Are You Turned On To Christ?

00:00 - Announcer (Announcement) Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Jack Hibbs (Host) The Christian is under the guidance of some invisible system, and that invisible system is the Holy Spirit, using the word of God as information technology to send it into our hearts as a guidance system. He works in us that way. He controls us. 00:29 - Announcer (Announcement) You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 00:58 - Jack Hibbs (Host) As a believer, you should be comforted by the Holy Spirit. All of us have trauma life, difficult things going on in life. None of us are exempt. But boy is it tough going through life alone. Thank God that we, as believers, have the comfort of the Holy Spirit and we saw in verse nine that he does three things for us. He confirms our relationship with him. He confirms it to us. I love this, we don't have to make it up. God confirms his call upon our lives. Secondly, we saw this it's God, the Holy Spirit, who possesses us as believers. 01:32 When we ask the question, what spirit lives in you, you got to stop and ask yourself. And don't make assumptions, friends, are you possessed by the Holy Spirit? That's what you want in life. You're going to be possessed by either the spirit of self, the spirit of this world, or, the Bible says, the spirit of Antichrist. What you want is the spirit of God to possess your life. All of us are open vessels until we're filled. And the question is who is it? What spirit is in you? And again, don't make an assumption. Well, I've gone to church all my life. I've been a faithful. What does that matter? I can quote Bible, satan can out, quote you Doesn't matter what spirit is in you, he confirms, he possesses, and we saw also that he reveals. He's the Holy Spirit who reveals truth to us. It is God, the Holy Spirit, that unlocks to us the understanding of the Bible. That's why when somebody's religious and they're reading the Bible but they don't get it, they don't understand it. They pick up the Bible, they read John, chapter five, or John three, or Psalms one, and they don't get it. It looks like Greek to them or sounds like it. It's foolishness to them. Why is that? Because you do not have the Holy Spirit revealing the Word of God to you. Let's be honest, christian, every one of us who know the Lord, when you open up this Bible I mean, imagine it being quiet right now I unsnap it, I open it up and when I go like this, god speaks. And I know that sounds kind of crazy or childlike, but I got to tell you, if you pick up the Bible and turn everything off, turn the TV off, turn the music off, turn your phone off, yes, you can. You can turn your phone off and you start reading the Bible. Now for me, who's ADD wacky? I've got to read the Bible out loud, because if I start reading it silently, I can hear crickets, I can hear a bug on a bush somewhere, so I have to read out loud. That's what I have to do. And how is it that God speaks? Is because the Holy Spirit reveals the Bible. You don't read the Bible, you're not going to hear from God, but you read the Bible. Be ready to hear Him. 04:01 The second thing we saw last time is in verse 10, is what spirit lives in you? Is he the Spirit of life? The Holy Spirit is all about life. He's the living Spirit. He's the Holy Spirit, he's the giver of life. And in verse 10, we learned this that he's the Holy Spirit who controls. He controls. 04:22 Listen, and you'll agree with me as a believer. My life is guided I want to believe like a guided missile. Guided, that missile may be flying through the atmosphere, but there's satellites and there's devices keeping it on a trajectory, on what is known as a teleonomic path. That rocket is following information and visible to our naked eyes. It's following, as we're, a string of information to the destination. I believe my life is like that. 04:53 I think if you read the Bible, it confirms that God says our lives, our days of our lives are all numbered by God. He knows exactly the day that you're gonna die and he knew the day that you were gonna be born. God knows that you don't know that. You say, oh yeah, what if I commit suicide today? You're assuming you'll be successful. You jump off the building, not this building. You go find some other building. Get off the property. If you're gonna go, do that. If you're wrong, you're gonna hurt If your day has not come. You can't hasten it and you can't be too late for it. God knows, it's amazing, but he's the spirit of life and he controls. I'm getting a little nervous these days. 05:40 Have you noticed when you're driving on the freeway? Notice this the other day 55 heading north and somebody I don't know we're all doing. You know what California 55 is right. First of all, there's freeway 55, which is what I was on, but you're supposed to go 55, which, when translated in California, is 80. That's the conversion. It's 55 in all other states, but it's 80 here in California. 06:11 And so, as you're going along, I glanced over and I saw somebody reading a book. And they were passing me Reading a book. You say, jack, you're joking. I'm not joking. He was driving a Tesla. Okay, a Tesla. That's why we have blackouts and brownouts in California. Everybody's charging their Teslas. Now Our lights go dim when the neighbor charges his Tesla. Have you noticed that? But the person's going down the road. Something's in control. He's reading a book. 06:44 Man, let me tell you, I don't have that kind of faith. I'm old school. Give me the wheel, give me the pedal. But this person had no problem with it. But that vehicle was going down the road doing all the stuff that normal vehicles do, but it was under the guidance of some invisible system. Are you hearing me? 07:00 The Christian is under the guidance of some invisible system, and that invisible system is the Holy Spirit, using the word of God as information technology to send it into our hearts as a guidance system. He works in us that way. He controls us. We learned that he does this because he indwells us. What a deal. Christianity is the only faith group of all religions on the earth where the God of Christianity says I'm gonna move inside of you, I'm gonna dwell within you and I'll surprise you. It's not only the comfort, it's also the uncomfortable part of the Holy Spirit living in you. That uncomfortable part is he doesn't let you get away with anything, and I love it Because you know what Jack doesn't know, what's best for Jack. Jack's not good for Jack sometimes, and that's when the Holy Spirit takes over. Why? How does he control me by indwelling? How does he control you by indwelling? Is it amazing to think right now that the Holy Spirit is everywhere, in all places, at all times, if you think about it, the Holy Spirit. And then, thirdly, we saw last time that he purifies. He's the Spirit that purifies us. He gets us ready. He's getting us ready. 08:20 The other day I posted something on my Facebook page I think it was, or all the platforms, whatever, but it was a response to an article, and the article said something like this maybe you read it that a national poll shows that Christianity is dying in America. And on the surface, I would say absolutely. That's totally obvious. If you didn't know anything about Christianity, hear me loud and clear. Everybody. Do not worry about statistics and articles. I'll tell you why. Because we are in the days that the Bible says are the end times. Jesus' truth that he proclaimed to us is still true, and that is the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. So when you see an article done by researchers who say Christianity is dying in America. 09:11 I wrote, I took that article and I simply said don't worry people, in the reading of this, god is just purifying his church for the last days See what do you mean by that? Listen, the numbers are shrinking. But the numbers should shrink why? Because the closer we get to wedding day, right, the church is being purified by the Holy Spirit. The bride of Christ is getting ready and you should get very excited about this. Reason is that when you see more and more people headlong departing out of Christianity, just know this. They were never in Christianity to begin with. It was because it was comfortable that they were there. Now it's not comfortable. 09:54 The truth is revealing who's for real and who's not. Don't worry, are you a real follower of Christ? How do I know what spirit lives in you? And you won't be bothered by statistics, you won't be bothered by an article, because you know that you belong to God. He indwells you, he brings you comfort and control. He's purifying you. He confirms this relationship to you by revealing more and more the word of God to you. So, church, here we go, we pick it up and I'm going to give this to you in advance so you can make notes of it. 10:30 The final, close out of this is what spirit lives in you? Is he the spirit of resurrection? That's what we learned in verse 11. The spirit of resurrection and there's going to be three things that we get out of that verse he's the spirit of resurrection. He's the spirit of power. Can't have resurrection without power. He's the spirit of eternity the whole point behind resurrection is eternal life. And he's the spirit of glory, glory. Yeah, this is something that we're going to be experiencing, maybe scratching our heads forever in eternity, and that is God is going to glorify us as believers. 11:06 The Bible says so. It's hard to believe, but it's true nonetheless and it is awesome. So he is the spirit of resurrection and we see so by power. Look at verse 11. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, notice it's the Holy Spirit. Notice it says the Holy Spirit of him. This is a remarkable statement. You see, the spirit of God, the spirit of him, the spirit of Christ. If his spirit dwells in you, this is the Holy Spirit. 11:42 The Holy Spirit is a person, friend. The Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation that he is a person. You know, listen, there's a lot of cults out there that call him an it or they don't call him. They don't say him, they say it's an it, it's a power. It's this. God made force, like the magnetic belt or Luke's sky walkers force. You know the force. Be with you. No, no, he's not. 12:10 Listen, the Bible says that he's a person. And the Bible says that the children of Israel, when they're wandering in the wilderness, they would not believe God. And because of their unbelief, the Bible says they made angry the Holy Spirit and he turned on them and became their enemy. Can you imagine the Holy Spirit being your enemy? And in Isis and Sapphira, in the book of Acts, chapter five and six, remember what they were doing? The Bible tells us that they lied to the Holy Spirit. Listen, you can go outside right now to a fire hydrant and lie to it, it won't matter. You can go to your car and tell it all kinds of stories, it ain't going to hear you. 12:50 But the Holy Spirit is alive, he's eternal and he's part of the Godhead. In fact, jesus said all manner of sin will be forgiven the sin against the father and the sin against the son. But he who is the Godhead, he who is the Godhead and who sins against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, and this life or in the world to come, that is called blasphemia of the Holy Spirit. You never want to commit that sin, which is this Dying without accepting Christ. That's it. It's the Holy Spirit's job to point you to Jesus now. That's what he's doing every day, every single one of you. He's doing all of an atheist. He's working overtime on you. He's trying to get you to safety and you're fighting and kicking against him. 13:38 It's the Holy Spirit that visits you in your thoughts. Yield to him, but he's the power, and I know how we think as humans. We're so dumb we think of things well. If he's powerful, then show me. Listen, god doesn't succumb to your threats and your bullying. Besides, he knows us better than we do, and if we saw something, we probably still wouldn't believe it. Thus the God of the Bible goes to work on the inside. But notice the qualifier there in verse 11. 14:21 The Spirit or the Holy Spirit, two things point of interest here that we should make note of. This is about the Holy Spirit as a person and his function that is indwelling within you. The power. He does that by his power. How in the world can God, who is everywhere, be everywhere except inside you? Listen, inside you until you invite him in? I want you to think about that for a moment. According to the Bible, god is everywhere. The omniscience of God, he's in all places. Omnipresence, I should say. But think of this theological dynamic. God can be and is everywhere, but according to the Bible, he's not inside you until you invite him in. That she caused you to pause. That is a deep thought Because, contrary to your friends or family or earlier belief, we are not all sons and daughters of God. 15:24 According to the Bible, jesus said that when we come into this world, according to the Bible, that we are all lost and we're all sinners, but we need to be born again. By the way, born again. Jesus said that to a man who is more righteous than you and I. Externally gave more money, did more good deeds, combined all of us together. The guy was better than all of us combined. 15:46 I'm talking about Nicodemus. And Jesus said Nicodemus, unless you're born from above, you'll never see the kingdom of heaven. Think of that. God's got to be on the inside and he does that by his power, by his person. His whereabouts is amazing. As I said, he's everywhere, but is he inside of you? By the way, I think personally I'm just making this up now. This is not Bible. I'm making this next part up. I'm wondering that, for those who are in hell this morning, I'm wondering if part of their hell is knowing that when they had an opportunity to say yes to Christ, they said no, and the very joy or gift or life of the Holy Spirit that could have been in them they rejected. Because we know that those that are in hell blame themselves. They blame nobody else. 16:43 I love this Psalm, psalm 139. This is 3000 year old Psalm. This is awesome and, by the way, it's sub. Look at it and it's quite scientific in some ways here. Whether shall I go from my spirit or whether shall I flee from my presence, says David. If I send up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall uphold me. What a Psalm. David is saying I can't go anywhere. Whenever I ran from God, god was there when I got there. Didn't Jonah find that out? 17:28 Jonah runs from God winds up that Jonah is having to still deal with God in the storm. God with the boat. Jonah says I know how to handle this. He tells the crew throw me overboard. I'm the reason of your problems. You want the storm to calm down, throw me over. That's committing suicide. Jonah has them and they don't even wanna do it. They don't wanna do it. These are a bunch of pagans that are saying that's not right. That's not right. And Jonah throw me over. He would rather die than obey God. They throw them over and I'm wondering if he's thinking on the way over. Finally, I'm getting away from God. He hits the water and it's like I am gonna drown and that's it, anything other than obey God? 18:13 And then there's this oh shaw, the Bible says God had read your Bible carefully. 18:19 It was not a whale. The Bible says God prepared a great fish and swallowed them up. And the Bible says that Jonah was thinking in there and he was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, can you imagine? And that fish spit him out, and now I have no idea what he looked like, but he had his stink, to say the least. But he found out that God was not only in the sea. He was speaking to him in that fish. You might be in a situation where you think that's it, I've run away from God, I've made it, and God is speaking to you. Or you might be in a situation where you think God will have nothing to do with you, that he doesn't care about you, that he doesn't want you. Maybe you think you've sinned so far that you're not welcome into the family of God, and God is speaking to you and he's using this message right now and the verses that we're teaching on to speak to you. It's amazing. 19:23 - Announcer (Announcement) This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. 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