Listen, uh, we want you to save that date, okay? Camp Venture will happen at all of our campuses in June. The last week of June. June 23rd is when it'll kick off. That's on a Sunday and it'll finish up on a Wednesday night.

I believe that's the 26th. And so I don't know what your summer plans are, but we don't want you to miss that. Uh, speaking of plans, listen, if you have got a student sixth through 12th grade, you don't wanna miss tonight. All of our campuses, we're gonna have the chance to host you right here at Lincoln Road at something we call Unite, which is where we bring all of our student ministry together. And so tonight's gonna be really a powerful night of worship, a great message.

And so don't miss a chance for your student to come tonight to unite. Now, one other thing just that, that I need to do, today's a really special day in my family, and so I need to tell Rosie happy birthday. You are 13 today, we love you and uh, man, I love being your dad. So happy birthday to Rosie, right? Listen, here's, uh, here's the question for you.

Listen, when you think about, when you hear the word church, what comes to your mind? What's the first thing that you think about? Now here's what I know about the room man. There's lots of you watching today that listen, the, the reality is you didn't grow up in church. So it's kind of a blank slate for you.

And maybe it's just what you heard about when it comes to church. Some of you, you grew up in church, some of you grew up in a different denomination. So what was normal for you, right? May look real different than what was normal for me. Uh, some of you grew up in just a different culture.

Uh, some of you, believe it or not, I've got a friend of mine that comes to this particular campus who's from Ireland. So what was normal for him is really different than what's normal for me. Here's my point. No matter what your normal is, it's different than the first church. The first church had no building, had no band, had no Bible.

The first church met on the very first day of the week, and it was before work, and they just kind of gathered together and someone told a story of what they saw Jesus do, and then they celebrated and they worshiped together, and then they dispersed and they went to work. It didn't look like just one speaker coming to share. It was a movement. And it was a movement centered around one question. And the question was, did you know Jesus?

And do you believe that he was raised from the dead? And that question determined if you were a part of the church or if you were not. And we are in a series. We're in a series right now and is simply called There's more. And we're studying the book of the Bible that tells the explosion and the experience of when the first church gathered together.

Now, that's the book of Acts comes right after the gospels. You know this about the Gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. I love reading about the life and the teaching of Jesus. I mean, there's something about that that just kind of brings us back to our roots. Like, this is what it's supposed to be all about.

But don't stop there because the next book, the Book of Acts, it's what happened after Jesus ascended to heaven. And the apostles, the ones that watched Jesus begin to take his word and his teaching, apply it to their life. And then here's what happened in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit. Now when you hear that, it's like I was with you, Craig, till you mention the Holy Ghost. And that's when we begin to kind of go, what is that all about?

Well, listen, we're gonna talk about that today, and I hope that today we're gonna begin to get on the same page a little bit about what it's like to experience the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, I wanna kind of catch you up because, uh, again, this is the second week in this series. You can go back to last week, man, gray did an amazing job and he gave us a verse to kind of really summarize last week. He said, when you experience the Holy Spirit, it's like, it's like there's, there's more I've come to give you life and I've come to give it to you more abundantly. And that's kind of the context of where we're going.

Like, could there be a life that is more abundant? And there is, it's through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's where we started. That's kind of Acts one and two, the big thing that happens in the first part of this book is the Holy Spirit falls on the church. The Holy Spirit was like Jesus is Jesus the God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

And you could see that in Jesus' life, he was the model for this. He lived differently. There was power. In the Old Testament, you see the Holy Spirit on a few, right? It kind of comes and goes, but in the Book of Acts, everything changes because now the Holy Spirit has fallen on us, the church.

And that is a good thing. In fact, it's a gift. Now here's what's happened because we've made it to chapters three and chapters four. And I'm gonna give you kind of a summary and then we're gonna, then we're gonna tackle a text. Okay?

But here's, here's what's going on. We're looking at Peter and John. Peter and John show up at church, just like you showed up at church today, when they walked into the temple, there was a man there who was begging. He had been crippled from birth. The text then tells us he's over 40 years old.

So he is a young man, right? Come on. But here's the point. The reason we have that detail is he had been there for a long time. Everyone in the community knew this man and they knew his condition.

Well, Peter and John walk into the temple, they're headed in, and before they get into the temple, they make eye contact with this man. And then Peter does what he saw Jesus do so many times. And he sees him, he looks at him, he begins to talk to him. I love this part of the story. This is all in Acts three.

Go back and read it. He reaches down and he holds him by the hand and he helps him up. And when he helps him up, the Scripture says, his feet and his ankles became strong. Man, that was a miracle. Here's the part.

Anytime you have a miracle in your life, the next thing that happens, the man that was crippled from birth follows Peter and John into the temple gates. And now what was once gonna be this controlled low key experience, it is, it is worship. There is jumping, there is celebrating. The man is on cloud nine because he has been healed. And the temple, the preachers, the elders, their day just got thrown out.

This man is causing a scene. He has been healed. It's miraculous, and they don't know what to do. In fact, it says that people came running, walking, jumping, praising God. They were filled with wonder and amazement at what had just happened.

In Acts three, we heard about, let's see how many 3000 people getting saved after this miracle. When people came running to see, when people couldn't wait to see this man who they knew because he was over 40 years old who had now been healed, man, they began to give their life to Christ. It says 5,000 people were saved. Do you see what's happening? The church is exploding.

And man, the rulers and the officials and the elders, they can't control it. So they're back to the same problem they had with Jesus. I mean, they thought maybe we were done, we crucified him. We had to get him out of the picture. But now his apostles, the people that watched him and heard him and listened to him, they're doing exactly what he did and they got a problem.

So let's pick up Scripture. We're gonna be in Acts four. And I want you to start with verse seven because this is the question that the elders, the officials, all the people that are in control, this is the question that they're asking Peter and John about the man that they just healed. Here it is. By what power or what name did you do this?

I love the man doesn't even get a name, right? Did you do this? Who healed this? Man? That's the question.

Here's what Peter and John say, starting in verse eight, hang with, I'm gonna read a little bit of Scripture so that you can hear their answer to who did this? Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers and elders and people, rulers, rulers and elders of the people. If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness, shown to a cripple and we're being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but who God raised from the dead, that this man now stands before you healed. Uh, you can tell Peter was kind of shy, right? He stepped into the moment, didn't he?

All right. Verse 12, salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. He is sharing the Gospel. He's using this moment when they saw the courage of Peter and John and they realized that these were unschooled and ordinary men. They were astonished.

And they took note that these men had been with Jesus, but since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there with them, there was nothing that they could say. So they ordered them to be withdrawn from the Sanhedrin and then they conferred together. I love this. What are we gonna do? Right?

What are we gonna do with these men? They asked, everybody living in Jerusalem knows that they have done an outstanding miracle and we can't deny it. He's, he's right here. But to stop this thing from spreading any farther, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name, the name of Jesus. Verse 18.

Then they called them back again and they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, 19. But Peter and John replied, judge for yourself whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God, for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. Okay, let's talk about that. Where is this power coming from? Well, it starts right there in verse eight.

Let's just take it piece by piece. Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit. 40 times in the Book of Acts, we get the Holy Spirit. Now, you and I need to know the last instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples after they watched him, after they saw him, after they heard from him, he told them, he said, listen, I want you to go back to Jerusalem and I want you to wait. What are we waiting for?

I want you to wait for the Holy Spirit to come on you. So wait, wait. You want me to go be your witnesses? You want me to go be bold and courageous? You want me to go tell about all the things we saw?

No. I want you to wait for the Holy Spirit. Listen, Jesus knew me and you and he knew these apostles and he knew the people that he'd been following. Man, we need help. We need power.

So before you go and do, just, just wait. And I want you to do all these things in the power, in the gift that is the Holy Spirit. See, the Holy Spirit is a gift. It's what He's left you and me. It's the way we find power.

It's the way we find strength. It's the way we overcome temptation. It's the way we find comfort. It's the way we have a counselor that's with us. You know, the, the fruits of the spirit.

And I love thinking about the fruits of the spirit. And I want more of the fruits of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Those things don't come natural for me. So how do we have those?

Will it that your gifts of the Holy Spirit, Jesus told them, I, I, this blows my mind. This is in John 1412. Listen to this first you will do, you'll continue to do the things I've done. You will even do greater things than these. How?

How are me and you like moms and dads? I mean, how are our students supposed to do greater things than even Jesus did it. It's through the help and the gift of the Holy Spirit. What we couldn't do, we now can do through the Holy Spirit. Now, lemme give you an illustration because that just helps me.

Um, I want you to see and think about this balloon kind of as our life, okay? One of the first things we know about the Holy Spirit comes from the Book of Genesis where it talks about how the Holy Spirit was, was, was hovering over all the Earth. And so when you think about the Holy Spirit, you need to know this, right? I mean, the Holy Spirit is with us. And so like when I take this balloon and, and I begin to fill it with air, it's, it's like I'm inviting Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who's all who, who's everywhere into my life.

So, so here I go, right? I become a believer. I put my faith in Christ and I say, Jesus, I need you in my life. It's like this. Lemme make sure I get this right.

Good Job. Thank you. Okay, too much Holy Spirit, right? So this is what we do. He begins to consume us.

And we know this right? We need more and more of him. And so we spend time in the Word and we come and we worship and we begin to battle with our flesh a little bit. And we get more and more of the Holy Spirit. And then our life doesn't look the way it used to look.

It looks different. My balloon's not the same. There's now this presence of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. They're holding their ears here. I need more.

I don't just stop. It wasn't just a prayer that I prayed one time in my life and then I got baptized and then I stopped. No, it's a daily journey or get more and more of the Holy Spirit and less and less of me, but you and I don't live that life. We pray one time, God come into my life, God come into my heart. And then we kind of keep doing life the way we used to do it.

And we wonder, where's the power? Where did it go? Like I thought there was more. How Do I get it back? I used to be, my life used to look different, But it's like the Holy Spirit's got He, he hasn't left you, man.

He's all around you. It's the secret sauce we have as believers. We just have to wait and we have to battle our flesh and we have to lean into the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have to learn to do life differently. It's not just a prayer and a baptism.

It's a journey. It's a process where we live differently by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the first thing. Second thing I see when I begin to study this passage is that Peter and John watched, listened, and acted like Jesus. Now let me give you the Scripture.

It's Acts four 13. When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realize that these were unschooled and ordinary men, everybody watching fits that category, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Peter and John had been watching Jesus so closely, and you see it in this miracle because they had seen what Jesus did. Like Jesus went from village to village.

And what did he do? He, he saw people. Me and you, we see a homeless person. We don't wanna look. Peter looks at the man that was crippled by birth and he makes eye contact with him.

The next thing Peter did was exactly what Jesus did. He reached down and he grabbed the man by his hand. Now, Andy said this over in in Laurel and Jones County, we were talking about this message and he said, you know, when he did that, he crossed every cultural boundary. This man was unclean because he was crippled. And now guess who else was unclean?

Peter, did Peter care? No. We're church for the unchurched. We wanna bring people to come to know love and follow Jesus. It's who we are.

We're not scared to get dirty, to get involved in the lives of people. I was talking to someone today about the Holy Spirit. She said she had been one week without vodka. And I said, praise. Let's do this together, man.

It's such a powerful picture. And I love this because they watched so closely what Jesus did. Now, lemme ask you something. I I, me and my wife and I get one, one of the, when our kids were smaller, one of the things we disagreed on was what it looked like to watch our kids for, for me to watch our kids meant they were in the neighborhood and they were in shouting distance for her. It's like they got, it's like she's got, it's like swatting distance.

Like it's, they gotta be close. It was so many disagreements, like, are you watching them or not? Yes, I'm watching them, but she watched them differently. And what I want you to see is like, how are you watching Jesus? Are you watching Jesus the way I watch my kids?

That's not a good idea. I want you to watch him. I want you to see what he does and then begin to do it. Listen, seeing is passive watching is intentional. Now listen, listen, let me kind of church this up for you a little bit because what I'm talking about is spiritual.

You ready? Really simple spiritual formation. We are all in the process of becoming what and who we watch, okay? That's why you love this, right? When it's a, when it's a wedding and we go back and we watch the slideshow of relationships or, or even if it's a funeral and we go back and we watch the slideshow of different seasons of life that people were in.

And man, we laugh because man, right? Who didn't have an awkward teenage stage. And we see that picture and we go, oh, I remember that season of life. And we see pictures, you know, you got your, you see people that were in your life at different seasons or stages and you know this, they had an impact on you. They began to form you into who you are today.

You have been formed, you are being formed, and you will be formed in days to come. But I don't want to discourage you, I want to encourage you to be formed into the person of Jesus. But that takes watching him, that takes studying and opening his word. That takes a moment where you're just in awe of some of the miracles that takes going a week without vodka. That takes saying no to your flesh and stepping out into the spirit of God.

Now, I, I need to be honest with you, I'm not there yet. There's areas in my life that I struggle with in becoming more like Jesus. And I, I've shared this with you. One of those areas is generosity. I'm, I'm just not naturally generous.

And it, and it, and it kinda came back and got me the week of spring break. Couple weeks ago we went to Texas on a, uh, spring break trip, me and my family, and we stopped in a kind of a no-name town quick bathroom break, you know, I've got a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old and one of my kids ran into the restroom, no big deal. They went in, came out, we jumped back on the road, spring break. Dad, let's go. We gotta go.

We're trying to get there. About three hours past that restroom, all of a sudden I hear from the backseat, dad, yeah, I forgot my phone. It's like, okay, okay. So we called the gas station and said, Hey listen, we forgot our phone. Is there any chance you could hold on to, do you have it?

Yeah, yeah, I got it right here. I got it. Could you hold onto it for us like for four days and we'll pass back through town and we'll get the phone? He said, no problem. Here's where my generosity got me.

I was like, let's just tell him thank you. My family was like, no, we need to give him something. He has kept this phone for four days and this was a, this was like a prop. This was like a grind in me. Like I I wanted to give him like a candy bar.

They're like, no, he owns a gas station. You, you're gonna have to give him some money. Like, bless him. This should be an overflow of your heart. Like he's, he's held this phone for you.

What is wrong with you? What is your problem? And what I'm asking you is like, when you think about that and when you hear that, like what, what area of your life needs to be shaped into what Jesus would do? That's what the Holy Spirit does. He takes this, this heart of mind that's not naturally generous and he begins to form it into a, a new way of living, a new way of life.

There's gonna be a day. I'm telling you, I'm 44 right now. When I'm 54, I'm gonna be more generous when I am 64. I'm gonna be blessing people when I'm 74 people at the Mexican restaurant are gonna be dying to wait my table 'cause it's gonna come outta me. But, but don't give up.

I don't know what you're battling, but I know there's an area of your life that needs the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's, maybe it's addiction, maybe it's depression and anxiety and you're like, oh my gosh, it is back again. Yeah, it's a process. It's a journey. Maybe it's patience with your kids, man, I was talking to one of the ladies on our prayer team and she's been taking care of her mom, who I I seventies dementia hospice.

And that's not easy. She needs the power of the Holy Spirit to make it through one more interaction. And I'm just challenging you to say, don't give up on the process. It's not just one Jesus coming to my life. Let's get baptized.

No, it's this journey where we walk with him and he begins to change us and we begin to look more and more like Jesus. Here's the point. Who are you beginning to look like? Now let me show you this slide because a friend of mine shot me this and said, this is what it would look like to look more like Jesus. Alright, watch this.

Let's look at this. This is what it would look like if our lives begin to look more like Jesus, right? This year I wanna be more like Jesus. I wanna hang out with sinners. I wanna upset religious people.

I wanna tell stories that would make people think He did that all the time. I wanna choose unpopular friends. I'm gonna be kind, loving, and don't you love the last one. And I just wanna take long naps on boats. This is who we worship.

This is Jesus man. He did the miraculous, but he also just chose unpopular friends. He also enjoyed resting. He also spent time every single day asking the Holy Spirit, asking God the Father to equip him for what he was gonna face to. Here's the question we started out with You.

Ready? What comes to your mind when you think about church acts? I think there's 28 chapters. I may be wrong. Something like that.

We are the next chapter. We're now writing what the next generation thinks about. I just told you it's a 13 year old's birthday today. When we ask her one day, what was church like for you growing up? What will her answer be?

Will it be that it was a diverse place with all different kinds of people? And man, we worshiped passionately and we opened up God's word week after week, and then we like applied it in our life and we sat around circles and we prayed for each other and we saw the miraculous. We had a man in our house church that we came around and we prayed that his back pain would stop his back pain stopped. And my kids saw that, and that is normal. Wow.

How would they answer that? I want you to wait this week before you respond. Wait for the Holy Spirit. He's here. He's a gift.

He's all around us. We just have to invite him into the balloon. I want you to watch this week, watch through Scripture in the Book of Acts, what it looks like for the power of the Holy Spirit to what rest on you. Last thing, because I want to encourage you, so much of the Book of Acts is about a guy named Peter. The things we know about Peter is he used to lash out.

He was bold and rash. He was the one that drew the sword and cut the guy's ear off that came to arrest Jesus. Love Peter. But the Book of Acts paints Peter in a totally different light, shows him as the rock, as the anchor. He was bold.

Yet, because of this journey with Christ, he'd become under control. He was fully surrendered. He, he was living through the light and the power of the Holy Spirit. He was in process of being changed. He was a new creation.

That can be You. That can be this movement, that can be us because we have the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, here's what I ask you to do. I want you to, all of our campuses just kind of bow your head for just a minute. And sometimes it's easier to think when you're not getting preached at or when you know people aren't looking at you.

I want you to think about what area of your life needs to be clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a conversation, you know, you've gotta have this week. Maybe it's a team member. Maybe it's your husband, your wife, maybe it's a child, maybe it's whatever it may be. Just to think about It.

Now, I want you to invite the Holy Spirit to equip you, to give you the fruits of the Spirit this week, to, to walk differently, to, to, to live differently. And then I'm gonna, I just wanna read this verse over you, and this is two Corinthians 12 verse nine. I just, I just need you to take this in. It says, my grace is sufficient for you, for you single mom, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ power may rest on me.

Ready? Here it is. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Me. Pray for us.

God, I thank you for this gift of the Holy Spirit and, and God, I know I'm in process and, and there's moments that I wish I could go back in time and not rush a conversation or an interaction or not miss a conversation or an interaction. There's, there's things I wish I would've handled differently through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, God, just in a moment of real honesty in front of a lot of people, I, I need less of me and more of you. So God, I'd just pray that this week that my journey with you would, would continue to bear some fruit. That God, I would see you and I would God I would stop when I feel rushed and like I have to step into a moment and I would pray first, and that the fruits of the Spirit will become alive in me.

Help me be more patient. God, help me be more gentle. Help me be a man that's full of mercy. God, I thank you for this gift that you've left us, that God, when you left us, you didn't leave us to figure it out. You sent the helper, the counselor, the power.

You sent the Holy Spirit. Don't let me miss this gift. It's in your name we pray. Amen.