Last week, if you were here, if you remember, I preached on why church? Just, hey, what's the big deal? Why church? And we looked at Solomon dedicating the temple, and we saw several similarities to the New Testament church. We saw that the church was a, hey, it's a good place. Amen? It's a place that God instituted, that God chose to show up. It's a good place when you are in trouble. I don't know where you go when you face troubles in your life and when things go awry, but you know what? Going and trying to find God is a good place to go. Church is a good place when you're having conflicts with other people, We looked at that. I'm not going to review all of the points, but it's a good place when you fall to the enemy, when you happen to fail along the way. It's a good place if you're feeling rejected. We talked about strangers coming in and just feeling like they were outside and, hey, I don't fit. And we saw in the Old Testament where, yeah, you'd be surprised. You'll fit just fine if you try. And I hope you don't feel like a stranger here this morning. If you do, I hope that you stay around long enough to get to be more comfortable and realize that, hey, we're all just a bunch of sinners just like you. Amen? And we just come together because church is a good place to be. We saw that church was, it's not only a good place, but that, listen, church, folks, is filled with good people. Right? There's good people here. There's a bunch of people where the saints are blood-washed Christians. Now, I don't know if you're saved here or not this morning. I know that most of you are. Most of you have put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the reality is, when you do that, God takes the blood that he shed at Calvary and washes every single one of your sins away. And it doesn't get much better than that. I mean, you step back and you think about your life, and you think about the past, and you realize that there's an awful lot of sins lingering back there. Amen? And what happens to those sins when you die? Well, the reality is, somebody's gotta pay for them. Right? God is just. God is a perfect, holy judge. And when you die, somehow or another, those sins have to be paid for. Now, if you choose to pay for them yourself, there's only one way, there's only one thing that'll work, and that, unfortunately, is spending eternity in hell, a burning lake of fire. Why? Because that's what the punishment is for sin. There's no other way to pay for your sin. There is no other way. So how many of you want to pay for your own sin? Because eternity in hell is the only option. Or, or, you can understand what Jesus Christ did for you on Calvary, and you can understand that hey, Jesus Christ loved you enough to come down to this earth and take on the form of a human being, and he was raised, and he was, you know, he was crucified on the cross, he shed his blood on that cross, and that blood is the payment for sin. Jesus Christ shed his blood as a payment for sin. You say, well, how did that make the payment for sin? Well, because what Jesus Christ did is he shed his blood. It was God's blood. But he also, he was in the ground for three days and three nights. Well, what happened during that time frame? Well, somehow or another, he took that blood, and he went down to hell, and he paid the price somehow for sin. I don't know exactly how God did it. I don't understand all the details. I just know that God is a holy God. He's a perfect God. And God required that that payment must be made. And when Jesus Christ died on the cross, it says He went down to the lower parts of the earth. And He went down there and somehow or another, He paid the price of an eternity in hell. God understands time differently than you and me. God can put all eternity into what you and I would think is three seconds. I don't know how it works either. But to God, time is nothing. God went down there and listen, Jesus Christ loved you and I enough that he died on that cross at the hands of wicked men. They beat him. They ripped his beard out. They whipped his back. And he went down and then he shed his blood on that cross. They nailed his hands and his feet to that cross. And he hung there and he died. A bloody mess. For you. And then he went down somehow to hell, and he took upon him the sins of the whole world, and he paid for those sins in a way that would satisfy God the Father. And when he rose again the third day, he proved that he had conquered death, he had paid for sins, he had conquered sins, and he set it up so that, hey, if you don't want to have to pay for your own sins, He'll give you a way out. The Lord Jesus Christ said, hey, listen, if you realize that you're a sinner and you realize, hey, I look at my past and I see all kinds of sins. I don't know what kind of sins you have, but I can well imagine. I bet there's lying. I bet there's cheating. I bet there's wicked thoughts. I bet there's things that you've done that you're not proud of. I bet you've gotten yourself involved in some situations you know were wrong and you did it anyway. The list can go on and on and on. But Jesus Christ loved you enough, even with all of that, to say, you know what I'll do? I'll pay the price for that person's sin. I will suffer the punishment in hell for what, for you, it would cost eternity in hell. Jesus Christ, somehow or another, paid the price for all of us. Now remember, he was perfect. He didn't deserve to go there. He was sinless. but you and i are but he paid that price uh... and and he set it up folks he set it up so that if you were genuinely sorry for your sins it takes an honest heart this is not just a oh yeah gee i want to go to heaven cuz i don't like the sound of burning forever uh... no no it's it's deeper than that it's like no i understand i'm a sinner I've sinned more than I even care to remember, quite honestly. And I don't want to have to pay the price. I don't want to have to face that punishment. I can't even imagine spending eternity in a lake of fire and never being able to get out. and never being able to find any relief from the pain and the torment and the flames that lick at my skin or what's left of my body. I don't want to face that. That's not where I want to spend eternity. Okay, the Lord Jesus Christ gave you an answer. He said, hey, you don't deserve it, but I'll give you a way out. What we all deserve is a sinner's hell because of our sin. Jesus Christ said, hey, I'll give you a way out. And you know what? It's absolutely free. Amen? It doesn't cost you a dime. You don't have to put money in the plate. You don't have to join the church. You don't have to get baptized. You don't even have to be a Baptist. You don't have to be anything. Just a sinner. And you're already that. But when your heart realizes, hey, I don't want to go there. Lord, what can I do? And the Lord said, you know what? I'll pay the price for you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him, what, might be saved. The Lord Jesus Christ did that so that when you realized you needed him, You go, you know what? I am in trouble. There's only one way out. That's through Jesus Christ. And then you finally get to the place where you say, okay, Lord, I get it. You're right, I'm wrong, you died for me, and other than that, I have no hope. Would you please save me? Would you please pay for my sins? Because I believe you. I believe you died for me. I believe you hung on that cross. You died. You were buried. I believe you rose again the third day. And I don't know all the answers. I don't know everything. But I know that you're real. I know that you're more than just a fairy tale. Father, I'm putting my trust in you to save me. And you know, when you do that, God takes that blood that he shed, and he pays for your sins. You know what the church is filled with? The church is not only a good place, but it's filled with good people. All the people here that have been saved, listen, that's what they realized. And they took advantage of that. And they're not any better than you in just a day-to-day sense, but I'll tell you one way that they are better than you, If you're lost, their sins have been forgiven. They don't ever have to face an eternity in hell because their sins have been paid for. You say, well that's pretty rough saying they're better. Hey, wouldn't you rather be in that place? I think that's a better place. The church is full of good people. Why? Because they're blood-washed saints. Because when you get saved, listen, you're fellow citizens. Every one of us is equal. We're all the same. The only difference is, you know, between us and what we were before is our sins are forgiven, but now the Lord put us all together. We're one family. Fellow citizens, the Bible calls us. And the church is full of good people because it's a place where saints are perfected. Right? Once you're saved, you come to church and you begin working on just character flaws. You begin to work on perfecting your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ and getting closer to God. And the church also encourages good practices. Hey, you know what the church encourages? The church encourages you to stay away from the things that are gonna drag you down and put you back in that lifestyle that you were in before. Or that you're headed to in the future. Hey, the church knows, God knows what are good things, God knows what are bad things, and one of the things the church does, it encourages good practices. Why? Because God wants to keep you out of the bad things and keep you in the good things. It encourages you to stay clean. It encourages you to help one another. It encourages you to submit to authority. It encourages you to work together for a common goal. It's a good place with good people. And it encourages good practices. That's what we talked about last week. This week I want to take a look at the power that makes that possible. Why is the church a good place with good people and good practices? What's at the bottom line? Obviously, Jesus Christ, but more specifically, I wanna look at where that source of power is that's gonna help you through all those things. right, that source of power that makes this church a good place with good people and allows you to follow good practices. That power, of course, comes from the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. You'll hear him referred to as. In Luke chapter one, when Mary was being ready to, you know, to have the Lord Jesus Christ when that whole process started, the angel answered, said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Folks, with God there is a measure of power that enables all these things that we're talking about to be possible. and the Holy Ghost came on Mary. She was a virgin, you know that, you know the whole story. And it says about that process of how the Holy Ghost interacted that there was the power of God that came upon her. It says in Acts chapter 1, it says that you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. There's a measure of power involved in the Holy Ghost coming upon you. When you get saved, what happens in a nutshell is before you're saved, your spirit is dead. It's full of sin. It's full of just earthly things, and yet spirit is dead. And you realize that condition. Like I said, you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior. And when you do that, God takes that Holy Spirit, the same one that came and visited Mary, the same one that we saw in Acts chapter chapter 1, chapter 2, when we're talking about the church starting in Pentecost and the same one that we read about in the Bible. God takes that Holy Spirit and He comes and He puts that Spirit inside of you. And that makes you alive spiritually. Where you were dead before, there was a lot of things you didn't understand. Now you're alive spiritually. And now you got that little piece inside of you that we call the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. And part of the things that Holy Spirit does is it brings with it a certain measure of power to help you in all these things that we're talking about. When talking of even the Lord Jesus Christ, it said how God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power. Again, those two things are associated together. In Romans 15, now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope through what? Through the power of the Holy Ghost. It's a real thing. God didn't just leave you down here helpless when you got saved. God gave you something that's supposed to help you and enable you to accomplish those things that you and I are trying to accomplish. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul said, for our gospel came not unto you in word only. Hey, it wasn't just sitting around listening. But also in power and in the Holy Ghost. What are we talking about this morning? Last week we talked about the church. Well, what makes a church so special? Hey, because it's filled with a bunch of people that are filled with the Holy Ghost. A bunch of saved people. Not perfect people. Saved people. Amen? I titled this message this morning, Holy Ghost Power. How's that for a Baptist message? Now, you folks know I'm not charismatic, proclaiming that you can have the power of God to use in your own selfish way. And that's what a lot of people want to do. Well, if I get the Holy Ghost, I can make myself rich, and beautiful, and prosperous, and I'll never have to worry again about anything else in life. That's not the way that it works. But there is a power with that Holy Ghost. And if you're saved here this morning, if you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, here's some things about that. And these things apply to you. Now, if you're here this morning, you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you don't have these things. They're available if you want them. If you get to that place where you decide, hey, I don't want hell, I want Jesus Christ, then all the things that I'm gonna be talking about here in just a second, they're available to you. But it's what makes the church a good place. It's what makes the church. And it's nothing that you probably haven't heard before, but the Holy Ghost, ladies and gentlemen, makes your Christianity stronger. Amen? Let's take a look at a few things this morning. Before we get started, let's open a word of prayer. Father, we thank You again for Your grace, Your mercy. Lord, especially for the price that You paid on Calvary's cross. Had it not been for you, every single one of us would spend eternity in hell. Father, I pray that no individual that's here this morning would ever have to face that. I pray that everybody here would realize you're a great God, you're true, you're holy, you're real. and you really did die for us, and that their hearts would be turned to you and trust you as their Savior. There's somebody here this morning that's lost. I pray that you'd work in their heart, prick their conscience, help them to realize just the great thing that they're missing. and father i pray that they would turn to you and trust you as a savior praises in jesus name open your bibles we will just uh... john chapter fifteen kind of get started here and we're talking about uh... we're talking about the the power the power of the holy ghost and and because uh... like i said i'm spam talking mainly to save people here this morning Because you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, the reality is, folks, the Holy Spirit came down, and there's certain things that the Holy Spirit came down to impart to you, and to help you with, and to empower you with. Right? God did not give the Holy Spirit to mankind so that somebody could use him as a ATM machine. Right? And just get everything that they want and consume everything upon their own lusts. That's not what the Holy Spirit was given for. But it was given for us, for Christians, when you're saved, it was given to you so that you can lean on Him, you can rely on Him at some different times. One of the first things is found in John chapter 15, take a look at verse 26. One of the first things that the Holy Spirit does is it gives you the power to glorify Jesus Christ. But when the Comforter is come, John 15, 26 says, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. The Holy Ghost doesn't testify of himself. He testifies of Jesus Christ. And ye also shall bear witness. That is, the Holy Spirit, ladies and gentlemen, gives you the power to begin to testify of Jesus Christ, to glorify Jesus Christ, to realize just how high and exalted Jesus Christ is. Amen? When you realize who Jesus Christ is, how powerful, He's God. He is God, just Jesus Christ was His earthly name we gave Him when He took on the form of a man, but He was God, and when you realize that, you know what, you begin to think about Him a little bit differently. And one of the things the Holy Spirit, Christian, one of the things the Holy Spirit gave you the power to do is to glorify Jesus Christ by bragging about Him. by telling how he's changed your life. Bob Jones Sr. said this, he said, it's one thing to know that there is a God. It's another to know the God that is. Right, hey, the devils know there's a God. Right, the devils believe and tremble. But it's another thing to know God yourself. It's one thing to know about somebody. It's another thing to know them. Understand who they are. Get to know them and understand how they think. Well, the power of the Holy Spirit, folks, gives you the ability to glorify God. Why? Because you know Him better. It gives you the ability to speak highly of Him. Christian, you know what you ought to be doing? I hope you find yourself saying things like this all the time. I hope you find yourself in just the normal process of life, coming across something, and just in the back of your mind, you wind up saying, oh, well, praise the Lord. I thank you, God, for doing that. I hope that's a regular part of what goes through your mind. I hope as you travel down the road and you make it safely, you think to yourself, well, Lord, thank you. You know what? You're amazing because you took care of me and I forgot to pray before I left the house, but you still took care of me. I hope you realize that everything that happens to you that is good, everything that happens to you that is noteworthy is because the Lord Jesus Christ allowed it to happen. I hope you realize that God is worthy to be spoken of. And Christian, when you open your mouth, you ought to speak in a way that glorifies Him and give Him the glory and the credit for all things that you have. I hope that's natural out of your lips. I hope praise is natural speech on every tongue, as the song says. I hope you're not one of those people that think, hey, I did it myself. Yeah. Who gave you the brain you got? Who gave you the strength you got? Who gave you the feet you can walk on? Who gave you the hands you can move? Who gave you the eyes you could see with? You didn't do it yourself. You know what a Christian knows? Because that Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside of us. You know what? We realize we've got the power to speak of Him. He's a mighty God. He's a holy God. There was that woman at the well, if you remember, in John chapter 4. And, of course, you know, she had had a rough life in her previous life, and she was sitting there at the well, and the Lord Jesus Christ came by and sat down and talked with her, and she began to debate and, you know, talk about her religion, and our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say in Jerusalem, and began to have this little religious debate, and the Lord just kind of cut through all of that, and he said, oh, he said, go get your husband. She goes, well, Lord, I don't have a husband. He goes, oh, you've had five husbands, and the one you're with now you're not married to. And she goes, yeah. All of a sudden, all of a sudden the tables turn, right? Hey, the Lord Jesus Christ knows every single thing about you. Right? And she came face to face. She had an opportunity in this life to come face to face with Jesus Christ and realize, hey, he knows every single thing about me. And you know what it did? It changed her heart. All of a sudden, she kind of stopped arguing about religion. All of a sudden, she kind of went, oh. And then she began to think. And then she began to process this thing. And then they had this conversation about living water, and I don't have time to go into the whole story, but she began to realize, bit by bit, hey, this is God. And it touched her heart. She met with God, she realized, hey, he knows everything there is about me, and you know what? He still wants to talk to me and give me this living water. And maybe you're here this morning, and I don't know how bad your past is, but if you're like the rest of us, it's probably pretty shady. You look around, you'd be embarrassed if everybody here told you exactly what they had done their whole life. Every one of you would blush in shame. We don't want to know. It doesn't matter. God doesn't care. God died for you anyway. And this woman at the well came face to face with that and the realization that God knows every single thing she had ever done. And it changed her heart. It changed her heart about God. It changed her heart about this man, Jesus Christ, who was God. And she goes back, and you know what she started doing? She started glorifying God. Hey, come see a man which told me everything I ever did. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't brag about that. I wouldn't come up and say, Brother Dale, Brother Dale, come see a guy that knows everything that I did because I'd be afraid that Brother Dale would go over there and talk to him and find out. But she didn't care. She started talking highly about Jesus Christ. There is no way, time just goes too fast. That Holy Spirit, that Holy Spirit comes inside and dwells inside of you, and He gives you ability to begin to speak highly of Jesus Christ. He begins to give you the ability, Christian, to speak openly for Jesus Christ. Shame, shame, shame if you're saved here this morning, if you're a Christian, and you keep your mouth shut. Amen? Shame, shame, shame if somebody's talking at work and they don't know that you're a Christian because you've never said anything. The power of the Holy Ghost. Listen, the reason the Lord put that Holy Spirit inside of you is so that it could kind of come forth and shine, so that people around you would begin to see, so that people around you would know, hey, God changed my life. God saved me from a sinner's hell. And your mouth opens up, and not only do you speak highly of Him, but you speak openly about Him. Why? Because you're not ashamed of Him anymore. Hey, some of you grew up in households where you were ashamed of your family. I remember being a kid and I was ashamed about where I lived. It's like, I didn't want people to know where I lived. All of us have things to be ashamed about. But you know one of the things that you should never, ever, ever be ashamed about? Your Savior. The God that bled and died for you. Hey, listen, none of us come from a perfect background, right? We're all just normal people. And if somebody says they did, they're lying. You say, well, what about the rich people with the silver spoon in their mouth? Yeah, well, they've got their own problems. Money may not be one of them, but I promise you it's something else that they're ashamed of. And one of the things the Holy Spirit does when it comes inside of you is it gives you the power to open your mouth, and it gives you the power to speak openly for Him, to speak highly of Him, and hopefully to speak often to and about Him. Hopefully that Holy Spirit, if you're saved here this morning and that Spirit is inside of you, listen, one of the things that it ought to have done to you is given you the desire to speak often to Him. What a shame to have a dad that's that great, a father that's that powerful, that's that mighty, that's that loving, that's that kind, that has got the power to move everything in this earth and then just not talk to him because you're busy? You're talking about the power of the Holy Ghost. Hey, the power of the Holy Ghost has given you the ability to speak highly of Jesus Christ. Speak openly about him. Don't be ashamed of him. Speak often to him. I'll tell you another thing the power of the Holy Ghost has given you the ability to do. And that is to reprove the world. You say, well, that doesn't sound very fun. This is what the Holy Ghost does. And when He has come, He will reprove the world of sin and righteousness and of judgment. There's a blind man in John chapter 9. And that blind man, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ came in and healed him. And he was, I mean, he was just ecstatic. He was thrilled. Because he got his sight back. And he didn't care what anybody else said. He got his sight back. and of course there was a bunch of uh... the religious crowd that looked at him and they didn't want to think they didn't like the fact that jesus christ was was working in this man's life right they didn't really care that he got a site back they were just more concerned about who is this jesus fellow that you're following uh... this guy got a site back he was looking at things for a completely different perspective and so he's uh... you know he's going on about his business and they said well who did this to you goes hey this guy jesus Well, who is he? Why are you following him? Hey, I don't know, but I know this. I know before I was blind and now I can see. Right? And those folks, listen, those folks, they began to get irritated and agitated, not because he was yelling anything at all against them, but just because they saw evidence of God working right in front of them and they couldn't ignore it. And that agitated him. That agitated him. That blind man had the courage to speak up. And as he spoke up, you know what it did? It reproved, it reproved those people that weren't interested. And they kept after him, they kept after him, and they kept after him, and he answered this, and he said, I've told you already, and ye did not hear, wherefore would ye hear it again? Would ye also be his disciples? They're mad because they don't want him following Jesus Christ and he speaks up openly and and just I mean he just he says Listen, I've told you time and time again, but you wouldn't listen to me. Oh, man, you want to be one of his disciples, too, right and That just that just ate. I mean that just ate at them The whole it was when you're saved you got the Holy Spirit inside of you you begin to testify of what the Lord's done for you and people around you If they're lost, they kind of get agitated at it. You don't have to try very hard. You don't have to try to upset them. Trust me, the Lord will get through to their hearts just fine. That Holy Spirit begins to work inside of you and it begins to reprove the world. When He has come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Just by speaking up. How do you reprove the world? You know what you do? Hey, you stay away from sin yourself. Hey, Christian. Christian. You're saved here this morning, the Holy Spirit's dwelling inside of you. You know what that Holy Spirit does? It pricks your conscience. When you're doing something wrong, the Holy Spirit speaks to you, and you know, and you kind of get... You know better. Right? Hey, how do you reprove the world? You know all you have to do is just choose to stay away from it. All you gotta do, all you gotta do is say, you know what, that's okay, I'm not really interested in that. And all your friends are gonna go, oh, what's wrong with you? Are you holier than thou? They're gonna have all kinds of bad things to say about you. It doesn't take much. How does the Holy Spirit reprove the world? Hey, by giving you the strength and the ability to just say, you know what, I'll pass, thanks. Just to stay away from it yourself. Hey, when they try to get you involved, You know what you do? Hey, you speak up against it. Try that for a change. Proverbs 1, folks, Proverbs 1, the Bible says, My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If the Lord said, hey, you got a bunch of people that are trying to grab you and pull you off in this direction and get you going down this road, you know what you should do? Don't consent. Just say, you know what, no thanks, I'm not going that way. Don't consent. All you have to do is say no, and the Holy Spirit's gonna wind up convicting them because they're gonna see that you're not going along with the crowd, and it's gonna bother them. their conscience is going to be guilty. Folks, the power of the Holy Spirit, God died for you, put that Holy Spirit inside of you, and you know what? It gives you enough strength to be able to stay away. It gives you enough strength when somebody tries to pull you in, that you have enough strength, enough courage, enough backbone. Listen, you got enough power from God, if you're saved, to say, no thanks, I don't consent. I choose to do something else. And that Holy Spirit gives you enough power, folks, not only to stay away from it yourself, not only to be in a place where you don't consent, but you know what, if you keep working at that, and you keep letting the Lord work in your life, and you keep striving to do right, you'll get to the place where not only will you stay away from it, but you know what, your mindset will change, and you'll begin to encourage other people to stay away from it. Hey, hey, hey Billy, come on, let's, let's go, you don't need to go with them either, let's go this way. You'll find yourself leading a counter-rebellion. Because the Holy Spirit's inside of you, just nudging you along that way. The Holy Spirit gives you the ability to do that. Amen? Billy Sunday said this, Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting them in. The power of the Holy Ghost. You know what the power of the Holy Ghost gives you the ability to do? Avoid that. I was thinking about this as I was going through, and I am going to try to hurry. And I realized that these points actually kind of follow a specific order. of how this all plays out. And I didn't really intend it that way, but as I looked at it and thought about it, you see that. And I realized that at the beginning, just young Christian, hey, you start by just praising the Lord. praising Him openly, speaking highly of Him, speaking often about Him, speaking openly about Him and often to Him. And that gives you courage and it gives you strength. And when you start doing that, the next thing you do is you start staying away from that sin yourself. The world starts getting reproved when they're being around you. It's a progress. Another thing that the Holy Spirit does, the power that He gives you, is, folks, the Holy Spirit guides you in life. It says in John 16, Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. You know what God's interested in doing, folks? God's interested in guiding you through this life in a way so that you can have the best life possible. We miss that sometimes, because sometimes we don't see what the best life possible is. Sometimes we think something's good for us when it's not. A lot of different reasons, but I promise you this, God's interested in guiding you through this life, and the power of the Holy Spirit, if you'll listen to Him, God will guide you in a way in this life that you will get to a place that is much better than where you were headed on your own. But let me ask you this. How interested do you think God's gonna be in taking time to guide this individual? Let me just throw another question out there first. How difficult is it to guide you? We're all a little bit stubborn. We all like to go our own way. How difficult is it to guide you? how easily do you listen how easily do you respond how well do you take review how well do you take advice uh... because sometimes we have a real real problem with that but i tell you what somebody who is somebody who has made it a habit to speak highly of God, to speak openly about God, and praise starts coming out of their lips, and they just naturally think, hey, you know what, God really is great, and God really is taking care of me, and that becomes their natural train of thought. You know, the Lord takes notice of that, and he goes, oh, hey, that person appreciates me. And then that person begins to, they try to avoid sin themselves, and that's reproving the world, and the Lord goes, oh, you know what? They're taking some steps in the right direction. Now, when it comes down to being guided, The Lord's much, much, much more readily available to guide you in your life in making wise decisions. Why? Because you're in tune, you're listening. You're walking closer with Him. You can hear Him. If you're not praising Him, you're not thinking about Him, you're not talking about Him. You're not interested in having a testimony that reproves the world. You're not interested in following it and obeying him. I promise you, even if he does try to speak to you and guide you in life, you're not gonna hear him. So you start with the first. You wind up, by default, having the second, being a reproof to a lot of people around you, and that's the part a lot of people don't like. That's where they fail. Oh, I don't want to upset somebody's feelings. They'll think bad of me because I'm standing up for Jesus. Really? So you'd rather go the other way? Hey, speak highly of Him. Speak openly of Him. Stand up for Him. Let your life be a reproof. And when you get to that spot, guess what? Your ears, I promise you, will hear better when God begins to guide you. That Holy Spirit is inside of you and it's trying to guide you and it's trying to take you to a place in life that is much better than the place you were going on your own. But if you can't hear, if you're not listening, When the Spirit of Truth has come, He'll guide you into all truth. If you let Him. So you start off, you work down, you become a reproach. And before you know it, the Lord is guiding your steps. And folks, you're getting into places that are far better than you ever would have imagined. I'm not saying all problems go away in life. But I tell you what, when you face a problem, you'd much rather do it with God guiding you than without Him guiding you. Trust me on that one. When you get to the place in life where you don't know which way to turn, you don't know which way is up, which way is down, everything is falling apart, your life seems like it's crumbling, and just, you know, it's, the pressure is on, you need to hear from God to guide you, to say, hey God, which way do I go? Because chances of you picking the right way on your own, without the Holy Spirit inside giving you a little nudge, say, hey, it's over here. Hey, it's over here. Hey, you're sitting there going, oh, I think I'll go over there. This is more fun. And the Holy Spirit all the time is trying to nudge you again. No, it's over here. It's over here. And if you're listening, and you've been doing these other things, you'll pick up on it. And God will guide you through those difficult places. And it doesn't mean you're not in a difficult place. It means God will help you with the best way out of that difficult place. Which is, in all fact, the best you can hope for. He'll guide you. I'll tell you another thing the Holy Spirit will do inside of you. It'll give you peace. It says in John 14, but the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I've said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. People search for peace all the time in this life. Hey, if you have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you, you have the power to find it. That Holy Spirit will lead you in a life and put you in a place, regardless of what circumstances you're in, where you can actually find peace. You can actually find joy, you can actually find comfort, you can actually find a place where you fit, where you're secure, where even though there's a storm raging about you, you're okay because you know God's got you taken care of. The Holy Spirit has that power to give you. But folks, I promise you, you won't find that kind of peace If you're not glorifying Him. If you, by your life and your testimony, don't wind up a reproach, because you're choosing to go another direction. If you decide, when the Lord speaks to you and tries to guide you, that you don't want to go that way, you want to go this way. Listen, I promise you, you're not going to find the peace that's over there, because you went the wrong way. See, step after step after step. I didn't plan it, it just kind of worked out that way. So coincidence, or God was just smarter than me when I was crying yesterday and tonight, help, help, help. He put it together better than I could have. But you get to that place where you hear the Lord guide you and that Holy Spirit, part of the power of the Holy Ghost is to guide you and you know what, you wind up in a place where you can find peace. You're much more comfortable when you're where God wants you to be, doing what God wants you to do, and God has now got you in a place where He can take care of you, and you're not in the middle of all the trouble that you would have been in had you gone the other direction. But you can't find this peace until all those other things fall into place. Billy Sunday said this, too. If you have no joy, there's a leak in your Christianity somewhere. I thought that was pretty good. Sometimes you hear a Christian say, I just can't find any peace, I can't find any joy. I promise you, you missed something. The glorifying His name maybe is not as pronounced as it should be. You wind up being a reproof and a reproach to the world is not as pronounced as it should be. Maybe you're not listening when the Lord's trying to guide you and you didn't get in the right place where he's trying to guide you like you should've. So of course then you didn't find the peace, you didn't find the joy, because you're not where God wants you. And I'm done, I gotta wrap things up and so I'll hit the last point real quick. The final thing the Holy Spirit gives you, and folks, you gotta think about this, because you and I know no matter what we do in life, It's temporary. I can get a new job and get a $10 an hour raise. Yay! And I can get fired next month. I can get a brand new car. Yay! And the engine can go out next week. No matter what you do in life, however successful you think you are, it's temporary. God's in control of all those things. The devil's trying to mess you up with all those things. And you live in a world where all those things kind of clash and combine and you're stuck in the middle. But I tell you one thing that's permanent. When you trust Jesus Christ to be your Savior, it's full circle. When you realize, I don't want to go to hell. I know I've sinned enough to deserve it, but I don't want to go. Lord, would you please save me? I believe in you. Would you please save me? That's all I got. When you do that, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside of you, and no matter what happens after that, it's permanent. The Lord promised he would never leave nor forsake you. Once the Lord Jesus Christ purchases you with the blood of, or he pays for your sin with his own blood, that transaction is permanent. While everything else in this life may be temporary, may be great today and lousy tomorrow, I tell you one thing that's great today and great tomorrow, that's your salvation. When you trust Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside of you, and listen, no matter what you go, no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter how, whether you listen to the guiding or not, He's still inside. It's permanent. Amen? And that'll never change. Let me ask you this, you got anything better? You got anything better? Christian, what are we talking about? We're talking about, hey, why church? It's a good place. Because the Holy Spirit gives us that kind of power. And it's trying to do that with all of our lives if you're saved here this morning. Amen? Amen. It's a permanent thing. Billy Sunday was a baseball player. He said this. He said, stopping at third adds no more to the score than striking out. I thought that was kind of funny. It doesn't matter how well you start, if you fail to finish. Folks, when you get the Holy Spirit inside of you, the Holy Spirit does the work that finishes you. Amen? The power of the Holy Ghost. Those are the things the Holy Ghost is trying to do in your life. But you gotta let Him. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, we thank you again for an opportunity to be here on a Sunday morning You're a great and a holy God, and Father, you shed your blood on Calvary's cross to pay for our sins, and Lord, I'm so thankful of that because without that, there would be no hope of any of this stuff that we just talked about here this morning. But Father, first off, I suppose if there's anybody in this room that is lost, I pray that you would deal with their heart, that you would help them to see, Lord, the best thing they could ever do is to trust you as their Savior. Because without taking that step, that Holy Spirit with all that power is not inside of them. Worse yet, they gotta pay for their own sins. So Father, if there's somebody here who's not saved, I pray that you'd help them to realize those two simple things. And then I pray that they would have a heart that just desires to receive you as Savior. There is no time like the present to do that. Father, I pray that nobody would walk out of these doors lost and still on their way to a sinner's hell. But Father, for Christians, I pray that you'd help us to realize that this whole Christian life is kind of step-by-step. It's built on a process, the things that we talked about today. Winding up in a good place and in the right place in life doesn't happen by accident. It takes some work. It takes some understanding. It takes letting the Holy Spirit do these things in our lives so that we wind up where you want us to be, in the place where you want us to be, with the peace and the joy and the comfort that you want us to have. Father, I pray that no Christian here today would chase a false peace or a false comfort because they're not gonna find it. It's not there. It's empty. But Lord, you give the real thing. I thank you for that. Pray that you'd help us now. I ask you to sing in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's take our hymnals and stand and turn to number 292. Not gonna take long here. I know it's a couple minutes past noon, but give you an opportunity to just think about some of the things that were said. And if you need to be saved here this morning, I pray that you would Just make that known to us. In a minute, I'll have everyone bow their heads and close their eyes, and I'll ask, and if you need to be saved here this morning, I pray that when I ask that you just raise your hand and say, yes, that's what I want. If you're a Christian here and maybe some of the things that the Holy Spirit is supposed to be doing in your life are not happening the way that you thought they should, would you examine what we talked about and just try to figure out hey where's the breakdown where's the leak it's all about finding the leak