The Transformative Power of God's Spirit

I'm going to ask you to turn to your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 1, if you would please. This is my annual deep voice period, so I want to sing bass in the choir if we have a chance to do that. 2 Timothy, the first chapter. I want to begin reading at verse, if I can find it, verse 2. Verse 5, excuse me. In our Sunday school, we've been studying, started studying the doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of how is it that God transforms or changes the lives and character of people around Him. The idea is that God changes us. Our first lesson started talking about the fact that God had planned this from the very beginning. Before the foundations of the world, He planned how He was going to transform each of us. And the means He was going to do it was through the life of Christ Himself. He does this in a very simple way. You're living your life and all of a sudden you become aware that there is something in your life that's wrong. Your behavior, your relationships, your lifestyle, whatever it could be. This is how God starts. He always initiates the process of salvation by focusing on you and what needs to be changed or transformed in your life. And you become aware of it. And whenever you do, you try everything you know how to make it work right, to change it, to make it so it's the way it ought to be, but it never really happens. You can't change that by your own power and strength. And after you struggle with this, you look around and you try everything you know how, you may hear that God has a way by which He touches and changes the lives of people. That's the next step that God takes in this process of changing your life. But the difficulty comes whenever you begin to say, how can I become different? You look at your life and your ability and you remember all the times you've tried to change your life, you've tried to change your choices, you've tried everything you know how and it just doesn't work. It seems sort of overwhelming. Oftentimes people come to Christ out of a last sense of desperation. I don't know what I can do to change my life. I've tried everything I know how. God, if you can help me, take my life and change me. In that moment of surrender to God, God listens to what you have to say. But for us, on this side, it's rather disturbing. Because what God wants to do is to take my life and make it like Jesus' life. So you read the Bible about who Jesus is and what He's done and you think, boy, that's not me. I'll never be that kind of person. So it's sort of overwhelming. But what the Bible is trying to help us understand is that God's transformation is the heart of what it means to be saved. God transforms us from who we were and what we were doing to people He wants us to be and to do different things. And you look at Jesus and you see how perfect His life was. You look and saw that He never sinned at all. You look that He was always doing what the Father wanted Him to do. And then you measure that by your own life and you think, there's no way in the world I'll ever be able to do this. It's impossible. Well, Paul tells us in this passage that even in the beginning of all this world, God made a plan by which He was able to say, I can transform you from what you used to be to be like me. This mighty power of God, the ability that God has to change our lives. Verse 5 of chapter 1 of 2 Timothy, I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your mother, grandmother Lois, and in your mother Eunice, and I'm persuaded now lives in you also. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flames the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of a spirit of power, of love, and self-discipline. Paul writing Timothy, who was sort of a, he was a mentor to Timothy. He was teaching him the things about how to live his life as a follower of Christ and also how to serve as a servant of Christ in church leadership. He reminds him, excuse me, he reminds him that he has a heritage. His grandmother was a follower of God and his mother was a follower of God, so he already had in his own mind what it was that God wanted from him, the kind of person God wanted him to be. Now this heritage had led to the place where Timothy had promised God his own life. Paul remembered this because he remembered the time that he and Timothy had prayed and he had laid his hand on his shoulder. We don't know if it was his dedication to be a leader in the church or if it was salvation experience, but he laid his hand on his shoulder. Oftentimes when I pray with people who make the commitment to Christ, I do the same thing. I put my hand on their shoulder after they've prayed to say, Christ take my life, change me, make me the person you want to be, then I pray for them. I remember, he said, how I laid my hand on your shoulder and the Spirit of God was in you. This Spirit of God that God had planned from the very beginning. Now what I ask you to do is to take that presence of the Spirit of God and blow on it until it becomes a powerful fire. Now the image that we have in this picture is someone in a blacksmith shop where they have a forge and there's a billow and the coal is there and it's on fire. It's not describing to Timothy you're running out of steam or your fire is going out, but the fire is there. But you're getting ready to work with it and work with metal and it needs to be really hot so you take the billow and you pump it and the air goes in there and it begins to get hotter and hotter and hotter until it's white hot. That's what he asked for. I know that the Spirit of God is in you, but I want you to stir it up until it's powerful, more powerful than it's ever been before, that you might fulfill the purpose that God has for you. For this reason, I remind you to fan the flame into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us the spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and self-discipline. What Paul starts this discussion with is a reality that we need to come to grips with. The Christian life is not lived because you make a decision. It's not lived because you say, I'm going to try hard. It's not lived because you're determined. It's lived because the moment you surrender your life to Christ, he places inside of us the very Spirit of God. He says now the human nature has a spirit of timidity. That's the opposite of faith. If you say, I'm going to do something and I believe that I can do it, you take the action and do it. But if you're unsure that you can do it, then you might be hesitant or timid or you might back off. So someone who begins the Christian life and thinks, I've got to do this myself, will be timid. They'll be afraid. They'll say, I can't live that way. And so the Spirit of God comes into your life and his presence in your life gives you confidence that you can do what God wants. The human nature that you have will shy away from what God's asking you to do because you will realize, I cannot do this. If someone comes into the kingdom of God confident that they can do this, they will always fail. For our confidence is not in our ability or our skill. Our confidence is in what Paul here calls this gift. It is the gift of the Spirit of God. When you say to God, take my life, he places his Holy Spirit inside of you. Now get a picture of this. Whenever God wanted to create the universe, he said, let there be light and the Holy Spirit made the sun and the stars and the moon and all those other things out there. When he said, let there be water, he separated the water and the ground. Every creative act in the world was done by the power of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was born into the world, the Holy Spirit controlled his life. He was able to make the choices he made because of the presence of the Spirit. I only do what the Father tells me to do, he said. I only say what the Father tells me to say. And that channel from the Father to him was the Holy Spirit. So when you say to God, take my life, he takes the very Spirit that created the sun, moon and stars and he places it inside of you. The same Spirit that helped Jesus to know what he should say and to do what he should do is now residing in you. Three qualities that Spirit has. One is it's a Spirit of power, he said. When you look around you at all the things in the world, you can see the power that God has. That power now resides in you. You don't judge your future based on your own human ability or skill. You judge your future based on what God's Spirit can do inside of you. The Spirit of power. All the power that you need to live is now placed in you. So as a human being, when you stand looking at this great task that's ahead of you and you say, I can't do that, it's very normal. What you ask yourself is, does God want me to do this? If he wants me to do it, will he give me the power to do it? God does not ask us ever to do something that he doesn't equip us to be able to do. So Paul is saying to Timothy, look inside of yourself this great gift that God has given you and stir it up to a white hot pitch. I want you to believe that the power of God is available to do everything in the world that he tells you to do. He can conquer everything inside of you and outside of you. And if you have a spirit of fear or timidity, it's because you're not trusting in the power that God has to be able to do the things he told you he wanted you to do. The second part of this, Jesus' life is characterized by love. He put the interest of other people ahead of himself. He always was doing what the Father told him to do in submissiveness. So inside of you is now placed not only the power of the Spirit of God, but the very love of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever perishes should have eternal life. When you receive Christ, you may be a self-centered son of a gun. You may be the most self-focused person in the world. But what happens is God places inside of you the very character of God himself by means of the Holy Spirit. And now you are a servant of other people around you. Because when you see circumstances and your human nature says, I don't care, the Spirit of God now in control of your life breaks your heart. And in the past, if you did something that might hurt other people's feelings, you'd say, I don't care, they deserved it. Now after it's over, you get to thinking about it and say, boy, I shouldn't have done that. I can't believe I did that. And you get worse and worse until finally you're ready to say, I'm going to go back and say I'm sorry, forgive me. Lord, help me never to do it again. This is how God begins to transform us. See, what happens to us when we begin to think about living a Christian life is we think, man, I am really a bum guy. Our kids, when they had to walk with Jesus, went in and they'd write on a piece of paper their sin and put it in this thing and poured water on it and it dissolved it. It erases the sin. It eliminates it. But we still remember that for ourselves. And we think of all the bad things in our life. We think of our nature and all the character of God instead of thinking the power God has to change us. What he does is he changes us by the presence of the Spirit of God. He gives us compassion and love for people that we never had before. The power to be able to live and the attitude of submission and love to each other that enables us to live in a different way. Now, you know, when you look at living a Christian life and you think, how can I start out and start going to church regularly whenever I like to sleep in on the weekends? And how can I turn off the television and read the Bible every day whenever I love these things so much, my hobbies and all the other things I have? I don't think I can do this. The third thing he gives us is self-discipline or self-control. Paul wrote in another place, the gifts of the Spirit include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, mercy, and the last one was self-control. Whenever you start following Christ, it's not a journey of your own. It's not like you say, suck up my strength and I can do this. It is laying your life in the hand of God so that he now is in complete control of your life. His Holy Spirit, the Spirit that made all this in the world, is right there inside of you. He's guiding your thoughts. He's helping you to think correctly. He's giving you the ability to do things you've never been able to do before. He's helping you to be able to say no to things that you were never able to say before. Now I want to warn you that the presence of the Spirit in your life is not like you open and shut the door. It's more like learning how to do something. You first know what you want to do and you begin to start. You'll make mistakes, but the longer you practice doing it, the more you're able to submit to the Spirit of God. In the beginning you'll start out and you'll try, but you revert back to those old ways and you have to keep practicing and you grow from a little bit of the control of your life by the Spirit of God to more control, to more control, to more control, until finally God has made into you the person he wants you to be in this world. Now it is this that enables us to look at what God wants us to do. The power of the Spirit of God is present within us. That's the secret to the life that God wants us to live. Now Paul says to Timothy, verse 8, chapter 1, So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me, his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. So Paul is writing to Timothy, so you're ready to do this job. Now because you have the presence of the Spirit inside of you, don't be ashamed to share your faith with other people. One of the greatest hindrances that people have to sharing their faith, that is what God has done with them, is fear. What will people think and say? I don't think I can do it. You see, all those are a spirit of timidity. That's your human nature. So if you learn to live under the control of your human nature, you won't ever do that. But if you have the Spirit alive in your life and you believe that he's there, and you meet someone who has a problem that you have had, and God has sealed that problem for you and he's changed you as a result of his presence in your life, you can say, here's what God did with me when I had that problem. You're put out there in the world with all the people around you and the problems that you have. And the problems that are in your life that God has cured is the testimony that you have. This great Spirit placed in you that's begun to transform who you are has made you a different person. You are now given the responsibility that you've accepted Christ to begin to tell what God has done for you. Now the spirit of timidity will get a hold of your mind and say they're going to think I'm some kind of religious nut. You'll think, you know, they're going to think I'm goofy. They're going to be upset about what I say. Paul was saying to Timothy, do not allow the spirit of timidity to control you. Let the spirit of God control you. It's not hard to witness, to tell what God has done for you. Everybody does it all the time every day. I'm sure that a week doesn't go by that someone doesn't tell you about a good thing that they either found or that they ate or that they did. If you went someplace and ordered a hamburger and you said this is the greatest hamburger I've ever had in my life, and you met someone in the next day that was going to go out to eat and they'd say you have a recommendation, you would say without any training, I went to this place over here and ate a hamburger and it was the greatest hamburger I ever had. You know, they don't have a class you go to to learn that. If you really had something inside of you that made a difference, and Christ has changed your attitude toward people, he's given you strength to be able to do things that you hadn't done before, and you met someone who was struggling with the same problem, you should be able to say openly, you know, I used to struggle with the same thing. I'll tell you what I did. One day I said to God, take my life. He changed my attitude, changed my relationships with the people around me, changed my home, changed everything. What Satan does is cause us to say, now wait a minute, somebody might think you're stupid. Paul said, so do not be ashamed to testify, and the reason you can't be ashamed is because the Spirit of God is inside you. He will tell you to do it when it's the right time to do it. He will give you the words to be able to say those things. He will make sure that it works as it ought to. He does two things, I found. One, he gives you the words to say what you ought to say, and the second, he goes over to the people you're talking to and he filters out the stuff that doesn't mean anything or that you're wrong about. So you can't go wrong. He gives you the words and then he goes over there to the other person as they're listening and he makes them work right. God does all this. It's the power of God, John, that Paul is saying to Timothy, allow the Spirit of God to let you testify. Don't be ashamed of God and don't be ashamed of me and what I've done, for God wants to change you, not because of anything that you have done, but because of his own purpose and his grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. What he means by that is simply this. When God decided he was going to change the world, he said, here's the way I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it through Jesus. I'm going to send a human being into the world. He's going to live under the control of my Spirit and then we'll write his story down and everyone in the world who's ever even met him can read about him and they'll say, this is the kind of person I want to be like and if I let God control my life, that's what I will be like. So God is interested in changing you to be like Christ and he has the power to be able to do it. What he doesn't have from you is permission. Lord, please change me. But now it has been revealed through the appearance of the Savior, Christ Jesus, who was destroyed by death and brought to life in immortality to light through the gospel. The story of Jesus' life now reveals to all of us what God can do with one human being who will say, God, here is my life. That's what God wants from you. It doesn't matter how bad your life is. It doesn't matter how messed up it is. God can transform it and what he wants to do is to save us. His plan from the very beginning is to be able to save us. In verse 11 he says, in this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher and that's why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. You see, not only does God change your life when he comes inside of you, but he has a purpose for you. His purpose is not just to fix your life up so it's good, but that you might be an agent for the transformation of all the people around you. When your life becomes different, the people who know you most can see it and they're going to say, you know, you used to be like, and you can say, I know, but you know what happened to me? God changed me. What Paul is talking about is that this effort to be obedient to God requires sacrifice on your part. You can't do all the things in the world that your neighbors and friends and family are doing and be faithful to serve God. What God asks us to do is to set aside the time for him to allow him to work in our lives and to do his work. Every person who surrenders their life to Christ has a place in the kingdom of God to work and serve. That's what Paul is talking about when he's talking about his suffering. He suffered because he has given up his life. Make sure that his life is given away to God. He left his job, he left his family, he started traveling around the world on this mission that God had given him, and many times he was beaten and he was treated like an outlaw, but he was doing what God asked him to do. I will tell you that if you start following God, not only will he transform your life, but he will ask you to do things that require sacrifice. He'll ask you to give your money. He'll ask you to give your time. He'll ask you to work in things that are hard to do. But because he has given you everything, you will find great joy even in the suffering that you endure to obey him. The struggle and the suffering Paul went through was a joy to him. Not because he loved the suffering, but because he loved what he was doing for the one who changed his life. What is it like for someone who rescues a person whose life was going to be gone and die? How do they think of that person that rescued them? I'd do anything for you because of what you've done for me. Now when the time comes and you have to do something difficult for that person who saved your life, it's hard, but you find it a joy really to pay back what's been done for you. What God asks for us is to allow the Spirit of God to work in us in a powerful way so that we might become the servant that he wants us to be. And we become that servant, verse 13, what you heard from me, keep as a pattern of sound teaching. And the word for pattern here is a word for something that's kind of an outline, like what you start. It's an outline that you fill in for yourself. For example, if I were to say, if you follow Christ, he will ask you to suffer for him. But I can't tell you what your suffering is going to be, what your sacrifice is going to be, because I don't know. My sacrifice for God is different than yours. In the beginning of my life, he said, I want your career. So I gave up what I was going to do and said, okay, this is what I'll do, whatever you want. He may not ask that for you. But there is in this outline suffering. And each one of us, when we come to Christ, we have that outline, suffering. All the other things that God wants us to do are outlines. And we have to find in our own way exactly what God wants for us. I've given you, Timothy, the outline of my life. I turned away from the career I had. I gave everything that I had to God. I began to do what he asked me and travel where he wanted me to go. You have the outline here. Submit to God. But I can't tell you what he's going to ask you to submit to. Your sacrifice might be different than mine, but I can guarantee you a sacrifice. So what God gives to us is a call, a call to say, here's what I want from you. And the outline is given in the gospel, in the scriptures. It is a pattern of sound teaching. That's why you read the Bible when you become a follower of Christ to say, what am I supposed to be doing? And it's revealed there to us. It's with faith, that is, trust in God, and love. The great commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbors yourself. If you love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, you will do whatever he asks you. And when you do whatever he asks you, it will involve relating to people around you in a way that would help them. That's always what it's going to be. Now, yours is going to be different than mine, and everybody else's in the world because there are different people around you, but it's the same thing. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and others as yourself. That's God's call to us. Guard this good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in you. The good deposit, I don't know what that means exactly. It could mean two things, maybe both of them. If I have something and I'm going to be in a position where it might be difficult or dangerous, I might take it and say, Denise, would you hold this for me because I'm going on a trip and I don't want anybody to steal it. So she keeps my precious treasure so that nobody else gets it. So in this sense, if God has placed his Holy Spirit within me, and he's given me these sound teachings that he wants me to live, he wants me to hold on to those so that they're not lost. That could be one thing God wants. When I place my Spirit inside of you, hold on to this, stir it up, use it, allow the Spirit to control your life. This is what God has called you to do. It could be also that he says, I have placed my Spirit within you and changed you. I've deposited my Spirit inside of you and changed you. So I want you to guard what's inside of you so that everyone around you can know what it is. I don't know exactly what Paul meant by that, but he's saying there's a treasure inside of you, God holds you accountable for what you do with it, and he holds you accountable for holding on to it. We are accountable to God when we yield our life to him as to how our lives are lived. That is God's accountability for us. Guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. You see how wrapped up all this Christian living is in the Holy Spirit? How do I guard all this? How do I guard making sure that what God has done to me is used correctly? I just say every day, God, would you show me how to use this change that you've made in me? And the Holy Spirit does that. How do I hold on to the things that God has given me and not stray away from God and get down the wrong road? Every day I say, God, make sure I make the right choices today. Show me what you want me to do. And I read the Bible, and the Holy Spirit inside of me helps me to protect that which God has given me. You see, the Christian life is not lived by your power or strength or wisdom or skill. It's lived by complete dependence on the Spirit of God. Lord, here is my life. If you try to be a witness without the Spirit, you're lost. If you try to serve God without the Spirit, you'll fail. If you try to submit your life to God without the power of the Spirit, you'll fail. The secret to all those things in the Christian life start way back there, when the moment you said to God, here is my life, and immediately, unseen, he places his Holy Spirit inside of you. And your future is sealed because you're in the hand of God. Your mind, your will, your body is now controlled by God. And all you do is listen and do what he tells you, when he tells you, the way he tells you. And you will find life in all of its fullness. That's God's plan of salvation for everyone. Would you bow, please, for a moment to pray? Let me ask you, have you ever come to that one time in your life in which you said to God, I give you my life. I want you to take it. Do whatever you want with me. If that happened to you, you know, as you look back now, that your life is much different than it was at that moment. That's because the Spirit came into your life. Have you guarded that treasure? Is your passion for God like it was that time? Here's an encouragement to you. Stir up the fire. Make it passionate and hot to listen and submit to the Spirit of God. Are you at the place in your life where you know that something should be different in your life? And you've tried enough different things that you can't make it different? And God is saying, hey, here's the way you do it. Right now, you just say to me in your mind, God, I can't do this. Here's my life. The moment you think that, surrender to God, his Spirit will come into you. And you will know what you're supposed to do. He may want you to say today, I'm ready now to have you stand and say before everybody, Jesus Christ is my Lord. He may say to you, this is the place you need to be as a follower of Christ in this church. He may say, here's some things in your life I want you to change. The Spirit is talking to you now. And it comes when you listen and obey. I want you to ask God, if I were to do exactly what you wanted today, what would it be? I'm going to ask the pianist to play. I want you to listen to God. If there is something he wants you to stop, promise him you will. If there is something he wants you to start, promise him you will. If there is something he wants you to do, do it. And the Spirit of God will make it possible. If there is some decision you want to make, I'll be at the front, Hasi will be here. I can pray with you and help you know how to take the next step in this walk with Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Would you hold this just a minute? Tara's come today to become a part of our church family, is that right? You grew up in what denomination? In the Methodist and the Lutheran churches. Okay. You have committed yourself to Christ, is that right? Yes. You've lived your life trying to live in obedience to God, reading the Bible and trying to put that in practice in your life. Yes. She has not been baptized by immersion, which is what we use for full membership in our church. But sometimes when people come to be a part of our church family and we know that they've committed their life to Christ, we have in our church a level of membership in which we accept them as a watch and care member. In other words, we're going to watch over her and take care of her spiritually so she'd be a part of our church family and we can still use her in the service in the church and things that we do. But because she is not a Baptist and doesn't want to be a Baptist, we have her as a part of our church family on the list that we call our watch and care membership. We watch out for her and care for her. The key ingredient is that you've made your commitment to Christ to live in obedience to him. You read the Bible to try to live by that as the practice for your life, and you want to serve God in whatever way he wants you to serve. Is that correct? Yes. So we're asking you as a part of our church family to receive her into our fellowship, not as a member of our church as a Baptist, but as a member of our fellowship. If you can promise to her that you'll love her, that you'll care for her, that you'll pray for her, that you'll be supportive of her, that church is a place where we will help her to learn about the Bible and how to put it into practice, would you indicate that by raising your hand, please? We want you to see that we are committed to you, as you have come today to say that you're committed to be a part of our church family. I'll ask you with your family, if you would, to stand outside just a moment, and when you come by, be sure and tell her your name, because we want her to be familiar with all of your names, and we'll have a test for her next week. Would you stand, please, for a moment of prayer? Go ahead with your family. Pardon? Yeah, you can get that. Father, we're thankful that you've given us the power to be what we could not be, to do what we could not do, the power of your Spirit. You've given us the outline of what we're supposed to be like watching Christ. We leave here to live out the call that you have made to us to serve you. In the name of Christ, we ask for your continuing empowerment. Amen.