Freeville/Homer Ave. UMC - Sunday - 10/06/13 Sermon - “Encountering the Holy Spirit” (Reclaiming our Wesleyan Heritage Series, Part 5 of 5)

Sunday 10/06/12 FUMC/HAUMC UMC’s

Sermon Title: “Encountering the Holy Spirit”

     (Reclaiming our Wesleyan Heritage Series, Part 5 of 5)

Old Testament Scripture Lesson: Psalm 137                           

                                            

New Testament Scripture Lesson: 2 Timothy 1:1-14                                      

Gospel Lesson: Luke 17:5-10

                            

          Hello and welcome my brothers and sisters on this the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, the day that the Holy Spirit moved, and the Christian Church was born. In addition to this being the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, this is also World Communion Sunday. World Communion Sunday is celebrated by many Christian Churches on the first Sunday in October every year, to promote unity and love among all Christian Churches. So when we partake of the Lord’s Table on this morning, let us remember that we do so while many of our brothers and sisters worldwide do so and well. For we are all one in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

          It might be said then, that on this World Communion Sunday, that we united in the Spirit. Spirit, that word we hear so often in church. Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You see we so often in church, here about the Holy Spirit, yet how many of us truly experience the Holy Spirit? Some of us might say, “Well Pastor, what do you mean by experiencing or encountering the Holy Spirit?” To this I would say, “That this is not just the mere believing of the Holy Spirit in your head, but that it is experiencing the Holy Spirit in your heart.” That the Holy Spirit is the guiding force of the church, is our passion, and is our way to be filled by God. We accept God the Father, we are saved by Jesus Christ, and we are then filled and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

          The Holy Spirit is so important in fact, that when you come into many towns or cities, you see signs for the United Methodist Church in that town or city that says, “Catch the Spirit.” Has anyone here every seen these signs in entering towns or cities? Some might wonder, we what does “Catch the Spirit” mean?

          For me my brothers and sisters, I can say with the greatest of certainty that not only do I believe in God, not only do I accept Jesus the Son as my savior, and not only do I believe in the Holy Spirit, but I have also felt the Holy Spirit. Some that have never encountered the Holy Spirit have asked me what such an encounter of this sort is like. I tell them it is like sinking into a warm and soothing bath on a cold and blistering night. It is like a low level warmth and a peace that surges through your body that gives you unbelievable calm and peace. You see, I not only believe in the Holy Spirit, I have encountered the Holy Spirit! I not only believe in our God in three persons, I have felt God. I experience God mentally, emotionally, and in the depths of my spirit.

          For many of us we look at the state of churches in the present day, and we say, “why are many of our churches shrinking in size?” To me, among many other reasons, some of our churches are shrinking because in many of our churches I worry that we worship a biune or two-sided God not triune or three-sided God. By this I mean, in most churches in America we hear often of the Father and the Son, but many of our churches have a glorified absence of the Holy Spirit. We then teach and worship only two sides of trinity triangle, the Father and Son, and we leave out the Spirit. Some people might say, “Well why do we need the Spirit in worship anyway?”

          The answer to this is that without the Holy Spirit, we have nothing. We can believe in our heads, but if we do not have the affirmation and the Spirit flowing through our hearts and souls, we are like a dead tree. Sure we can go through the motions of faith and look alive, but we have nothing, as we are dead without the Spirit.

          With the Spirit though, then faith “the size of a mustard seed” can grow into a mighty tree. When we call upon the Spirit, it fills us; we are strengthened, we are filled, and we are given the spiritual power and energy to build the kingdom of Jesus Christ. You see Jesus said that we can increase our faith, even with faith “the size of a mustard seed,” and this requires the calling upon of the Holy Spirit. That when we call upon the Spirit of the living God, that he can take what little faith we have, and grow that faith into a might tree, that is powerful, abundant, and sets this church and this community spiritually on fire for Jesus Christ!

          Some of us, like me sometimes lift a hand or two during worship. You might say when I do this, “Is Pastor Paul waving to me?” Or if we were to have two hands us, than what does that mean. You see two hands raised in the air, is the universal sign of surrender. When we, the people of God surrender to him, and call upon the Holy Spirit to fill us, we are fully vulnerable, and trusting in the Lord. We then call upon the Holy Spirit to fill us. When put a hand or two in the air in worship we are surrendering to God, and calling upon the Holy Spirit, so that we as our United Methodist Church signs say, “Catch the Spirit.”

          For some of my friends that I attended college with though, who were in fraternities, I don’t think that they were lifting their hands to surrender to the Lord. They might have been lifting their hands, as the police were raiding there beer filled party. In fact, to reference the movie “Animal House,” I think that some of my Fraternity friends from college might still be on “Double Secret Probation.”

          On this morning then, have we encountered the Holy Spirit? Have we ever felt that warm, soothing, peaceful, and joyous feeling of the Spirit of God filling us? Some of us might say, “No that has never happened to me.” For some, they wonder if this is ever going to happen.

Yet did you know that the founder of the Methodist movement John Wesley was an ordained and practicing priest in the Church of England early on in his ministry, and that he had never encountered the Holy Spirit. In addition to this, John’s brother Charles Wesley had encountered the Holy Spirit before he did. John and Charles were known to be a little competitive, like typical brothers are at times. Some think that John Wesley might have been upset when Charles had encountered the Holy Spirit in fact. Perhaps John thought, “well why does Charles get to encounter the Holy Spirit and I don’t?” Sibling rivalry can be great can’t it?

          Shortly after Charles Wesley encountered the Holy Spirit, the joy that filled his mind, his body, and his soul was so overwhelming that he wrote the hymn “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” You see Charles Wesley was so filled with the Holy Spirit, and so overwhelmed with the joy, love, and the peace of God, that he said, oh should a thousand tongues sing of the greatness of the Holy Spirit.  

          Maybe the first time that John Wesley heard this hymn he said, “Yeah great Charles, whatever!” John Wesley even went on a missionary trip to Georgia in early 1730’s that was mostly a miserable failure. It was a failure though, because something was missing from his faith and his ministry. This thing was the Holy Spirit. John Wesley then returned back to London England after this missionary trip, convinced that he was a failure in ministry. John Wesley further, felt utterly broken and thought that he was done as a minister and an evangelist. God however, was not done with his young Methodist, John Wesley.

As it turned out, on May 24, 1738 John Wesley has his famous Aldersgate Experience. Has anyone ever heard the name Aldersgate? One our United Methodist Church camps in the Adirondacks is called “Camp Aldersgate.” We have many other places named Aldersgate this and Aldersgate that. This name is all connected to the first time that John Wesley experienced or encountered the Holy Spirit.

Here is the story of what happened on May 24, 1738 direct from John Wesley’s personal journal. The entry is called “I Felt My Heart Strangely Warmed.” Here it is, “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

“I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, “This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?” Then was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation; but that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth, them according to the counsels of His own will.”

“After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations, but I cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He “sent me help from his holy place.” And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror.”

Then the next in his personal journal John Wesley has this entry, “Thursday, 25.—The moment I awakened, “Jesus, Master,” was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon Him and my soul waiting on Him continually. Being again at St. Paul’s in the afternoon, I could taste the good word of God in the anthem which began, “My song shall be always of the loving-kindness of the Lord: with my mouth will I ever be showing forth thy truth from one generation to another.” Yet the enemy injected a fear, “If thou dost believe, why is there not a more sensible change? I answered (yet not I), “That I know not. But, this I know, I have ‘now peace with God.’ And I sin not today, and Jesus my Master has forbidden me to take thought for the morrow.”

          So why do our United Methodist Church signs say, “Catch the Spirit” then? They say this because without the Spirit, we are dead wood, as John Wesley himself was dead wood, until he encountered the Holy Spirit. After John Wesley did encounter the Holy Spirit though, he then went on to be used by God to move the hearts and mind of millions of people. You see people like John Wesley, Bill Graham, and many others first believed, but the power of the Holy Spirit enabled them to grow from a little mustard seed, to might mighty servants of the most high God.

          On this morning then my brothers and sisters, let us seek to encounter the Holy Spirit, maybe for the first time, or maybe anew. If we are to truly to revive the greatness of Christianity in this great land, we need and must have the Holy Spirit. So when we get to our closing hymn this morning, “I Surrender All,” consider what surrendering all to God means. Consider calling upon the Holy Spirit to fill you on this morning, so that we may all have our own Aldersgate experiences. I bring this message to you in the name of the Father, the Son, and or course, the Holy Spirit. Amen.