WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 1

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1 WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 1 TITLE: Help When We Need It Most MAIN SCRIPTURE: Acts 2:42-47 BIG IDEA: A spirit-filled church is a praying church; A spirit-filled person is someone who can t go the day without talking with God. BRIEF OUTLINE: I.) INTRODUCTION II.) SIGNS OF A SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE A. WORD B. FELLOWSHIP C. PRAYER III.) HOW THE SPIRIT HELPS A. FERVENCY B. FAITH IV.) CONCLUSION ) INTRODUCTION Jim Cymbala, Pastor of The Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City, shares that on every Tuesday evening people congregate for a 7:00 P.M. prayer meeting. A few thousand gather for this meeting. This prayer meeting is the engine that drives the church, because they know that they need God s power, the power of the Holy Spirit. And the power of the Holy Spirit comes when God s people pray. This shouldn t be unusual, because religion in the Bible didn t begin with the call of Abraham or the birth of the New Testament or even the life of Christ. Religion began back in Genesis 4 when men and women began to call on the name of the Lord. There was some revelation that God wasn t simply Creator but someone you could call out to in prayer for help. So prayer was the essence of the relationship between first people and God. They kept calling on the name of the Lord for help and grace and mercy. Every Tuesday Jim Cymbala s church gathers to pray for the world, to pray for their needs, missionaries overseas, personal needs. But they also realize they need the Holy Spirit to help them pray for these things.

2 WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 2 He says that every time they gather they are intimately aware that they can t really pray unless the Holy Spirit helps them. That s why they need the Spirit. You can just say prayers or you can really pray from the heart, which isn t possible without the help of the Holy Spirit of God. We ve been talking about spirit-filled churches and spirit-filled believers. We ve talked about all the promises associated with the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent. As we ve learned, the Father sent the Son, and the Son sent the Spirit. When the Spirit came the Church was born, and it was spirit-filled from the very beginning. Things were happening that no one could predict and God was using people to spread His gospel. But what exactly does a spirit-filled church look like? What do spirit-filled people look like? Have you heard this phrase before spirit-filled? In one way we should be careful about how we define this, because it can hinder what God can come and do. If we have this certain concept about how being spirit-filled should look that can put God in a box. The Holy Spirit cannot be put in a box. He works like the wind, blowing where ever He will blow. And the way He manifests himself is different through different people and different times. But we do know that certain thing always happens when the Spirit fills: Christ is glorified, the Church is built up, the Kingdom is extended, and the Word of God is honored. There are a couple of vital signs that will always accompany a spirit-filled life and church. We should turn the light on ourselves and our church and let God speak to us about how we should be and look as spirit-filled people. 3) SIGNS OF A SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE In Acts 2 when the Spirit came and the church was born, we read that after converts were made and baptized and all kinds of wonderful things happened, a steady rhythm began to characterize the Church. This is how Acts talks about that rhythm: Read Acts 2:42-47.

3 WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 3 They continued without stopping in their devotion to the Word of God, which is always a sign that the Spirit of God is working. Sometimes people forget the Bible and instead quote other extra biblical things like dreams and vision, instead of preaching the Word of God. Paul told Timothy to preach the Word of God. And whenever the Spirit is truly working the Word of God will be honored and people will be studying it and loving it. They also continued steadfastly in fellowship in koinonia, which is a sharing with one another in their lives, their love, their possessions. They broke bread together regularly in shared meals and also communion. And finally they continued steadfastly, without stopping, in prayer. This was in keeping with what Jesus taught ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open. Paul said to pray without ceasing. So when the Spirit came He produced more prayer after the Church had been waiting for it in prayer. This always happens when the Spirit of God is working. He always guides us to the throne of grace to pray. He does this by constantly revealing to us our weakness and failure where we are not acting like Christ. He shows us our need for Christ and leads us to the throne of grace to receive Christ. A spirit-filled church is a praying church. A spirit-filled person is someone who can t go the day without talking with God. The Bible tells us that this happened often throughout the history of the early church. Whenever there was some challenge the Church would gather together to pray. One such challenge came in Acts 12. Peter was put in prison and no one knew what to do. So the church shut down everything and prayed (See Acts 2:5, 12-14). And you know what? Peter was delivered from jail! It is the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Prayer. He teaches us the habit of prayer by teaching us the importance of communion with God and bringing our needs to God. The Spirit doesn t want us to bear burdens so He brings us to the throne of grace so we can give our burdens to the Lord to carry for us.

4 WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 4 4) HOW THE SPIRIT HELPS In 1 Cor there is a great teaching about the Spirit lifting us above our mind and what it can comprehend and praying in the Holy Spirit. When Paul talks about spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6 he says to pray in the Holy Spirit. On top of putting on the armor of God we need to pray at all times in the Spirit. There are two ways the Holy Spirit helps us: with fervency in prayer and with our faith. James 5 says the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available. And it is the Spirit of God who helps us with such fervency in our prayer times. When the Holy Spirit helps us pray and He leads us into the will of God, God can do great things because prayer isn t about words but about the heart. The Holy Spirit engages the heart so that prayer isn t this laid-back thing. Instead He helps us dig deep into our hearts and pray with purpose. The Holy Spirit gets the heart engaged and teaches us to be fervent. Not in a worked up emotional way, but in an engaged way so that we see the things that God sees and feel the things that he feels. The other thing we need when we pray that the spirit helps us with is faith. It is the prayer of faith that accomplishes great things for God. Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about merely mouthing words in prayer and then God doing something in response to our words. No, a certain type of prayer is what God responds to it s the prayer of faith that moves God. Without faith it is impossible to please God, especially when we pray. If we send up words whether in quietness with candles or loudness with shouts it doesn t matter. God doesn t respond to quietness or loudness but faith. Faith takes the promises of God and makes them real to us so that we know that we know. This is not mental positivism or mind science. No the Holy Spirit produces faith that can move mountains. That faith is needed when situations happen that seem too big for us. Perhaps, give an example of this from your own life.

5 WHEN GOD S SPIRIT MOVES Help When We Need It Most (6)! 5 5) CONCLUSION Maybe you re sitting here and you want to get more serious about prayer or have more effective prayer times in your small group maybe you even want to start a prayer meeting. So what things should you keep in mind? One of the things we need to keep in mind is that we cannot separate prayer from our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. So we need to ask ourselves some questions: Are we open to the Holy Spirit? Do we know who He is? Are we grieving Him with our behavior? Are we quenching Him? When the Holy Spirit is honored prayer can become something very powerful. If our church is spirit-less and if there is little influence of the Holy Spirit it is very difficult to have prayer. We can t expect great intense and effective prayer when the Holy Spirit is not present in power. Paul tells us in Romans 8:26 that we do not know what we ought to pray. But the Spirit helps us with groans that can t express on its own without the Spirit. He puts that burden in us so that we know how to pray. When we are prayer-less and cold and hard and prayer seems almost repulsive we should go to the Word of God so our faith will be built up and also come before God and tell Him the truth. We should tell Him we don't know how to prayer or what to prayer or that we don t have a burden to pray. We should ask the Holy Spirit to help us pray. It can be as simple as this short prayer: Come Holy Spirit, oh how I need you. Come Holy Spirit, I need you. We need Him not only to teach and give and suffer for Christ we need Him for everything, but especially prayer. Otherwise we become mechanical and listless, instead of having a dynamic, purposeful prayer life. Amazing things happen when God s people pray. What God has done throughout the centuries when His people pray He can still do today. We want to ask the Holy Spirit to come and grant us a new spirit of prayer in this church, in our small groups, in our families, and in our own personal lives. Let s do this. Let s not simply be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word which commands us to pray and instructs us in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.