk into my prayer room and say, well, Lord, I knew you were just all excited. I’m so glad you got to see me today. We come as peasants to say, I was full yesterday, but I need another full meal today.

Feed me, Lord, until I cry no more. We used to sing a song like that. Feed me until I’m full.

Feed me until I cry I can’t take anymore. I’m full. It was the year 1900.

There was a Bible school. I don’t know what its denominational stripe was. It doesn’t matter.

It was in the city of Topeka, Kansas. Forty students were attending that college. They gathered to learn about the major tenets of the holiness movement.

There was a holiness movement. You might not be familiar with that, but these were very humble, pious people called the holiness people. Parham was the leader.

I suppose he was the principal or maybe just the prime teacher. He was the leader of this school, and he wondered about the New Testament evidence for baptism of the Holy Spirit. The word baptism of the Holy Spirit, that’s a New Testament word.

By the word baptism, the original of that word is baptizo. I’m not getting clever on you here, but that word baptizo means totally immersed. That’s why we believe for water baptism, it’s baptizo.

It’s totally immersed. We don’t sprinkle. We don’t pour.

I hold you down until I see bubbles. Baptizo means fully immersed. So the New Testament promised.

Jesus said, don’t leave Jerusalem until you receive the promise. What was the promise? Well, John the Baptist had announced it. He, in an apologetic way, said, I can only baptize you with water, but there’s someone mightier than I. He may be standing here right now because to this moment, I don’t know who he is, but my job is to announce to you, I baptize you with water, but he will immerse you, baptizo you, he will immerse you in the Holy Ghost, and he goes on, the Holy Spirit and fire.

So that word baptism is a real word. It’s a biblical word. And so Parham was investigating that and saying to the students of this class, of this college, it’s important that we understand.

Let’s dive in. Let’s find out what does this mean, baptism of the Holy Spirit. So he went on a three-day trip and asked his students to ponder while he was gone.

Go ahead and talk about it, pray about it. And they concluded that glossolalia, that’s a fancy word, or speaking in a new language, was proof that the Holy Spirit had fallen on an individual. Now remember I already said that when a person gets saved, the Holy Spirit comes to abide within.

But remember Jesus said, if you drink of me, something will flow out, something will flow out, rivers of living water. And you can read in the New Testament, the book of Acts, what it would say, the Holy Spirit fell on them. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon them.

Several definitive words to indicate this baptism, immersion in the Holy Spirit. There are several words to describe it because it’s something so sacred, so beautiful, so incredibly mysterious that one word doesn’t do it. You’re baptized, but He, the Holy Spirit, is poured out upon you.

And on that occasion, He fell upon us, among us. I was in a Bible college class how many years ago, and all of a sudden the students, this looked weird to me. I’d never seen anything like it before.

They started falling off their chair. This was in our chapel service. We never got out of the chapel till after two o’clock in the afternoon.

The Holy Spirit on that occasion seemed to have fallen upon us, and we lost control. We ended up on the floor. Then somebody says, you know, that’s just too much for me, Dave.

That’s just too much for me. Well, what about Revelation chapter 1? John, who knew Jesus better than John? The one always leaned against Jesus’ breath. He knew him, but he says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet like I was a dead man.

That’s okay. That’s okay. But I have seen it.

I don’t look for it. I’ve seen it. I’ll tell you this.

I know I’m wandering all over the place. This topic is so ginormous. I was in Ethiopia.

I may have told you this. Forgive me if I did. I was talking to a man just two days ago at the Brayside Camp.

He came out of the service. He says, Dave Forrest, I’m excited to tell you. He said, I’m going to be retiring from the fire department in 24 months.

And he said, guess where I’m going? He said, I’m going to Ethiopia. I said, where are you going to live? I’m not sure. I said, go and live in the city of Awassa.

That’s the place you need to go. Then I said, from there, you need to go out into the bush. I said, there’s no place better to minister to the Ethiopians than off in the bush.

I said, I told him, I said I would go many, many, many, many, many times. And I said, we’d go as far as we could by jeep. And then we’d get out with backpacks with some little bit of supplies.

I said, we would walk. We’d tramp into the bush, and we’d find a village of people there. And the word would get out that we had arrived.

And people would run, run, run, and go until, and pretty soon they’re coming, thousands, thousands. And I preached on this one occasion out in this huge span. It was just a place for the cattle and the goats to graze.

And the people would rip off a banana leaf so they wouldn’t have to sit on the ground. There were, there were pucks all over the ground, right? From the cows that had been there. And so they would pull down a banana leaf and they would put the banana leaf on the ground and they’d sit on the banana leaf.

That was their little cushion. They’d sit there for hours. And so I preached about, about how, about Jesus.

And so many of these people had given their lives to Christ. I had no way of knowing. See, I don’t know their language.

It’s mharic. And I don’t know one word of mharic. So I couldn’t ask them.

I couldn’t talk to them. But I had an interpreter. And I preached about how the Holy Spirit wants to be a part of your life.

And I asked, how many? See, I believe you’ve experienced Jesus. But it was one of the apostles went down to a town, book of Acts, said, have you experienced the power of the Holy Spirit since you believe? You’ve got saved, is the question. You’ve already got saved.

Have you experienced another something? Have you experienced the power, the dynamics? Have you experienced the outflow of the inflow? And they said, no, we never even heard anything about it. So I was teaching these people, the most of whom I thought were already saved. I was teaching them through an interpreter that there’s something else.

The Holy Spirit who’s within you wants to overcome you. He wants to bless you immeasurably. He wants to loosen your tongue so you can be an ambassador and speak.

Because Jesus said, not many days from now, stay in Jerusalem. You’ll receive the power of the Holy Spirit and you will be my spokesman. I’m going to loosen your tongue by the Holy Spirit.

The church needs its tongue loosened. Say hello, I’m good till five o’clock. Say yes, David.

Amen. Say something. I think I heard them over the internet too.

I said, if you want to experience this outflow of the Holy, I didn’t tell them what to expect. I didn’t tell them. But I said, if you want the fullness of the Holy Spirit, stand to your feet.

And they stood. I turned to my interpreter and I said, what did you tell them? I told them what you said. I said, no, you told them all to stand.

No, brother, I told them what you, I said, tell them to sit down. He said, please sit down. They’re probably thinking there’s a new game called Simon Says.

Simon says, stand. They’re sitting. I said, no, you tell them exactly what I said.

If you want to experience more in your heart through the Holy Spirit, you stand. They stood. I said, lift your hands and just say, I love you, Jesus.

Just say that. I love you, Jesus. Thousands of people in Amharic are saying, I love you, Jesus.

I love you, Jesus. And then it happened. I could, I could tell.

How could you tell? It’d have to be there. I could tell a different language was flowing out of them. And now these people started falling onto the ground.

They’re not going to get hurt. They’re landing in the grass. The Spirit of God was being poured out upon them.

My interpreter looked at me. He said, it’s happening. It’s happening.

I think they’re praying in Amharic. I’m not sure. It looks like something.

He said, they’re praying in languages that they’ve never learned. Pastor Dave, that’s weird. Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. That’s the first day of the church.

That’s the first day, the first thing that happened in the church. Before the first sermon was preached in the early church, the first thing was the ignition switch of the Holy Spirit. And those who were not of the household of faith yet, they were from all over the world because they were there to experience a great festival, famous festival.

They were there from all over the world. It was like a pilgrimage, right? Showing up. And they said, we hear them speaking in our languages from all over the then known world.

And what are they saying? We’re hearing them speak in our language from our country of the wonderful works of God. And Yosemite said to me, it’s happening. It’s happening.

It’s happening. It’s happening. And there were little children, little regaffers like this.

It was happening to them. So many of them, tears are rolling down their cheeks. Some of them got in to just wave their hands like this.

I couldn’t tell what was going on. It was just, it was a spiritual circus. It was absolutely wonderful.

I’ve had people say, good, that’s what we want to happen. No, you don’t. No, no, no, no, no.

What we need is just to allow Jesus to do what he wants to do with no specific expectations. If there’s something, I had a fellow come up to me. I was preaching in a church, doesn’t matter the city.

And a fellow came up and I went to pray for him as sometimes we do at the end of the service. And he said, before you pray, there’s something I want to ask. I said, what’s that? He said, pray that I’ll fall.

I said, what? Pray that I’ll fall down. Why do you want to fall down? Well, I think there’s a special blessing in falling down. I said, that’s crackers.

That’s foolish. That’s silly. I said, if you want something, it should be Jesus.

Just crave Jesus. We don’t need people saying, I want to experience the shivers. I want to experience this.

No, no, no, no, no. You don’t need experience. You need the reality of Jesus like an anchor.

So that when you walk out the door, that anchor is with you. You can’t go out on the street and start demonstrating falling down. Well, what’s happening to you? I’m falling down.

What’s that? Well, that’s what the Holy Ghost does. That’s crackers. That’s silliness.

No wonder we’re being chastised and criticized. Don’t seek something. Seek Jesus, just Jesus, and He will fulfill your every craving, your every desire.

All these Catholic people, I say, why are you here? We want more. We don’t want to change Catholic. We still go to our church.

We still go to mass. I said, you do whatever you want to do. I didn’t tell them you got to stop doing that.

Leave them alone. The Lord is going to look after His sheep. My job is to catch fish, and the Lord is going to clean them.

Heavenly Father, I have no idea if I did this right today. For people who don’t know anything about what I’ve shared today, it would sound like silliness. And to others, it would be a fearful thing because people are so used to being in control, and they wouldn’t want to think they’re out of control.

Lord, you have to deal with all those things. I just know what is in this beautiful book. You’re the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And what the Apostle Paul experienced is available for each and every one of us. Thank you, Lord, for Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, for the promises unto you, to your children, and to your children’s children, as many as will be afar off. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for not abandoning us.

But Lord, keep us from craving things. Keep us from craving experiences. We don’t need experiences.

We just need Jesus. Holy Spirit, you’re the one who delivers. So, we surrender our all to you.

We don’t want to be like any other church. We don’t want to mimic anything else. It doesn’t matter what God’s doing in Dallas, or in Chattanooga, or British Columbia, or anywhere else in the world.

It only matters what’s happening in David’s heart, and what’s happening in each of our hearts. We just want you. Teach us.

Teach us to crave Jesus, and Jesus alone. I pray it in His name. Amen.