Living It - 2 - Living With The Spirit

So last week we started a new series called Living It. Last week we were thinking about living risky, taking risks to follow what God is telling us to do, even when it seems mad. This week we are going to be thinking about what it means to spend a life living with God.

The examples that we looked at last week of the disciples choosing to live risky in obedience with Jesus while he was with them. This week we will be looking at how they coped once he left them and went back to Heaven, and what we can learn from them.

We see the account of what happened after Jesus was taken back to Heaven in the book of Acts. At around this time we are told that there were around 120 believers. We see them then carrying out some general ‘housekeeping’, such as finding a replacement for Judas.

Then after this we see something amazing happening in Acts 2 : 1 - 8.

Here we see God giving gifts to the disciples, in order to equip and encourage them to continue God’s work following the departure of Jesus. Speaking in foreign languages that they had never learnt is just one of the gifts that God gave the disciples, and gives us as followers of Jesus through his Holy Spirit.

By the disciples using their gift, and sharing it publically they were able to make a massive impact, on that day the number of people who believed in Jesus grew 26-fold it says in Acts 2 : 41 that “about three thousand were added to their number that day”. Just think of that, the auditorium being filled four times over, with new believers simply through the Disciples using the gifts that had been given by God.

Can you remember what the gifts of the Holy Spirit are?

These gifts are mentioned in several places in the Bible, but the place that we are going to read from is Romans 12 : 6 - 8. The Holy Spirit may not give us all of these gifts, and he will give us more of some of these gifts than others.

This is intentional as we are built to serve God as a community rather than as individuals. Where we have weaknesses other people will have strengths and together we have everything we need.

Think about these seven gifts, which one of these gifts do you think that you are most gifted with, and which one do you find the hardest.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to us as followers of Jesus to equip us to serve him as a community.

As we saw last week the disciples were ordinary people, just like you and me. Despite this God used them to share his word and build his church.

What practical ways can we use all of these gifts?

As you look though the book of Acts, you can see that the disciples actively used their gifts. Sometimes like we saw earlier, this was welcomed by the people and new believers were saved.

Other times they faced strong opposition both from the religious leaders (such as in Acts 4 and 7), individuals and believers of other gods and practices such as sorcerers and magicians (in Acts 8).

However as we see throughout Acts and the New Testament that the Disciples continued to trust God and use their gifts, and support each other.

Have a flip though Acts and share some of the examples that stand out to you.

God intends for us to use the gifts that he gives us though his spirit. However we need to have faith to use them, even when we face opposition.

As well as the gifts of the spirit the Bible also talks of ‘fruits’ or products that grow within us as a result of living life with the Holy Spirit living inside us. Paul speaks of these fruits in Galatians 5 : 22 - 26.

The more we allow the Holy Spirit to live within us the more these fruits will develop within us.

To remind of these fruits and how they grow within us we are going to add these fruits onto our seed, and then combine it onto our helicopter from earlier.

To help us remember that the spirit has come down to enable things to happen, and is not simply a passive thing we are now going to let our spirit filled seeds fly.

Each one of us have the same seed, and have the same fruits contained within them. However we all have different gifts and as we are about to see they are likely to all fly and move differently.

Along with the gifts of the spirit that are unique to us, we are all able to grow the fruits of the spirit by allowing the Holy Spirit to live within us.

Encourage the youth to pray, it would be good to cover:

• Thanking God for giving us his Holy Spirit.
• Asking God to help us identify and use our gifts.
• Ask God to give us opportunities to use our gifts.