<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

HopeLives365

Mark Finley

Who is the Holy Spirit Really and Why You Need Him Right Now ?

Hi, is it good to be back at Living Hope?

My wife and I have been traveling for, I think, the last 6 or 7 weeks.

I don't remember how many flights, 12 or 15 flights.

I did count up the number of hotels we stayed in.

I think it was about 25 in the last month.

So to get home and sleep in your own bed is great.

And to be at church with you and to be able to share God's word.

We led a tour to the 7 churches sites of the book of Revelation.

I've been there many times to be in what we believe was the cave where John received the book of Revelation on the island of Patmos and sing Amazing Grace in that cave and listen to the echoes and kneel and pray there.

And you know, we were out at Laodicea, the seventh of the 7 churches, And there at Laodicea, the University of Pomucoli has recently excavated that city.

When I first used to go there many years ago and film with the Innisritten film crew, it was just a wild, barren place, but now they've excavated it.

And they excavated a fourth century church.

And we made an amazing discovery in that church.

In that fourth century church, there is evidence of Sabbath keeping on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, as late as the fourth century.

And so it is really remarkable to climb over those ancient ruins and to study on site the book of Revelation.

This last week, we were at a major event.

What would happen if 2050 volunteers went into a city, dedicated their time to reaching that city for a week?

Louis city had given us the convention center, which if you wanted to rent it, it would cost you half a million dollars, but they gave it to us free.

We brought in physicians, we brought in dentists, Academy students came with choirs, university students came.

They needed no insurance, they needed no...

They didn't need any identification And we had our dentists there.

We must have had 50, 60 people dentists in the dental department alone.

We had maybe 17 dentists and dental hygienists, and we had students that were helping us to organize.

Louis, where we'll have our general conference session.

And it's funny because people said to me, Pastor Mark, here's what your responsibility is.

With thousands of people coming in, we're going to have many problems.

You are our problem solver." That was an interesting job.

So on 1 occasion I would go to each of the department heads, the head of dental department, the head of medical department, the head of eye care.

In fact, we gave out, we did eye testing with our optometrists.

We transformed the convention center into a hospital.

And political officials were walking through with their mouth open saying, Seventh Day Adventists, this is amazing what you guys are doing in this city, helping the underprivileged.

The police were so excited about what we were doing that they said, we're going to be distributing all the brochures all over the city.

But many of our Spanish folk thought that the police distributing the brochures was a trap by ice.

But the first day, we had a few Spanish folk come, and they were so excited that after the second, third, and fourth day.

I mean, we were overwhelmingly packed when they knew no identification.

All we cared was helping people and praying with people.

But I'll tell you 1 interesting experience.

So each morning, I'd go to the department heads.

And I was talking to the head of dental and I said, let's pray together.

I know it's going to be a tough day in dental because the lines are out around the building.

People coming in to get free dental care.

As I was talking to the head of the dental, 1 of the dental hygienists ran up and said, we have a man that's non-responsive, just passed out.

The dentist looked at me and said, Pastor Mark, we need medical care.

My wife's helped me learn how to jog well.

So I jogged over and got the head of medicine.

We began to work on that man, unresponsive, unresponsive.

And so we thought, are we going to lose him?

And as we had him on the floor, we looked for veins, couldn't find any veins.

Finally, a little vein in the arm, shot it in the arm.

And I was on the floor, knelt over that man, prayed over him.

That man got up, he was able to function, and so we saw miracles.

Miss Tini, my wife, was responsible for organizing the follow-up and we had training for our instructors.

We have 24 classes that are now going and we developed a special prescription pad for doctors.

So if somebody has high blood pressure, they write you need to attend our stress management, our wellness class.

If somebody has high cholesterol, high triglycerides, you need to attend natural lifestyle cooking.

So we have 24 natural lifestyle cooking classes, wellness classes, diabetes undone, depression recovery, running all through that city.

Hundreds of people said, we want Bible studies.

If Seventh-day Adventists have come to this city to give $15 million plus of health care help, we get probably between $15 and $20 million free of health care.

They said, we want to know about Adventists.

Young and old working together, all ethnic groups working together for 1 reason, to help a city.

So thank you for being part of a church that understands that human beings are whole, physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional, and a church that cares enough to try to make a difference in the community.

So let's pray and then we're going to open the Word of God together.

Father in heaven, as we talk about the Holy Spirit today, I pray that your Spirit would be with us.

Help us learn not simply something about the Spirit, but help us learn the role of the Spirit in our lives and how to be filled with the Spirit.

There are a lot of questions today that people have about the nature of the Holy Spirit.

And so in our message today I want to answer 3 questions.

Is the Holy Spirit merely an influence that comes from Jesus?

Is the Holy Spirit a force that comes from the Father?

Or is the Holy Spirit the third person of the Godhead?

Second question, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in your life and mine?

Third question, What is the infilling of the Holy Spirit?

Back to Menu

Who is the Holy Spirit Really and Why You Need Him Right Now ?

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine