Some of you may have noticed that bluecastle.us was down for a few days – if you didn’t notices, well… the site was down for a few days.
It is now back up and running as you are currently reading this note on website. Brilliant, I say, simply brilliant.
I had the pleasure and honor of preaching Sunday morning as our pastor and his wife went camping for the Memorial Day weekend. It’s pretty cool that our pastor has the freedom to do that – shoot, ALL pastors sh
ould have that freedom as one’s marriage is very, very, very important!!!
The sermon – ah, to have my notes in front of me… or the ability to upload a huge mp3 file (and when I mean huge – I mean 56mb HUGE!)
“The Holy Spirit Is Our Helper”
Jesus tells his followers that he is sending a Helper to be with them after he is gone four times between the Last Supper and the Garden (John 14-16). My question is what does the Helper or Spirit help us with?
The short answer is: everything.[@more@]
However, since that would make a very short sermon, I flushed things out a bit more. =) Here are some bullet items that I talked about:
- The Spirit will guide us into all truth and tells us the things of God. I.e. The Spirit talks to us directly about things going on right now as well as helps us understand the Bible. (John 14-16)
- Going to Exodus, we sell the Spirit coming upon carpenters, weavers, jewelers, and other craftsmen to help them build the Tabernacle. In the same way I believe the Spirit helps us in our jobs today – as long was we make the deliberate choice to focus on God and what He is doing at your job. It’s not about getting rich or being promoted – it is about the Lord On High.
- In 1 Samuel 10, Samuel tells Saul that the Spirit of God will come upon him and that he “will be changed into a different person”. His “nature” would change – so it is with us. Everything MUST change. The way we look at this world, the things that we do – everything must change.
- God is not an American. He is here in America – but he is also in Iraq, Russia, Chile, Africa and everywhere else. We need to be thankful for the freedoms that our love ones have fought for on behalf of this country. However, we need not waste them by building bigger houses and gathering more things – we need to change the way we use our freedoms. If we have bowed our knees to Christ, we need to be focused on Him and what He is doing in the world.
- What is God doing in the world? Isaiah 61 and Matthew 10
Isaiah
- God is here to heal the broken heart (emotionally, spiritually, physically)
- Free the captives – captives are not law breakers, they are prisoners of war. We, the church, need to go out and find them and release them from the bonds of the evil one.
Matthew
- Jesus told the disciples to go and “preach this message, 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' 8 Heal those who are sick. Bring those who are dead back to life. Make those who have skin diseases 'clean' again. Drive out demons. You have received freely, so give freely.”
- That is the same commission we have been given. Let us do it.
Hmm…this reads a little rough…oh well… it was better in person. 