Transcript for:
Ephesians 5:18,21 -Spirit Filled- Pastor Rick Beaudry 2026-04-19
Found the transcript but need the audio? View Episode
Ephesians five eighteen through 21. Would you please stand with me as we read God's holy word together? The reason we stand is because we wanna honor God in his word. Right? So we're standing for him, giving him a standing ovation, thanking him, honoring him for his word. Verse 18, and be not drunk with wine wearing a success but be filled with the spirit. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing to make a melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Father, thank you so much. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the instruction in your word. Lord, none of us can do it. None of us can live the Christian life without the empowering of your holy spirit. And so, as we learn intellectually, as we learn and and see the the laid out plan and purpose of your word and leading guidance in all truth. Lord, we also need the power. We need the power of your holy spirit to enact, to to live it. And so Lord, we pray this morning evermore that you'd equip us, strengthen us, remind us of these truths, but Lord, give us a fresh outpouring of your holy spirit to, give us the power, the dunamis dynamic power to have better marriages, to be better parents, to be Christians in the last days. And, Lord, we can't do it without you. Without you, we can do nothing, but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Would you please be seated? So how are we to walk in fellowship with God? We're instructed to walk worthily. We've been instructed to walk not as other Gentiles walk. Sometimes we if you're raised in an unbelieving home like I was, I didn't know how to walk, but I I learned how not to walk. So walk not as the other Gentiles walk. I'm told to walk in love, walk as children of light. We looked at walking circumspectly, but the question comebacks, but how? How can I do this? I see the ideal. How can I behave like I'm supposed to? And the apostle Paul wrestled with this in the book of Romans when he got to chapter seven, and he said, and I and I would that I do not. The things I wanna do, don't do. The things I don't wanna do, I do. And he's frustrated with this because he knows the ideal, and he says, oh, wretched man that I am. Who? Not what. It's not another formula or program. It's not going and taking a certain pill. Hey, the doctor's got a pill that's gonna make me so I'm not a rage a holic anymore. Hey. They've got some means of therapy over here where I can learn these many steps and and do this. Maybe shock therapy. Maybe I need my head shocked or something to get me from doing that sort of thing. All the methodology of men to try and change behavior. Elon Musk has got a chip he wants to put in your brain and connect you to the computer and all and try and alter your behavior to get you in compliance with the antichrist and all. So the question comes back to how? How how can I do this? And this frustration as Paul felt in Romans seven verse 24, oh, wretched man that I am. You know, who is gonna deliver me from this body of death? And the beauty is he goes into chapter eight, and he starts out, there's now therefore no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. There it is. And then as you go through Romans eight, spirit spirit spirit, you underline, circle it. Spirit spirit spirit spirit. Emphasis upon reliance upon the holy spirit. That's how be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be and the Greek tenses, be being filled with the holy spirit. Right? Every day, I need to be filled with the holy spirit because every day, my family's dependent upon me. My children depend upon me. God's dependent upon me to be the example of what it is to be a Christian man living in these last days, and I need the power. And that can't be something that happened to me twenty years ago or thirty years ago. You remember when we were in the upper room? You remember when we all began to speak with tongues and tongues of men and of angels and used to sing and we used to share the gospel and so bold and all that, we all have that honeymoon experience. It's awesome. We never wanna forget that honeymoon experience. But in the ongoing, when we come down from that mountain top and we come down to the base there, you know, there's a guy knocking at the door wanting us to pay these exorbitant energy bills. How am I gonna afford to make these energy payments? How am I gonna afford food? How am I gonna afford all this stuff, this pressure? There's a demon waiting for me at the bottom of that mount, you know. And the son is casting himself into the into the fire, and the father's distraught. You know, how are we gonna do this? You know? And and the answer comes back, only Jesus. This kind cometh not out, but through prayer and fasting. So as we see our need, as we see our inadequacy, as we see that we can't do it in and of the flesh, we cry out to God. God, you gotta help me get through this. How am I gonna survive the lost of my loved ones? How am I gonna survive the various trials and the things that are coming against us as Christians in America, you know? I voted for the right guy. I thought he was in there. I thought he was gonna make life easier, but it looks like it's getting harder. What do I do? Well, get your eyes on me. Depend upon me. Rely upon me. I love how when we're first married in our twenties, many of us, some of you in your thirties, forties, fifties, I don't know. But I love that we had nothing. We didn't know the answer to how to any how. How are you gonna afford that? How are you gonna do that? How are you, you know, I'm gonna homeschool the kid. Well, how are gonna do that? You know? I'm gonna start a business. How are gonna do that? How are gonna do anything? How are you gonna be a husband? How are gonna be a wife? How do you know you can do it? How do you know you're not gonna wind up like your mom married seven times and divorced seven times? How do you know you're not gonna wind up like an alcoholic, like the majority of your family? Because the therapist all tell you that that alcoholic gene is in you. You inherited this alcoholic gene from your parents, from your family. There's no hope for you, man. There's no hope. They don't they don't have any pill that's gonna keep you from being like your dad was or your mom was. And that's the beauty of becoming a Christian, isn't it? Yeah. Because if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are passed away. All things have become new. That's not me. I'm not that person anymore. And I've got a new gene. You wanna argue on the letter of the gene? Well, you know, you I got the homogene, the lesbian gene, the raging gene, the alcoholic gene. I'd agree with you. We're all endemic in nature. We all have a fallen nature. We all have a fallen gene in us, but that's the beauty of being born again. I'm born again now. I'm body, soul, and spirit. So I can argue, hey. Well, okay. Alright. You got the gene. But if you're in Christ, you don't bring that old gene into it. You're a new creation. You're you're operating in the power of the holy spirit. There's a transformation that takes place. I don't want it to just be of the flesh or simply of the, you know, the letter or mechanical. There needs to be a dynamic in my life. Jesus said, wait for the promise of the father. I'm gonna send you the holy spirit. I'm gonna send you the comforter, and he's gonna help you. I need all the help I can get. And it's not a one time thing. It's not forty years ago during the Jesus movement when we all we all move like this, you know, and everything. You know? We're getting older now. We're wearing diapers. Some of are older. You know? And it's getting harder and harder to get through life, all the different things that we have to go through. And we we had it made living in paradise, and these churches so on fire, and the gospel going forth and all that. And now we're we're facing, things in the marriage. We have prodigal children. We have illnesses. We have, you know, loss of jobs. We have all sorts of things that come against us as human beings. We're not the only ones that go through this, but we want to be successful as Christians. And how do we measure that? How do we how do we know we're being successful? And that we're getting victory over the world, the flesh and the devil. These enemies want to destroy me. They want to destroy my marriage. They want to destroy me as a father, as a husband, as a as a Christian. And I need help when we move in next week to that of a marriage. You you can't do marriage without the help of the holy spirit. I marvel when I see people that are worldly people who have been married twenty five, thirty years. How did they do that? That's crazy. And when my grandma and grandpa say, you know, hey, we've been married sixty five years and we've never been in a in an argument. I'm like, how did you do that? You know? Somebody's drunk all the time. Something's happening here. I don't know. But amazing amazing testimonies. I just know in my life that, I need the help of the holy spirit. I need the lord to help me every which way, and he's been so incredibly faithful, to be there for me. And so we can't do it without his help. And you don't receive his help until you admit that you're an alcoholic. You don't receive his help until you admit that you're a rage a holic. Until you admit you're addicted to lust. You're addicted to pleasure, you're addicted to drugs, you're addicted to pharmaceuticals. God doesn't have a magic pill. There is no pharmaceutical magical pill that will make you whole. The answer is a person. God sent his only begotten son to live the perfect life, the last Adam, and to demonstrate what it is to live a life that's pleasing unto the father. And we look at that ideal, we look at that exhortation to be holy. We don't make excuses. Christians aren't perfect, you know, that sort of thing. No. The exhortation is we're we're reaching above to be holy, to be perfect. We're not there. We haven't apprehended that for which we're apprehended, Paul said. But this what we do is we press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We keep pressing toward Jesus. We keep pressing toward the goal. We're running the race. We're fighting the good fight. It's important that our faith fail not. It's all by faith. When we fall, we get back up. We continue to walk by faith, trusting in him that being confident of this very thing that he that's begun a good work in me is not gonna leave Rick like he found him. He's gonna complete that work that he's begun in me. I won't always be that old Rick, that tendency that's there, that's always there, that's always warring. It's like you're carrying a corpse. You're carrying a dead man. The old man is still there. And that corruption of the old man, you're not careful, will permeate and corrupt you. So you gotta walk in that newness of life, in the power of the holy spirit. The battle in Galatians five that we learn between the flesh and the spirit. The flesh, the carnality, the fallen nature, warring with the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. How do I get the victory? If I walk in the spirit, I won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. If I feed the flesh and give in to the flesh, the flesh is gonna gain victory and dominance, and I'm gonna sin. I'm gonna fall. I'm gonna fall back into some of those old habits, those old desires and things. If I walk in the power of the holy spirit, I'm gaining victory, and God is transforming and changing me from meta a metamorphosis, from glory to glory. What's that mean? I'm faced with a test. I'm faced with a trial. Somebody's being really rude and and and ignorant toward me, and what am I gonna do? Rage a holic it? Am I gonna go there? Or am I gonna be patient, loving, and turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile? Oh, that's so so not who I was. You're right. He's changing you into the image of Christ. God's changing your heart. He's changing you from within. And you're able to go away rejoicing that you passed the test, that you were hit, that you were struck, that you're faced with injustice. I think moving forward, one of the greatest things that we need to prepare ourselves for is injustice. We're so inclined to think that things we deserve, and we do. We worked hard. We played by the rules. But when that protection of the law, as lawlessness rages against the church, we're gonna find ourselves with no advocacy from the law, no protection. And God's gonna allow many of us to go through things that are unjust, unfair, that not protected by the constitution anymore. Laws being changed. Even being a Christian in The UK and in Europe and places presently, you can be arrested for street preaching and things like that. Well, wait till they come after your assets. Wait till they come after the things you worked for. Wait for the bankruptcy and the reset and all that. We're we're not gonna mentally be able to handle that. We're just not gonna. So we're gonna have to come back to square one, and we're gonna have to what Cathy and I call Matthew six in it. We're gonna have to trust the Lord day by day, walking by faith. As you read Matthew six, the heathen are always concerned with what am I gonna eat, what am I gonna drink, what am I gonna wear. We're gonna have to start looking at the birds the way God provides for the little birdies everywhere. Right? We're gonna have to look at the way the Lord clothe the fields, you know, the spring flowers and all that. We're not gonna have to worry about clothing. God's gonna provide as we go, day by day, provide the food, everything we need. That's that's a day labor that we see for the for those who are in the tribulation period. In Revelation six, they're working a whole day just for food. Now we're not gonna be there, but prior to the the, tribulation period, it could very well be that we go through tribulation. We go through a period of time where things are very, very unjust, and we're gonna need the help of the Holy Spirit because there's gonna be meltdown happening. It's gonna just rock you so far when it's injustice. And God, you're all powerful. Why are you allowing this? Why are you allowing this to happen? I'm teaching you to rely upon me even more in a time of injustice, in a time of breakdown of society. I'm trying to get society to look to the king of kings and lord of lords that's coming. I'm trying to get them to let go of this world and their dependency upon their economy and everything that they built. I'm trying to get them to look up knowing that man is failing. Man will continue to fail. And as the world is presented with a champion, the antichrist, many are gonna fall for it. Many are gonna give into it. Jesus said in John chapter five, I come in my father's name, he received me not. Another shall come in his own name, and him you will receive. The people of the world will be receiving a man that promises them everything except the power of the holy spirit. Right? Demonic empowering. And so your wife, how is she to be submissive next week if she doesn't have the help of the holy spirit? There's no program or educational degree that will make you an honorable parent. It's a work of the holy spirit. To be a spiritual leader in the home, a loving husband, there's no drink, no potion, no nothing that the world can provide to make you that Christ like leader within the home. It's it's be not drunk with wine wherein excess, but be being filled with the holy spirit your whole Christian time through. We are wretched people. And in and of ourselves, we can do nothing. And so we need a constant flow, a continuous flow of Jesus. We need Jesus. Jesus, I need your help. Jesus, help me. Rick, I want you to just go and apologize. No, man. I can keep this thing going for a week, Lord. I can I can force my will? I can show her that I'm the boss. Ricky asked for my help. Go apologize. Oh, Lord. That'd show weakness. No, Rick. That's strength. That's the strength of transparency, humility of laying your life down for. Oh lord. That's just not fair. That's so unfair. When do I get to win? When do I get to be the boss? When do I get to pontificate? Rick, go apologize. And when you do, it all lifts, doesn't it? It all lifts off of you, and you're back to the joy of the Lord. Homes filled with singing once again. But if you persist in holding to the letter of the law, imposing your will upon another person who craves freedom, then you're gonna be sleeping on the couch all week. It's not gonna be fun, is it? He says, verse 18, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit. As I said, the Greek tense there, be filled with the spirit, is be being filled with the spirit. So seek divine intoxication. Be under the influence, you know, when you're driving. Hey, sir. Have you been drinking? Have you been smoking the hooter? You know, what are you are you under some pain pills or whatever? Be under the influence of the holy spirit. Be spirit controlled. So when Christians like to say, so called Christian, professing Christians say, I can drink and still be a Christian. Jesus turned the water to wine. Jesus drank the wine. I can smoke the hooter. I can smoke the weed because, you know, it's just an herb. God made the herb. He also made poisonous stank snakes, you know. Made a lot of things. And although it can be used for for good as painkillers and such, but are you under the influence? How much can you drink before you come under the influence? So let me agree with you. Drinking the beer, drinking the alcohol, there's no means of smoking the joint. None whatsoever. Pharmakia. But alcohol is called spirits when you get into hard stuff. So drinking the beer, the lower volume of alcohol, the fermentation, the corruption, and I wanna suggest to you that the water that Jesus turned to wine didn't possess the corruption. That is just better of the type of grape juice that they would drink at the time. And so drunkenness, you'd have to drink a lot of that stuff because to some degree, there's a little bit of of benefit as a as a medicine, as a a medicinal effect. As Peter told Timothy, you know, drink a little wine for your stomach's sake to kill the bacteria of the of the water that's bad and all. And so that's why many of them would drink. It was a regular drink because the water source was so tainted with corruption and all. And so how much can you drink before you get drunk? Because I'll agree with you, drinking is not the sin, it's the being drunk. So being drunk coming under the influence, it might be a beer. Have a beer yourself, pastor. No, I don't get drunk until I drink a six pack. Well, you've been drinking a long time to build up that sort of resistance, you know. Don't expect me as a pastor to go drinking with you. Don't I'm not going there. That's not who I am. You wanna exercise your liberty? Answer the question. Sin happens once you're under the influence. The at what level of alcohol in your blood will the police officer take you to jail? There's your sin. There it is. So why would you tempt God? Why would you tempt yourself and give into the intoxication of of alcohol? Paul saying, be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be being filled with the holy spirit. So my parents were alcoholics. I grew up in a home where they had hot water, cold water, and at the kitchen sink, beer. There was a kegger outside the wall with a refrigerator, and every two weeks, we'd go over to high rise high Roy's liquor store up on Edinger, and I'd help my dad lift that kegger up into the truck and drive it home and lift it out and put it on the dolly and roll around the backyard and lift it up into the refrigerator before people had this sort of stuff. And then you take the c o two and you pop it in there, crank it, And then you shut that door. You go into the house, and there's a refrigerator right here with frosty mugs. They're always real frosty, big mugs. And dad would come home and say, Rick, draw me a cold one, and you knew to go over there and grab that mug, and go over to the sink, and tilt the tilt the mug, and and pull that puppy back, and let it go go go go, and and just give a little bit of a head, a little bit of a head on there, and then bring it over to dad and blow it on. No. You wouldn't do that. You give it to dad, and pretty soon, he'd be passed out. It's 04:30, 05:30 in the afternoon, functional drunks, functional, working hard, all week long, after work, passing out, and and so that's how they roll. My mom, dad both, neighbors starting to get home from work, they're coming over because, hey, Janie and Ralphie, you know, they they've got a kegger, and that's an anomaly in those days. And they come over and everybody's got the got the beer going and all. My little brother Bobby, one time, we put a new kegger in there, and he drew my dad a cold one, and my dad fell asleep, and he woke he woke up to the sound of my brother forgot to put the handle back, and a whole keg of beer went down the sink, down the drain. Now, to an alcoholic, that's serious stuff, man. That's serious. I mean, it's gone, you know? And then on the weekends, we'd have little league games and stuff and, you know, halfway through Saturday, the coaches, the umpires, everybody come on over to our house and they're they're continuing. They're starting to party. Then you might go to a Mexican restaurant, and then they're doing the margaritas and it's real festive and all. And then they go to sleep, and being not drunk with wine wearing a success, but be being filled with the holy spirit. They can't keep it going. How are they gonna keep it going Sunday morning? How are they gonna keep this this drunk, this intoxication going? You and I can keep it going. We can keep it going indefinitely with the help of the holy spirit, be being filled with the holy spirit. But my dad would wake up in the morning, no church, we didn't go to church. And Sunday morning would be this this griddle this grill, and there would be French toast. But before that or while that, he would go over to the refrigerator and he'd open the door and he'd pull out tomato juice. And then he'd get the beer, the mug, half full, and then the rest tomato juice. Some have taught me that's called something about the hair of the dog or whatever. So you wake up in the morning, basically your head's pounding. Boom. Boom. Boom. And then you drink that, and it helps the headache to go away. So to keep it going, you gotta keep drinking all day. You're drinking all day Sunday. And pretty soon, they tell the kids, get out of here. And they're partying again. The neighbors are over. Everybody's over, you know. You go to the Christmas holiday, and grandpa, he's got a kegger. And everybody's gambling. You're playing snake eyes and stuff. And they're nice drunks. They're nice people. But there's no hymn singing. There's no bible study. There's nothing about Jesus except a formal kind of a prayer at the Christmas holiday. And once grandpa would pray that prayer, everybody laugh at him. I didn't understand that. And I go to a Catholic church, and I get the red jacket and made my first communion and all. There's a little little bit going on there. But apparently, even the priests drink, even even the Catholic churches have bowling alleys in Saint Louis, A guy told me, and a bar to bring the men to church. That's what I said. I'm not that pastor. When the churches went through this whole season of what would Jesus brew, and everybody's talking about being hip and cool. I'm not that hip and cool. I'm not gonna go there. I have a doctorate in alcohol. I know what happens. I've been there. I've done it. I've seen it. You can't fool me. I was cool in high school. I was cool after high school. I know how to be cool. I'm not gonna enter this pulpit and act like the world and have you think I'm cool because I drink beer with you. I'm not gonna take whiskey and smoke cigars so you think I'm hip and cool. Are you a man? Are you a man's man? Yeah. I'm a man. I'll show you that I'm a man by laying my life down for my wife. I get so tired, tired of people obscuring the truth about what it means to be a man. A man is Jesus laying down his life for the church. He's not a man by showing people how many beers he can drink, how much whiskey he can drink, how many cigars he can smoke, how long his beard can grow. I'm glad you can grow a beard. Praise the Lord. You know? I guess you're fighting feminism, showing them you can't do this. You know? Praise the Lord. But don't go down that path of carnality thinking that you're a reformer, and you're gonna go into the bars and the pubs around here, and and one pastor actually brewed beer and said, what would Jesus brew? That's an offense. You're you're misleading the young people. You're leaving the young people to act like they're reformers. Martin Luther drank his his his beer and, you know, and Calvin his wine, and George Whitfield had said that he loved a, you know, a barrel of of whiskey, a bourbon or whatever. And we've got this show coming up right now, The Great Awakening, and I don't know, I haven't watched it, I heard it's good, but Whitfield was famous for drinking his barrel of, I don't know what it was, bourbon? And Spurgeon was known for the cigars that he smoked, know. Well, that's great. I that's not who I am. And I don't think it's a thing to promote as it'll make you more Christ like. You'll be more like Jesus if you do these things. You're just trying to embrace the world. You're trying to Christianize the world, the things of the world. And and I just caution you with that because I'm gonna ask you when you pull that on me. How much can you drink before you come under the influence thereof? And how does it affect your walk and relationship with the Lord? Is it drawing you closer to the Lord? All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. I won't be brought under the power of any. It's interesting when you go back to visit your friends thirty, forty years later that you started out drinking alcohol with in high school like we did, Kathy and I, how many of them are addicted to the alcohol and the drugs, and how it's affected their marriages and their jobs, and and again, some of them are functional drunks. But for us, when we see, when we ride our bikes along the beach and they've got a reunion, and they have these bars in California now out on the beach, And so you've got this fenced area where there's a establishment selling alcohol, then they've got a stage set up where they have live music, and then it's fenced. And the adults can go in there as long as they're in the fenced area, It's got a liquor license, and you can drink liquor there. And then your kids can be at the beach playing, so you have a real nice family day there. Right? Or a or a, you know, a class reunion, and my classes there, a bunch of different classes from the high school, I went to Marine High School. And, you know, I'm watching, and I'm like, is this real? This is high school. It was fun back then. There's happiness and sin for a season. But where's the growth? Where's the maturity of growth as an adult? Because you're watching them doing the same things that we did in high school to attract attention from others. You're married, but you're, you know, you're wanting to sleep around, you're wanting to play around, you're wanting to mess around, do the mess around. And so for me, being saved when I was 20, God's helped me to grow. He's helped me to grow as a person, to grow as a human being, to outgrow, let's say, the lusts of the flesh. The you know, Paul said, we're to run from fornication. You know, the youthful lusts. We have these youthful lusts, and are we gonna grow and outgrow those youthful lusts? Are we gonna mature and become a man, or are we gonna act like a boy, still be a boy? And Kathy tells me all the time, you know, I you're like one of the grandkids, you know? You're such a image you're so immature, you know, when you're round, you know. Well, sometimes you don't wanna grow up, do you? So be not drunk with wine wearing a success, but be being filled with the holy spirit. So seek divine intoxication. Be under the influence of the holy spirit. Be spirit controlled is another way to look at it. Allow God's spirit to empower you to to let him saturate you, fill and continuously flow through you, be being kept filled. And so at Pentecost, Jesus breathed on the disciples earlier after the resurrection of the holy spirit, and they received the indwelling of holy spirit. But then he told them to wait, and he had previously let them know that it was expedient that he'd go. It's profitable because then I'll send the comforter to you. So now he's walked on the planet for forty days in his resurrected body and the disciples seen him all, and, and he told them to wait. They're assembled in the upper room, the 120. So wait now. Wait for the promise of the father, the outpouring of the holy spirit. So on penta, fifty days after his resurrection, on pentecost in acts chapter two, the holy spirit is poured out upon them. He told them in acts one that you shall receive power after the holy ghost has come upon you. And the power in the Greek is a dunamis, dynamic power like dynamite explosive. Explosive power when the holy spirit comes. P, the Greek preposition is upon. So the work of the holy spirit is with, comes alongside me to convict me of sin, to show me my need of Jesus. Within is where I become born again. I'm a born again believer with then in at conversion. And then the p can be simultaneous, but can also be later of upon me to empower me for service. God knows that you and I can't do this without the help of the Holy Spirit. When we say do this, I wanna apply it to every facet of what he's called me to be and do, to be a husband, to be a father, not just a preacher. More important to be a father, to be a husband, to be a grandpa. These roles are of family are far more important than your public role. Certainly, need help in public, but we need more help in private to transform and change me from within. Because if we don't get the private down, we can't last. There's no duration for the public, because soon we'll fall, we'll stumble if we're just playing playing around. And the devil will be very patient and wait and wait and wait. And pretty soon pretty soon, you're in the flesh and you do things that that you thought you'd never do again. So we need the help of the holy spirit. So in acts chapter two, the holy spirit's poured out upon the early church, and they're speaking with tongues, and they're speaking the wonderful things of God. They're worshiping God, and like 19 or 16 or 18 or 19 different dialects of people there gathered at at Pentecost, and and just amazing things taking place, and the church just so empowered where they're wimping out when the shepherd was smitten, all the sheep scattered before the resurrection. They're emboldened with the resurrection, but now they're receiving that power of the holy spirit. And then in acts chapter four, so they're empowered there, but in acts chapter four, they're getting in trouble because, Peter and John left the the temple area, and as they're walking, there's a beggar there at the Pool Of Siloam. And he's begging, and Peter walks by and says, silver and gold have we none, but the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk. And this man that had been impotent and and crippled for forty years stands up and walks, and the people are going crazy, and Peter preaches the gospel thereafter. 5,000 people are saved, and it's it's blowing everybody away. And but the persecution comes from Annas, the the the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who's the high priest. So the heavies come down, and they interrogate Peter and John and the rest of the churches around there, and they discover that how are we gonna refute what they've done? Because this miracle has happened, and Peter uses it as a as a ramming rod to just nail these guys, and they're forbidden him to to speak in the name anymore. What's the church doing? And so in four verse eight, Peter's filled with the holy spirit as he's under trial, filled again. And then in verse 31, the church is filled again. And with their prayer, give us boldness because we don't wanna shrink in fear of the religious leaders telling us that we're not allowed to speak in this man's name anymore. So they go to prayer, and they're be being filled with the holy spirit. And then Peter just nails them. He just nails them. Jesus, whom you crucified, you know, neither is there any other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, you know. And it's your wicked hands, you know, predetermined foreknowledge of God, he allowed this, but you guys are the ones that did this. Incredible boldness. And you can beat them, and you're gonna threaten them. And there's nothing you can do to stop them because they're emboldened with the holy spirit continually flowing through them. They reach points where they recognize, boy, you know, it's creeping in. It's creeping in. We better stop and pray. We better ask the Lord. We better ask the Lord for the help because we're leaky vessels. So what happened to me, you know, three weeks ago or at church last Sunday at the Africa, it's kinda leaked out of me, man. I've been I've been hammered on. I need to spend time daily in God's word. And there there's the secret of being filled with the Holy Spirit, spending time in God's word. As you spend time in God's word, you're filled and refilled with the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit's bearing witness of the sun as you read, Churches that don't teach God's word, the people are famished. They're starving spiritually. And they can get all hyped up and emotional, but that's not being filled with the Holy Spirit. That's just sensual. That's that's just the emotions of your humanity. You need an actual moving and working of the holy spirit to fill you. Now there's frauds of this when the Toronto blessing, quote unquote, years ago, took place. You used to see on TBN, used to see on these charismatic stations and stuff, they began to develop what they called drunk tanks, where people would get so overwhelmed, intoxicated with the holy spirit that they couldn't drive home, and that they'd need to go in the drunk tank overnight, you know. And then you saw the worming. You saw the roaring and like lions and all the all the fraudulent aspects of what it means to be being filled with the holy spirit, to be drunk in the spirit. And so they started acting like kooks, acting like drunks and all, and crawling on the ground and all this weirdness, just just just weirdness. And one of the fruits of the spirit is self control. And so you're out of control going nuts saying it's, oh, I'm under the influence of the spirit. No, you're not. You're under the influence of demons. You brought in witchcraft into the church. And you can see it's still happening today as it goes from quote unquote the Toronto blessing and some of the vineyards, and then Bethel. Bethel has a has a tunnel, a fire tunnel, and all these different kind of witchcraft occultic means where they call it the holy spirit, but it's really a different spirit. It's a demonic channeling of wickedness. That's not be being filled with the holy spirit. Be careful of the counterfeits, and don't fall for it. Be like the brilliance in search of scriptures. And I'm I'm 100% for the gifts being in operation. I'm 100% for the exercise of the gifts, all the gifts of the spirit, and the power of the holy spirit. I'm not quenching. I'm not a cessationist. I'm not saying they ceased with the death of the apostles. I'm saying go for it. I'm just saying make sure that this is that as as Peter did. As he's describing what was happening in acts two to the people, they thought the people were drunk. No. They're not drunk as you suppose. This is only nine in the morning. This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. He's reaching back and he's looking for scriptural verification to point out and show that the manifestation, the actions these people are doing is consistent with the scripture. Well, we're gonna go experience new things. God's always known that's dangerous. If Jesus didn't practice it, if you don't see it in the old, the new, if you don't see it in the gospel, that's a dangerous place to go to be presumptuous that that's being, you know, a work of the holy spirit. Be careful. Don't go there. You need the word of God to lead and guide your steps. So how do you describe the spirit filled life? To be spirit filled means we have three things. Number one, a celebrating heart. Verse 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. God puts a new song in your heart. In Psalm 40 verse two two, it says, he brought me up also out of a horrible pit, not of the miry clay. And he set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. And he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise under our God. Many shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord. And so amazing grace we sing. And pastor Newton, John Newton, you know, he's a slave trader, and he's just so filled with guilt, and and as a captain of a ship, and bringing these these slaves from Africa to England, and the whole slave trade, and just how horrific horrific. But it's said that historically that many of the slaves would be singing. They'd be singing, in the hole down beneath the ship and all, and and even the melody that he used for Amazing Grace, he put the words to it, but it was their melody. And so he got converted. He got saved. He became a pastor. And so amazing grace, how sweet the sound, you know? And so we still continue to this day. We sing that particular song, and it was born out of suffering, born out of a realization of the wickedness of man and how unjustly we treated the blacks, these slaves from Africa and all. And it's not just the blacks throughout history, it's the Irish presently today. It's human trafficking of children. It's never stopped. In the in the tribulation period, they're going to market as we'll see in Revelation 18, the souls of men, of children. They're gonna use sorcery. Sorcery is pharmakia. They're gonna be all kinds of drunks, all kinds of things to alter consciousness, to be able to cope with wickedness. People are not gonna have joy, not the joy of the spirit because it's the fruit of the spirit. They're gonna use counterfeit drugs, LSD, whatever kind of new drugs they can come up with, means of stimulus to help people to what? To cope, To be able to last another day. And that's why my mom and dad drank. That's why my family all drank. To cope. To enjoy life. My grandma and grandpa, they grew up in Wisconsin. And in Wisconsin, their family had taverns. Taverns are bars. And in that tavern, my little grandpa with his brothers and my grandma nearby, they, helped in the bar. They'd helped serve alcohol and that sort of thing. And so my my grandpa was musically inclined. He had a band called Bob Kuske in his orchestra, and he even played a couple times on Lawrence Welk down in Southern California. That's fascinating. Because he was in the music union and they lacked a drummer, and so he went in there and filled in for a guy that couldn't be there. But, they mostly played, you know, in bars and stuff in Wisconsin and all. And one of the things they loved to do was sing and dance. And a lot of dancing. My grandma and grandpa later on in San Diego when they moved there, they always went to the VFW and they loved to dance and sing and party. And that's that's who they were. That's who they are. And the other thing they incorporated later that trickled down to all the kids was gambling, is alcohol and gambling. Also, blue collar, working hard, functional drunks, making money, but the whole aspect of of coming out of just the mundane aspects of life of just just working, you know, getting the paycheck. And so they love to they love to party in that way. Now we as Christians, when I got saved, I didn't need to go to the parties anymore. I didn't need to function in that way. I tried to go to a couple of them so I could witness to some of my friends, but it was so incredibly empty. The same way when I went forty years later to some of those reunions, so incredibly empty. God had given me something better, So much better. And so I loved going to bible studies. I love studying God's word. I love going to church. There's a whole different spirit there. And talk about fullness, talk about, you know, the joy of the Lord and the excitement of knowing Jesus is far greater than whatever high I could get from cocaine or marijuana or alcohol or whatever. There it pales in comparison. There there's no comparison. And there's freedom. I'm set free from those things. Right? There's no addiction. There's no downside. And so if you've ever been in the hospital room for somebody that's suffering, drinking too much alcohol, alcohol poisoning, And the nurse says to me, have you ever seen this before? No. My grandma and grandpa, my mom and dad, none of them drank like that to get alcohol poisoning. They they got it went to work Monday morning. They never, as I know, went on a bender for seven days drinking as much vodka as they possibly could to reach a point if they drink one more day, they'd die. To flop on the kitchen floor like a fish, your body's in convulsions, and then your little girl is taken to Harrison Hospital. And then they give her some medic medication to wean her off that alcohol poisoning. And then later, she marries a guy that has the same problem, and he tried to take himself off the alcohol addiction. I think they call it cold or something. Just and he winds up flopping. He winds up his heart stopping. So you gotta wean him. You gotta wean him off of that. And so it starts out being really cutesy. Rick with his grade school friends when mom and dad are camping and everybody's in the kitchen, him and his buddies, Eric and I, and we're drinking beers. Frosty mug, I didn't like the taste, but I'm drinking them. And Kathy and her friends, her dad's got this bar. You know, they're more executive kind of people. Sure, they have some beer, but they're in the cans in the refrigerator. They've got all the mixed drink stuff, you know. More expensive. And they got the swimming pool there, and Kathy's mom and them would go out at night with their friends, and Kathy and her friends would get there and try and mix drinks, and they just had them all, and then they'd take and they'd see where the bottle was, and they'd put water there, mark it. They'd mark it. And they never got in trouble, never got caught, but that's the way they rolled. And so both of us in homes that a lot of alcohol, that's how people cope. That's how they get through it. That's that's how they meet it, you know? And we as Christians, we have the living water. We have the holy spirit. And I can drink all the alcohol I want. I I just don't want anymore. I I just don't want it. And then in ninth grade, when I went to high school, it's part of your socialization. It's it's part of how, you know, you you you're able to go over there and talk to the most beautiful girl in the room. You get your courage up by drinking a couple beers, you know, and you're not afraid anymore. You're not your inhibitions are gone. And pretty soon, I'm on I'm on PCH, Pacific Coast Highway in Sunset Beach, and all it is is a is a field with a fence around it, a chain link fence, and I don't know who was throwing the party, but we're all there drinking. And I remember that first beer I had, it was old English 800. It it doesn't take a whole lot of that to to get drunk in the ninth grade. And then my first date with Kathy as a junior, I remember it was Old English 800, I think. Or no, Schlitz malt liquor the bowl. That's what it was. And Knott's Berry Farm. And we're going dancing. And we both had Schlitz malt liquor. And pretty soon, we're not afraid. We're out there dancing and I don't know how to dance. I got no rhythm. But put a couple beers in me and man, I think I can dance. Today, I'd be making a fool of myself at a karaoke karaoke whatever thing, know. Be a fool out there. My inhibition's gone. But we as Christians, we get the real. We get the fruit of the spirit, the holy spirit. In acts two verse 11, he says, we do hear them speak in our tongues, the wonderful works of God. Others mocking and said, these men are full of new wine. We saw them at the karaoke bar. They were drunk. Were singing like the rest of us. No. That's not true. For these are not drunken as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the of the day, 9AM. They're not they're not drinking at 9AM. My mom and dad would. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, saith God. I'll pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Some of you might be dreaming dreams now because you're old. And on my servants and on my handmaidens, I'll pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. No booze needed. You wanna go on a booze cruise? No booze needed. Right? I have a lot of fun. I have far more fun. I had a party house while I was in high school. Rented a house, constant party every night of the every night of the week. I'm like 18 years old, my senior year and I rent a house and I stay in that house for a year and a half, almost two years. Never never did that house go to sleep. Party in. One time I had a customer when I started my business and and they were partiers, they were drinkers and all. And he was intrigued like, I had a reputation and he was the older guy with a bunch of us younger guys and he had a really cool business. And so I he's one of my customers, and I'm there, and he goes, Rick, the problem with you is, Rick, that you partied too hardy. You should have been more moderate, but you partied so hardy that then your reaction was to quit, you know. Like somehow you're supposed to be a moderate drunk or a moderate drinker or whatever. And and I'm like, no, Tom, you you don't get it. I I got saved, man. I got saved. That's the contrast. I got saved. Jesus saved me. I can drink all I I just don't want it. I have the holy spirit. The holy spirit came into my life and upon my life. There's no booze needed. What would Jesus brew? I I didn't do that idiocy. When the churches around here were having Tuesday night poker for the men over by Downtown Bremerton, Tuesday night poker and cigars and drinking alcohol. I didn't fall for that idiocy. I I don't need those kind of men here. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna meet them halfway. If they're lukewarm and they won't come to church, I'm not gonna accommodate a woman, a wives, whatever. Think of a way to get my husband to church. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Not gonna go there. He wants to act like a man, I'm gonna ask him how much you bench? How much can you squat? How much you dead lift? Can you lay your life down for your wife? We as Christians, we're not wimps. We can be strong, but we choose to lay our lives down. That's the real test of strength. Is to lay our lives down. Be spiritual leaders in the home. Bring your wife to church. Be sober. Allow God to transform and change you. Don't don't Christianize the alcohol thing, you idiots. And I was so frustrated because one of the most prominent pastors in the area, he came up with that phrase, what would Jesus brew instead of what would Jesus do? And the kids all laughed. And then he said, I don't know that my drinking has ever stumbled anybody when people began to, challenge him about publicly drinking and going to the pubs and trying to be reformers and get people saved in the bars around here. The unbelievers know you're idiots. You don't know how to drink like they do. They can drink you under the table. Teetotalers, you know. They come from families like mine. We're bread in it. We don't play games with it, you know. Tinker with it. We don't take our our lovely, beautiful, college age, young women and men and send them on a on a retreat up to Port Townsend to a wine festival, and they all sleep with each other and sip wine for the weekend in the name of Jesus. We don't do that idiocy. That's not Christianity. That's not who we are. These idiots. I rebuke the young pastor at Pat's cookie jar years ago because they were going in that direction. I just full on rebuked them. What are you idiots doing? I I asked my grandma about it. Grandma, these guys are incorporating alcohol in their services. They're having they're having bible studies, and they're telling people to bring their wine coolers and beer to these bible studies as an icebreaker. No bibles. But they wanna sign them up to get them tithing and get them into the church and and build and grow the church in that manner. She said, Ricky, it's one or the other. This is my grandma. More sense. What would Jesus brew? You idiots. And anyway, this pastor that did that, the guy that started the church with him, the two of them started the church over in Seattle. He went through a divorce and two DUIs. Yeah. Your drinking stumbled him. It stumbled him. There are ramifications. There's consequences. You're gonna reap what you sow. Don't go down that road. So no booze needed, except maybe for the shallow, dry, empty, professing Christians. I don't wanna be that guy. I can drink all of it I want. I just don't need any. I don't need what not I I don't even desire it. Now maybe you do. Well, I'm not going drinking with you. Invite me over your house, you wanna drink wine, that's fine. You wanna drink a brew? That's fine. Don't expect me to. And I noticed that people that like to drink don't like to be around people like me. Somehow, they want everyone else to drink with them. Well, where's where's the liberty for me to choose not to drink? Why are you uncomfortable around me if I choose not to drink? I'm not imposing upon you that it's a sin to drink. I I even extend enough enough liberty and freedom knowing you guys all go to the casino. So my family were drunks and gamblers. I don't care, but that's not Christianity. You may exercise that liberty in such a way, it's your entertainment, that's fine. There's a line there. You know you're not gonna cross to be a drunk and get a DUI and have it on your record. So there's a certain gray area there that you choose to operate within, and I choose not to. Why? It's not because I'm smarter than you, it's because I'm weaker than you. If I open that door, I can't stop at one beer. I've gotta drink 20 of them. If it starts to make me feel good, I'm gonna turn toward it every time I'm filled with stress. So I found a better way to deal with the stress. Chocolate. I'm a chocoholic. And it it lowers my cortisol. It helps me. Police officers have a their belt with all their tools, and they got this little loop there for a donut. You know, you you gotta have that donut. You need that to calm you down when the stress level comes up. Now I'm learning that as a sugar holic, it's detrimental to my health. I gotta do something about it. It's gonna take me down. It's true. How do I do that? How do I overcome? It's hard. Because it's accepted in Christendom. If I go out to eat today, I might go eat today that has the best pudding. They got the best everything. And I gotta figure out how I'm gonna go eat there and not eat that stuff. I had to fast last week, and I'm not trying to it isn't a boastimony. It's more for my health. I fasted five days last week, Monday through Friday, no food, and worked out at the gym. That's brutal. It's so incredibly brutal. But it accomplished what I wanted to try to accomplish. It alleviated my insulin spiking back from the holidays when I reintroduced all that sugar. And once I reintroduced all that sugar back in November and December, I never stopped. Although I ate a lot of good food, and although I kept exercising, I kept bringing in the poison to me, may not be poison to you, poison to my body. My body's screaming, no more. You're gonna suffer the ramifications of this if you keep going this way. So I don't want surgery. I don't wanna be on pills. I don't wanna have to mask the the issues going on in my body. Lord, what can I do? Well, Rick, that's from inflammation. Cut out the sugar. Start over. And a good fast is a good place to start over. I encourage you. And the fasting of it, the Lord's saying to me, to Rick Bodrey, it may be okay for other people to eat a lot of sugar and chocolate, but your days as a a sugar holic are winding down, unless you wanna be sickly, unless you wanna rely upon metformin. No. I don't wanna do that. Well, you better change your ways. Well, it's easier just to be a type two diabetic and take metformin. Even help me to lose weight. Well, that's your decision. That's not me. I'm afraid. I I fear fear getting sick. The fear of the Lord is beginning wisdom, knowledge. So I'd rather go through two brutal days, Monday and Tuesday, taking lots of electrolytes and getting through that brutal period, their first two days. And then Wednesdays, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, guess what? It's easy. So easy. Hardest part of doing it is the working out, bending over and you get dizzy. But also the hardest part is mental. The mental. If you watch a show at night with your wife and everything's based upon snacking, these are all addictions. Now I can wean myself from that and gain victory in other ways too by learning to deny the flesh and feed the spirit. That's the secret. Deny the flesh. Ask yourself, do I really need this Twinkie? Is this Twinkie gonna build my body up? Is this Twinkie gonna make me feel better? Is the pleasure of this chocolate really worth it? Sometimes it is. You betcha. And once I start, I can't stop. That's my problem. I can't do it in moderation. That's not the way I am. So if I allow alcohol in, I knew when I got married, I'm not gonna be able to be one of those real disciplined teetotaler dudes, you know, drink one after work. My day will go crazy, and next thing I know, I'll be justified drinking six of them. I can't do it. I can't allow it in. I can't I can't do it. And so thank the Lord. He changed my desires and helped me to overcome, helped me to to not be under the tyranny of the alcohol. But we as church people, we'll go out to the restaurants after church at night and eat these huge crazy hot food sundaes and all that stuff, and pretty soon it's okay to get fat. It's okay to be way overweight as Christians. And that's where we're looking to. We're looking to the pleasure of eating. Right? And then the whole thing comes down to the being skinny and all that pretty stuff. And then I have to diffuse that and make sure that none of us fall into that trap with Joel Olsteen imposing upon us. And I have to say, well, what level of fat percentage did Jesus have? What's the holy level? Because everybody's all engrossed with how they look outwardly, and and we know that it's not the outward. God looks at the heart, not the outward. And so a back injury, any kind of injury or change in your life, your hormones changing, different things can cause you to gain weight after a mental pause, you know. Does it mean you're not spiritual? Does it mean you're evil because you're not like you were in high school? No. These people are idiots. They're on Ozempic and all other sorts of things to take shortcuts, you know, to losing weight and all. And a lot of them have a great discipline in that way, and maybe we don't, but we we're allowed to be fat and happy and calorie chapel and just enjoy it, you know. But then it may affect our affect our health. And it may be that I'm not gonna be there for Kathy or my grandkids or my kids, and now it becomes something I gotta take more serious. You know? And so I was I was fat and happy for a lot of years after I hurt my back down at the Roxy sitting there for twenty five years. But then the type two diabetes sets in, and the insurance company takes your blood, and then they kick you off the insurance pot. Wait. What's going on, man? What's wrong with me? Hey. Well, your numbers are up, and and we're not gonna assure you anymore. Oh, oh, okay. Alright. And can I say, your eyes are getting glassy? Something's wrong. I'm gonna check your blood sugar. Oh, your blood sugar's up. What what can I do? You gotta stop. You gotta start exercising and cut out the sugar. Well, that's do I wanna do that? Will I do that? We have something real to celebrate. Our hearts are changed. They're filled with him. We have that new song to sing. How do you describe the spirit filled life? To be spirit filled means we have number one, a celebrating heart, and secondly, a conquering heart. Verse 20, giving thanks always. Can you give thanks always? This is the will of God in Christ Jesus. Let you praise the Lord. Right? Can you do that? Can you sing in the midst of the storm? Giving thanks always for all the kind of for all things, Lord, all? Does all mean all there? Unto God. God, you made a mistake. No. All things work together for good. For those who love God and are called according to his purpose. All means all. Well, what's it mean in the Greek? All. Not some. Giving thanks always for all things on the God and the father. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Always and for all things. If we're worshipers, we're conquerors. The devil can't defeat us. The devil's banking on the fact that we're gonna curse God and die. If you take away Job's stuff, he will curse you. If you take away his health, and you guys, a lot of us have lost our health, and you still praise the Lord. The devil didn't win. The devil was wrong. You will worship the Lord. You'll say, naked came my end of the world, naked I'm gonna go, the Lord give the Lord, take away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Now, I'm not like Job when it first happens. Well, actually I do. Typically, when it first hits me, I praise the Lord. It's three, four days later, I start to curse him. I start to think about it. And I can't rash it's unfair. It's unjust. Me? How could you do that to me? And then I do the comparison. Looking at all you wretches and how blessed you are. How come you don't give it to them? How come I got the boils, he didn't have the boils? You know? And you start look at how big their house is. Oh, you know? Oh, that pastor, he never's in trouble. Oh, yeah? I'm trailer trash. Alright? I got a nice one now, though. And so you've learned to worship the Lord, be a worshiper. And that's impossible without God's help. What's our greatest fear? We're faced with our greatest fears, and the Lord's helping to develop our faith. And I'm really, really blessed by many of you, the things you've gone through. Enormous, enormous trials. Trials, and I'm so thankful. I thank the Lord, Lord, I'd rather be poor than go through what they're going through. I'm serious. Lord, thank you. I mean, I'm out there playing with my grandkids yesterday in the sunshine. What if the Lord gave Kathy and I a mansion, you know, 10 miles from here on the water? Would I wanna go there? Maybe. Then I'd prove to all of you that I'm a winner. You can measure what a winner I I am because of my bank account. Because God blessed me more than you. That's how we measure one another. But what's true wealth? My kids are next door to me. Ruthie can come up in a moment and bang on the door and say, grandma, grandma, grandma, what's that worth? If I'm 10 miles down the road, I'm gonna see him what? Once a week? Twice a week maybe? And you gotta organize it? What about impromptu? The kids are all around me. And even if I'm not with them, I can look down there. I can see little Toby walking over to play with the dogs. What's that worth? So God got me out of my house in Paulsboro and brought me there in Seabeck, right next door to my daughter and son-in-law, seven grandkids. What's that worth? I'm a rich man. Why would I why would I wimp out and give in to what the devil's trying to use to destroy my faith and to destroy me and destroy my walk with the Lord? Why lose the song in my heart, the worshipful heart, and all the little things that are all around me reminding me of God's love for me? Why would I fixate on the various trials and bad things that happen and try to understand them with a finite mind. Where's the walking by faith and trusting that father knows best? That's the kind of man I wanna be. And when I first got married, and the Lord gave me Kathy back, and I prayed for quite a while. I was a Christian for nine months before she became a Christian, and she used to mock me. Her and her friends used to call up the house I was living in, now it wasn't a party house anymore, it's a Christian house that I rented. And I used to answer the phone, praise the Lord. And she would get high with her friends on a Friday or the weekend, and she would say, what's this? They'd dial the number. She had my number and and they'd say, to this. And I'd say, hey, praise the Lord. And Kathy and her friends go, that's Rick Bodrey. Rick Bodrey, he's a he's a Jesus freak now. Listen to that, you know. And as much as I tried to win her to Christ, I couldn't win her. And so I just kept praying and praying and praying. Finally, finally, the Lord got her. And I asked her to marry me. We got married nine months later. So I've been a Christian eighteen months by the time that we got married. And we rented a house, and we had nothing, but the Lord was providing everything. And I remember praying this pious, self righteous prayer, which I wish I could retract and pull back. But it was something like this, Lord, thank you for saving me. Thank you for saving Kathy. And Lord, thank you for answering my prayers. See, I was in my honeymoon experience as a Christian, and honeymooned with my wife. And I said, Lord, this is easy. This is easy. Lord, I wanna be the kind of Christian that praises you in the midst of the storms, in the time of difficulty, not not after winning the lottery. You know? It's easy to praise the lord after winning the lottery. Oh, I wish I'd never prayed that prayer. Because I found out what a what a wimp I am. How how wretched I am on the inside. And and I've been trying I've been trying to yield to the Lord to die to self on a daily basis to become that man. There's too much of Rick still alive, the old Rick. If you're whining, you need to look at the cross and remind yourself, dead men don't whine. The reason you're still whining is there's too much of you alive and not allowing Christ to live through you. So when we recognize we're filling up the sufferings of Christ, when we recognize what a blessing it is to have these scars, the stigmata on our body from the things we've went through, a testimony of what God allowed you to go through, but you're still not quitting. You're still pressing toward the mark. You're still a worshiper. You see a friend that you haven't seen in forty years and and he knows you're poor, and everybody wants to go through all the ways they amass their wealth during their working years and all. And you got nothing, But you're so wealthy. You have the true riches, the unsearchable riches of Christ. You got your grandkids, your wife who still loves you after all those years. What an amazing thing that is. And I ask her from time to time, Kathy, do you still love me? She goes, why do you keep asking that? I don't know. Do you still love me? Yeah. I love you. Why do I have to say it? I I need to hear it. I need to hear it right now. Do you still love me? She never says that to me. She knows I love her. She probably doesn't care by this time, but you know. So they'd called the apostles and they beat them in acts five forty. They commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. And they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. Is that the kind of Christian you are? And daily in the temple in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. How? An unconquerable spirit within each of them. How can I possibly thank God for suffering, for sickness, for poverty, for death of a loved one in the cross? The answer is you have him. He's promised he'll never leave us nor forsake us. We learn to enjoy him in the midst of the storms, in the midst of the trials, midst of the difficulty. The unconquerable spirit within that of Job. Think of Job, unconquerable spirit within. I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand on the latter day upon the earth and though after worms destroy, come after my skin and destroy this body, yet in my flesh I see God. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. He knows the way that I take and when he's tried me, I'm gonna come forth as gold. His wife says, you, why don't you curse God and die? You speak as a foolish woman speak. Shall a man not receive good at the hand of the Lord and not evil? What a lesson for us. And we see behind the curtain. We see that Job, his miserable comforters came and said it's because there's secret sin in your life, and they'll do the same to you. They'll treat you like a leper because they don't wanna catch what you got, Job. But they don't see behind the curtain, they don't see that God's bragging on you, knowing that you consider him to be your treasure. That your relationship with him like Joseph is so important to you that even if you could pull off sin and nobody hold you accountable, you know God's watching. You looked up. Moses didn't look up. He looked left, he looked right, and he slew the Egyptian. Joseph was looking up. How could I do this great evil against God? Not gonna do it. Not gonna allow the circumstances of my of my life to sever my relationship with my Jesus. Not gonna happen. Not gonna give in to unbelief. Not gonna give in to the flesh. Not gonna try and build a church with a life support system of flesh. Lord, it's your church. The knife is up. You want me to take it down and slay Isaac? It's coming down. There's no alternative. There's no Ishmael before you. We're not gonna help you out, Abraham says. God, you're gonna have to raise him from the dead. And God knew that Abe wouldn't withhold anything from him. And I wanna be like these guys. I wanna be a man of God. I don't wanna be like the old Rick. And I don't idolize any pastor today. I don't idolize any spiritual leader today because I know they got feet of clay. My eyes are on Jesus. He is my hero. He's the one I wanna be like. Not gonna get caught up in a lower level of faith and trusting in men, putting my trust in men when I can trust directly in the Lord. His grace is sufficient for the apostle Paul. A drunk can thank God when he wins the lottery, when he gets the promotion, when he marries a princess, but will quickly curse God when the mirror of adversity reveals he is nothing but a bloated toad. We don't know or really like till we're put in hot water. We don't know what flavor we are, if it's sweet or bitter, till we're put in hot water. And where we put that hot water, we it can be proven that we have a conquer conquering spirit because we overcome the devil with the word of our testimony, the blood of Jesus, and we love not our lives unto death. We're dead. Our life belongs to Jesus. We don't fear them who are threatening to kill our body or take everything away. We trust the Lord. We give to God a thankful heart. That's the greatest gift that we can give him. Fanny Crosby, she wrote 8,000 hymns during her lifetime. She was blind from eight years old. She says, oh, what a happy soul I am I. Although I cannot see, I'm resolved that in this world, contented, I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't. To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot and I won't. She said that she used to rejoice that the first thing she would ever see is the face of Jesus. An unconquerable spirit. How do we describe the spirit filled life? To be spirit filled means we have a celebrating heart, a conquering heart, and thirdly and finally, a controlled heart. To be filled with the spirit is you're controlled by the holy spirit. Submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of God. Now you need to look at that verse and carry this whole message into marriage next week. You need this help in this verse to understand what it means for wives to respect their husbands, be submission of their husbands, and husbands love their wives like Christ love the church. The secret is be being filled with the holy spirit. And there's also a mutual submission as Christians. We're in submission to Jesus. The wife can be in submission under her husband as she sees the husband in submission to Jesus. Getting ahead of myself, but that's the key. That's what you need to look at ahead of time. So submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. So not an unruly drunk, not a my way attitude. You have an other centered. It joy the secret of joy is Jesus first, others, and then yourself. And so Jesus said, I do always those things that please him. Jesus said, not my will, but thy will be done. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Jesus said, I lay down my life for the sheep, controlled, Yielded to the holy spirit. AW Tozer said this attitude is not one of passiveness where we look at things as blessed are they that tolerate everything for they shall not be made accountable for anything. No. We're in Ephesians five eleven being, you know, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. I'm not gonna wimp out and not speak the truth when I see people following lies. Their blood would be upon me. I'm not gonna compromise, not gonna give into it. I'm in love with Jesus. And my soul, my life, my testimony is not for sale. I'm blood bought. I will not sell my soul for what's it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what would a man give in exchange for his life? Not gonna do it. Wanna honor Jesus. And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be being filled with the holy spirit. That's the secret. That's the secret to the Christian life. It's not a program. I don't have a purpose driven book for you. I don't have any kind of steps or whatever. It's so simple. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. Fall in love with Jesus every day. Express your love for Jesus. Be a worshiper. Be being filled with the holy spirit, and you will experience the joy of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you once again. Thank you for the simplicity that's ours in Christ Jesus. Lord, help us to recognize when a man, a woman, somebody standing in our way and bringing forth the law, bringing forth rules and regs and a tyrant, a dictator, and gets us in the working mode to try and work for favor, to work for freedom. Lord, help us embrace the freedom that you purchased for us at the Cross Of Calvary, knowing that it's death to self that frees us, that sets us free, that allows the holy spirit to live and dwell within and to fill us to overflowing, and the overflowing life is what's used to minister to others around us, Lord. We can't minister, We can't serve without first receiving, being filled, be being filled. Lord, let us be spirit filled men and women, husbands and wives, parents, brothers and sisters, Christians, servants. May it be spirit filled. No hypocrisy. No mirrors and and deception, smoke and mirrors and lights. Let it be real. Let us worship you, Lord, in spirit and in truth. Help us, Lord, in these last days to be bold. To be bold. And Lord, help Kathy as all those kids are screaming, Lord. Help us. Let her be spirit filled. In Jesus' name, amen.
About This Podcast
Calvary Chapel Bremerton - Sunday Service
Listen to Rick Beaudry, Pastor of Calvary Chapel Bremerton, teach the Word of God cover to cover, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. Be edified and built up in your faith with solid Bible teaching. New episodes on Mondays in the Pacific Standard Timezone.
