[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Way Community Church Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our mission is to show people the way to life with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Darahal and I am the pastor of the Way Community Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to join us as a member or of you simply need prayer,
[SPEAKER_00]: or if you want to worship through giving, you can find the links and the transcription of this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're going to kick off a new series entitled Where Do We Stand, and as a new church, just in three years of our short history, we have begun to do our own theological work on key cultural issues, and so I want to spend some time
[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking out loud and talking out loud about where we stand as a church on these key issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these sermons will be more topical, which means we will consider verses with verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't stay in one main passage, but we will consider many important passages to the conversation we're having.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to encourage you to follow along in the transcript of this podcast, grab your Bibles, let's study God's Word together.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever tried to get a group of people to all agree, to do the same thing for the same reasons, you understand how difficult it is to make our out of us and them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you are part of a blended family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe you're trying to start a business and you want to get people who have different experiences professionally to contribute to the mission of your organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, like what God has done here in the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we enter year number four, we all enter this space with previous many of us church experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do I take us and them and make our work?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's hard to be unified when everybody got different taste buds, different preferences, or how they won't things to go, or how they won't things to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's easy when our preferences clash to have division is something we're trying to unify.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something I'm preaching about here at church.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that I was broken-hearted to discover in my own house a few weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: My house is divided, I will tell you now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I learned after making breakfast and serving a plate of grits to my youngest son that I didn't know what was happening behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was broke her heart at when my youngest son got the plate of grits that I made him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his next question broke my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't I have some sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was devastated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just telling y'all straight up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't really cook like that for real, but it's three things I make.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll put against anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chicken on the grill, omelette, and grits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my baby boy, ask me, a real ATA Lea,
[SPEAKER_00]: Daddy, where's the sugar?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I knew that in their genetic pool, they have Atlanta half Chicago.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: My son's a half, 30-south half Midwest.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I knew it was a chance they could be pulled over to the dark side, but I believed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believed, I believed, I believed,
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that my genes without run, they mama's now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all, here's what's for that make me shout in all it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the person who made that graphic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my oldest son.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he gets it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have named him Darryl Jr.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the truth, the truth is, many houses are divided because of the pallet of the people in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not because we disagree on values, we just disagree on how something should taste.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can have fun around the grit of the conversation of grits, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We all understand a lot of things go angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Salt go angry, it's butter go angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cream go angry, it's cheese goes angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I love my son and I love his model anyhow.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church has always dealt with trying to bring people from different experiences into one community.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first century church was known as the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people in that movement were known as followers of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Acts 15, 1 through 33, until it's a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have time to read, but I want you to take a note of it and read it later.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Acts chapter 15, verse 1 through 33, some new things were happening in the way
[SPEAKER_00]: But they had to come together and create a council to reunify people with different taste buds to come under one community as followers of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was happening is that Gentiles were now being saved and
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to enter in the fellowship, someone to gente our practices were unsavory to the Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they wrote questions to the church leaders, right, what do we need to do in order to be a part of the congregation?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Jewish leaders, or excuse me, the Christian leaders of the first century church, had the first ever church council.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody say church council.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Acts 15 is about a council.
[SPEAKER_00]: A council of apostles, church leaders, different people came together, and they had a conversation around questions that could divide the church, and instead they came together to create a statement that we unified the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once this council reached their conclusion that yes, Gentiles can be Christians, hear me, and they don't have to get circumcised to become Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean, Reverend?
[SPEAKER_00]: Gentiles don't have to become Jews to become Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you say, Reverend?
[SPEAKER_00]: Black people don't have to act like white people to become Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you say in preacher, Asians don't have to become American to become Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you picking up what I'm playing now?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, along with you, call the name of Jesus, and they said in Acts 15, stay away from meet sacrifice to false idols, keep your body's pure from immorality, then y'all could.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this church council came together to answer a question that could split the way, but instead they developed a stand that would unify the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was the first church council, the first of many.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are at least seven in the history of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the first century BC until now, I'll excuse me, AD until now, there are at least seven councils that have shaped church theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have the time to go through each one in detail, but I want to list them for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first council of NYC and 325, cost that to Noble, and 381, Ephesus, Chowster down, cost that to Noble two times, and then NYC again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And each of those scenarios that was false teaching,
[SPEAKER_00]: that was threatening to pull the church apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so leaders had to come together to theologize.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means read the Bible, but understand the times, and figure out together how to take what the world means to where we live and create clear language that can unify instead of dividing.
[SPEAKER_00]: something each of those scenarios these councils came together and from those councils we've gotten what can be defined as orthodox doctrine meaning the fundamentals of our faith that help to shape the way we articulate what we believe stuff like the apostles create.
[SPEAKER_00]: or why we believe in the Trinity, or why we believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, or why we have accepted the books that are in the canon as one part with those that were not questioned to be God's Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, they don't mean that today we don't still have some questions about some of those things, but it does mean it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: believers in the twenty first century, stand on the shoulders of the work believers have done for the last twenty centuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that only we'll need to do our own work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can take their answers to their questions, but we got new questions that we need to answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my goal in this series of where do we stand is to answer some questions out loud about the way community churches official stands on some key cultural issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why, because false teaching is always present.
[SPEAKER_00]: I already understand, y'all don't have to say this to me, I just knew it to be so, and that is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I'm not the only preacher that you listen to every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for some of y'all, I'm not even your top choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like your third favorite preacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just live so close to the church that you come here, and you can't go the way you took your top two favorite preachers on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not only taking a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You thought man, well, if I lived in another state, I guess DeHall had to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, my ego is out of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that after you hear this sermon, between now and the next time you hear me preach, you will have access to all the preachers and teachers and information, and you got information coming at you from everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I also know.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has given me the responsibility and pastor and his church to shield your souls by mediating his truth and wisdom for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ray, my goal is to inoculate your spirit so that you don't get sick by the false teaching that is coming at you from every way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, false station is always present.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are always questions that need to be answered, and theology is our job in our generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every generation must do its own work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every church must do its own theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church that hasn't thought about what it believes don't know what it stands for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't know what you stand for, we already know this, you will fall for what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've had to do our own work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the way community church is a non-denominational church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means we all have influence from different denominations.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all know I'm about this born and bred.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the minute the Lord let me start a church and plan a church, I immediately knew about a conviction of the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: This church is supposed to be non-affiliated with any denominational back end.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I mean, we aren't influenced, it means we aren't kept from the broader scope of what the body of Christ is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so because we're not an organizational church and we're only three years old, we got to do our own theological work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to know what we believe, okay, because that's our responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's all the things we learn from these church councils.
[SPEAKER_00]: Theology is best done in groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, if one person is coming back to you and they the only person who can ever tell you with God, say it, that's not a church, that's a cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear me when I say today?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gone to school for five times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, four times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in school all my adult life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have given, I love the Lord with all my money, I promise y'all probably my strongest spiritual discipline is meditation and study.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I got the mantle on me to pass to this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what my spiritual gifts are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the office I hold and the fiduciary duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are in.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, that is bestowed unto me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, and I'm not the only person in this church who can hit with us at the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So theology is best done in groups of us thinking together, asking questions, dialogue, and throughout understanding of the scriptures to try to come to a reasonable communal clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what these church councils taught us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with that for the last two years, the way community church has had its own church council.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like Acts 15, 1 through 33, just like the seven councils I listed for you that helped shape the orthodox theology of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: T.O.C.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: has had a group of people meeting, imprive it, approve our board, to craft theological statements around key cultural issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my goal in this series is to give you those statements that we've developed and also preach and teach through the script to that undergrad, then so you'll know where we stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: not just where we stand, but so you'll be ready to give a reason for the hope that lies with the YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so here's a little bit about our theological counselor because I'm gonna be all wonder who I was on the counselor if I'm gonna keep the names anonymous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody ask me why, because if you don't like the statements, I wanna be the only one you can attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I'm gonna protect the other seven.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm going to give you the demographic breakdown of the council.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was eight people on the council.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four men, four women of those eight people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had at least one person in their 20s and at least one person in their 30s and at least one person in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and one person in their 70s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means it's what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Intergenerational.
[SPEAKER_00]: of the eight people on the council, three of us have post-grad seminary degrees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got people who go on a school to study theology and all eight of us were certified wayfongers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, T.O.C.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gang, Gang, for real.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are the demographics of those who came together for this board approved council to help shape what we believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for the next couple of months, I'm gonna answer the question of where we stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of today's message, I'll give you the other items we'll be talking about that I need you to be praying for.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let me just tell you, this series is not about, this series is not going to question what's already unquestionable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're not going to argue about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can always say that he's a son of God in God the Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we'll communicate here in a couple of weeks where we stand on Jesus, but this is not a debate about Christ as the Messiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is about cultural issues and how to explain in our articulate where we stand on those cultural issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen, church.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna give you one position.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm going to give you two perspectives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm going to show you three pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the first thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, one position on the gifts of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So today, I'm answering your question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do we stand on the gifts of the Spirit?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's our statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the T.O.C.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: Council came together and drafted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would like for you to read it with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to, you can, on the count of three, one, two, three.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that the Holy Spirit gives at least one spiritual gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: to every believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each believer is accountable to discern, embrace, and passionately function in their unique calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: All spiritual gifts are for the glorification of God and for the
[SPEAKER_00]: We embrace all biblical spiritual gifts to reduce fear, miss, use, and misunderstanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: One more, spiritual gifts are to be upheld by spiritual maturity and not abuse through
[SPEAKER_00]: carries magic into time in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, we teach that all going obedience and surrender to the spirits guidance is key to sustain effectiveness and the use of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, if you tune up CC during a game and you like it, let me see your thumbs up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'll rock with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like, let's see how this article first.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like, not, right, that one ain't, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I could have stopped now, but I got so many more notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, notice in our statement, the emphasis is placed more on spirit than gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means here, the way maturity matters more than charisma.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people you see promoted at the way community church have a maturity about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we'll be getting to the weeds of the grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to impress you, we'll try to talk over your heads, I'm going to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are some particularities in the Greek language, between these words that undergar terms like spiritual gifts or gifts or blogs, I'd love, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You got words that are translated as charisma or carousel or charismatic.
[SPEAKER_00]: All from the same root were slight difference, or you got Numa which means Spirit or Numa teacles, which is the effect of the Spirit, right, through people.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I don't really think matters for the conversation we're having, what I think matters for the conversation we're having is this simple reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual gifts are supernatural abilities to function under the option.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That means when you get saved and become a believer, the Holy Spirit don't just save you, the Holy Spirit gives you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whether you know it or not, or whether you use it or not, every Christian has a supernatural ability to function under the auction, which means by auction, when the Holy Ghost get a hope to you, you can do something with an exceptional skill that most people can't do at that level.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the spiritual gift is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual gift is not just, I kiss the Holy Ghost, I shout, fall out, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: I get a white sheet and throw it over you and use this laid air to your get up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some y'all aren't real, that's the Holy Spirit I'm used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holyness is right, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We tear it on the Lord every Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all in church around the same time every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ain't no Holy Ghost in this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like sugar on my grids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us, that's the Holy Ghost we used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others of us, you bet it's like me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you believe in the Holy Ghost, but you're all in the Holy Ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make you stay in church alone.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I believe in the Holy Ghost, but I own ketchup.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm too dignified, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sit down doing praise and worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Ghost is here, but they're not moving on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like subtle migraines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the major key that is this being gifted is no guarantee of spiritual maturity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do a disservice when we promote people because they give us, and we haven't given them time to mature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then you use the wrong gauge to determine if you close to God and not.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you're saying, Ria, this one I'm saying, you can be a good preacher and a bad person.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be a good evangelist and have a nasty attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be, you can speak in unknown tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: of angels, and then cuss people out in no tones of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you're saying, Ralph, you can be effective in your gift and still living in sin in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because God can use you, don't mean God is pleased with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can use anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God has only pleased with those who's maturity reflect the spirit's work in their heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all pick up, I don't put down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Bible is full of people, God used, but He went, please, with God used Pharaoh.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God went, please, with Pharaoh.
[SPEAKER_00]: God used King Saul.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saul was the first king of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: God used him in a powerful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But was God pleased with King Saul?
[SPEAKER_00]: He stripped the kingdom from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guy used Queen Jezebel.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was Queen of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guy used her.
[SPEAKER_00]: But was Guy, please wear her.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had dogs, a lick of her remained off the cement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guy used Nebuchadnezzella King of the Babylonians, but was he pleased with her?
[SPEAKER_00]: He made Nebuchadnezzella walk around like an animal in the forest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave him the mind of an animal until he humbled his heart to stop thinking all his greatness was his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: God won't please, whenever can as he just used him.
[SPEAKER_00]: God was not pleased with Gomer, the wife of Hosea.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God used her to paint a powerful picture of his mercy in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the last one.
[SPEAKER_00]: God was not pleased with Judas.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God used Judas' plans to affect your way salvation for mankind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get caught upon if God can use you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can use anybody at any turn or do anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, is God pleased with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God, I give you a gift and use you when that gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if he's my please or two, you know what you'll do?
[SPEAKER_00]: You come to the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have on a great blazer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will preach your heart out.
[SPEAKER_00]: People will be fighting all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God, this is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's certainly ever, ever, ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Monday through Saturday, you live like hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you die?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you face God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, hey God, I'm there at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I preached for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you should have been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was March 1st, 2020 season.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you said the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had on a great blaze of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put man, I killed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was all on the season.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the offering was great too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God is always like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember that day because even though you was in your flesh, some people got say about a spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you the people who came to heaven from that sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, see?
[SPEAKER_00]: You welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got you 10 people from that sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then God gonna look at me and say, yeah, I use you, but the part for me because I never knew you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
[SPEAKER_00]: because there's a difference between the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the fruit of the Spirit are listening to Galatians 5.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at this graph.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to differ each eighty-four.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fruit of the Spirit, every believer should have all of these.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gifts of the Spirit are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every one of us don't have all the same gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why it's dangerous to pick one gift and say, you don't have to hold the Spirit if you don't have this gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking in tongues is one gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't say that somebody don't have a Holy Spirit because they don't speak in tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't say that somebody don't have a Holy Spirit if they don't have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of us should have all the fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the fruit?
[SPEAKER_00]: That later is five.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I just named them for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the gifts are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's look at the list of the gifts of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Based on Romans 12 and 1st Corinthians 12, these are the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning, when you get saved, the Holy Spirit in dwells you and then gives you at least one of these.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that when the Holy Spirit move on you,
[SPEAKER_00]: You function in one of these at an exceptional level that you can't explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual gifts are exhortation, giving helps or serving prophecy, ruling or leadership, mercy, teaching, administration, discerning of spirits, faith, healing, interpretation of tongues, word of knowledge, miracles, prophecy, speaking in tongues or word of wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of us got at least one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of us have all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you got any one of them, but you don't have love, you are nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us will scared we won't say it because you couldn't speak into ours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody told you to go sit in this room to hold us be your follow on you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will know you say, because you will come out speaking in tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got in there and you will see her, is it first?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you got hungry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you was like, man, I'm just faking it, so I can go get something to eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got him, I got the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you speaking in tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, that's my stomach, Rowling, Rowling, Rowling, Rowling.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we all have at least one, and here's the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of us have multiple, but none of us have all of them, and none of us have the same in the same measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a different measure of faith that comes with each gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might guess my gifts by just being engaged in me as your pastor, my gifts by teaching wisdom and knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: On my dominant gifts, leading leadership, obviously, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of my office, I have to function in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I went in this office, I think I would still be a leader but I definitely would have wisdom and knowledge and teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just what the Lord gave me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means I can't explain it, but the Lord will help me understand and synthesize complex theological, beautiful truths, and then give me the words to explain it so clear, and I don't know how I can take credit for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I was in a room for pride in the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause you a no wish I would give, we don't even know how you did it like that for real.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how did that come out of me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotta give you the gift of giving and you'll remember how selfish you used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll give away generously and you'll stop it and be lying away, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm used to keep an eye on my God for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When did I get this desire to give from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause maybe you got a spiritual gift of giving.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be looking at somebody everybody be so impressed and you'll know in your soul they learn through the teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, how I know this person alive?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, this person around him's house, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because you got the gift of discerning spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody lose an A-Mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: You send that thinking, you're a lie and the truth ain't in.
[SPEAKER_00]: But keep on though, the Lord gave you the gift of discerning spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit, I tell you, you've been a Belot to before you walk in a room in a line of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll be able to play in that room how you need to, knowing the whole time, I know the real strategy that God has up to, and you're trying to take me to opposite way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why I get that from?
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not be good in the school, you'll be a sea student, but you'll know the secrets to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: How I don't do good on organizing tests, but my friends asked me for advice and I can give them wisdom of how to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you got a spirit to give the wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all picking up what I'm putting down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we all got at least one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The truth is we have multiple.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of us all have them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And none of us have them all in the same measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's a major key.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being mentored by an established believer in a safe community helps us mature in our gifting.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you take your gift home with you, and you think, well, I'll need to be a part of a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what you really just did?
[SPEAKER_00]: Rob Joe Self of the development, you can only get from somebody more matured in you in that same gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've left Joe Self to your own devices to try to figure it out and work it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which for me, Ralph, if you were profit,
[SPEAKER_00]: You need somebody more matured than you because your dreams are going to terrify you, your open faces are going to disturb your soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to be left to your own devices trying to discern the difference between when God speaks, when Satan speaks, and when my flesh is speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need a mentor to help me to sign a voice of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yapping number don't put down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's everybody's action item.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody got the same homework.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, discover your spiritual gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, prayerfully seek a mentor to help you grow in your gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's everybody's homework.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a story in Acts chapter 18 of a gifted speaker who needed mentorship.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was gifted, but he needed mentorship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at Acts chapter 18, verse 24 through 27.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, now a Jew named Apollo's, an Alexandria in my birth, a watch-all, eloquent man, came to Ephesus, and he was what, for fishing in the scriptures.
[SPEAKER_00]: This man had been instructed in watch-all T.O.C.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he was accurately speaking and teaching things about Jesus, being acclaimed only with the baptism of John.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he began speaking boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila, that's a life in husband, Priscilla's the wife, Aquila's the husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: When they hurt him, they took him aside and explained what y'all, T-O-C-C, the way of God, more accurately to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what they noticed, you gift it, you just not there yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got it, but you need a little bit more than what you got.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they pulled him aside and mitten toward him, so that after that mentor shoot with this couple, he was able to go forth in greater effectiveness in his gives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we all need to discern our gift, discovery, and find a mentor, prayerfully, who can help us develop it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one position on gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna run through the next two points real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's number two, two perspectives of the gifts of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I gave you our one position.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here are two perspectives.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may not notice, but hold the nominations, have broken off and started a old thing,
[SPEAKER_00]: because the church can agree on gifts of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold denominations.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all say over here, we're gonna go over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking over here and do.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing y'all doing over here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're y'all going over there because we like to shii going our grids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And y'all know, cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: God gave us the gift of diversity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride makes us turn it into division.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be in our first.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an issue when there's division in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's usually somebody's ego in front of the divide.
[SPEAKER_00]: If y'all gonna go down the street, let's diversify, not divide.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, when the way community church was planted out of ABC, that was not a church split, that was a church plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was not subtraction, that was multiplication.
[SPEAKER_00]: You picking up what I'm playing down?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, there are two perspectives that give us a spirit, and this is literally devoid of denominations.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a given to you real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: One perspective is the perspective that certain gifts ceased when the Bible was complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: The supernatural gifts that are unexplainable ceased when the Bible was complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after Revelation was done, certain gifts ceased.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's called cessation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you got the opposite perspective, which is continuation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, as long as the Holy Spirit is in our earth, and until the church gate rapture, all the spiritual gifts will continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
[SPEAKER_00]: The cessationists would also believe certain gifts cease essentially what they say is, when the Bible was done, we didn't need stuff like miracles, tongues, interpretation of miracles.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that light, supernatural stuff that is hard for us to explain, we'll need that no more, because we got the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But nowhere in the Bible doesn't say this, hey, these gifts won't be needed after the first century.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, there is a verse, let me read it to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 13, 19, 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, for we know in part and prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the part or the partial will be done away with.
[SPEAKER_00]: They take that verse to me, the perfect is divided.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Bible comes, we won't need to speak in tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't need miracles and signs and wonders.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's what that verse means.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll think that verse means when Jesus returns,
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is the perfect, everything we do in this space of church, age we do in part, when Jesus is combat, we will need it because we have Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the truth, the truth is, people who love the scriptures like I don't, and like many of you do, it's easier to rely on the scriptures than it gives you kind of explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we just gonna believe that we don't need the supernatural stuff no more, because it was hard to explain anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: But spiritual gifts, the five explanation, I cannot tell you how I, y'all, I was a regular teenager, cousin at school, rapping at lunch, just getting class.
[SPEAKER_00]: For real, I was going all at that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, the six funniest person in the school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm roasting everybody except the top five people who I didn't want to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm with the Mayas High School and the Lennon Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was doing all that by date and going home at night, reading the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read through the whole Bible cover the cover about a time I was 17.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knew I was doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell my mama, I didn't tell my grandma, I ain't tell none of my friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And school, I was cousin, rapping, beating on the table, roasting, skipping class, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Skipping class a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: One progress report has seven classes with five F's on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mama came in the room and woke me up in the middle of the night, show me the report call, and I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: But what scared me was how cold she was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ain't sleeping good at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a regular kid, but reading the Bible every night, read through scripture and I understood more, reading that Bible in the room by myself than anybody ever explained to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had good, good Sunday school teachers like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ms. Marguerie Battle, Ms. Leveo, I can't remember I understand Leveo, Ms. Bogos, one of my Sunday school teachers, Reverend Dennis Townsend, my youth pastor, Milton Campbell was my youth pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had all these people teaching me the Bible, but I don't understand the Lord reading in a room by myself at 16, that any human being ever explained to me, where I get that from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's the Holy Spirit saying, both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop cussing that school wrapping, being on the table, roast the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go to class.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to be a preacher, since you want to do all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I at least want to draw my first album first, but anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop trying to understand what cannot be understood.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Holy Spirit will give you gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: This how you know you get in constant your gifts because you will think you're going crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd be like me, council people, show people mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like the new you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if anyone be in Christ's heat or she is a new.
[SPEAKER_00]: but how all things have passed away, all things have become new.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would know you can close your spirit to give because you will think you crazy for thinking you can do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you start doing it, you will do it at an effective initiative, you can't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's not take when we don't understand to make it seem like something ceases.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the way we believe in continuation of gifts, all the gifts are available.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the only thing, how you flow in it is a sign of maturity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We promote maturity, not gifted at the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you oil it, but you not self-control, sit down a little while longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I want your order beyond demise.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, we believe in continuation, but if you're a prophet, the Bible says, the spirit of the prophet gets subject to the prophet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't know why the kids to Holy Ghost and lose control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Self-control is like fruit of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't catch the Holy Ghost and oh, I just got a profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got, not here you don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Push.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spirit of the Prophet.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have your spirit on this objection, you're not mature enough when you're a gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say that as I go over my time for each of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost done.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you three pictures real quick of gives us a spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm let you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the first picture in the best one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody say body.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever heard a term body of Christ, that's a biblical metaphor, right out of 1st Corinthians 12 to explain that we all are different parts of the same body, and you need each other even though you have different functions on the junction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just because I'm an ear and not a foot, I can't say I'm not important, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the ear needs a foot.
[SPEAKER_00]: A foot needs an ear, they're engineered to do different things but a part of the same ecosystem, the same life force empowers the function of the different members.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this picture body of Christ is straight out of first grade the instaill and straight out of a wrongness chapter 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the first picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the second picture I want to show you, pieces and everybody say pieces.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Peter 2 says, we are living stones.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we're being built up as a spiritual house, meaning peace by peace, we're being added to what God is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one picture is we are a body, the other picture is we are pieces, here's the last picture, seeds, let the church say seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all get the same spirit but different,
[SPEAKER_00]: spiritual gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 12 tells us it's one spirit that works all in all and through all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I got on this table is some seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got some some basil.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got some a zinear, some merry gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got different bags of seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the only thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: How long deacon's homework work?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you keep wasn't in the bag, you got to commit to someone in
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to see, raise your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, pass out the seats, there we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to do as many as we can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't take the bag if you can't sew it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw Dekin Curtis give his first bag to his wife, smart man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smart man.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ignore all the other hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing about gifts, and I'll be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gift you don't sew is the gift that won't grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody holds your bag up and you just got a bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: They all got the same bag, but they got different stuff in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the same spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But on each bag is written a different name.
[SPEAKER_00]: In each bag is a different sea packet.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all got the same spirit which has got different stuff in our bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't sew it, the lower can't grow it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man turche, a man get a little to hack up a pray that he would.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we stand on spiritual gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to show you what I'm going to be preaching about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meet in the team for the next two months, and I need y'all to be praying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're going to answer the question where do we stand on these subjects, or in women in leadership, on politics, on Jesus' identity, on resurrection, on artificial intelligence, or in marriage, and on sexuality.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so for the next two months, there's what we preach in about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So y'all know, at least for them, got me terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we ask and where do we stand, I'm going to be on my knees praying.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, next week is women's history day and so I'm going to preach on women in leadership, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So y'all be praying, at damn politics, y'all make sure y'all hear it two weeks for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope it's not going to be terrible, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus' identity resurrection is going to be easy to Sunday, artificial intelligence, marriage, sexuality, we've got statements around those, and we'll share them in time.