My topics are to talk about living, preaching, and praying in the power of the Holy Spirit and I am thrilled to spend time thinking and meditating and speaking now about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in those three areas. In fact, there’s just two. Living is everything and then two subsets are preaching and praying.

So if you get this message, you don’t need to come back for the other two, but it might help by just putting a little more meat on the bones because if you know how to live by the Spirit, you know how to preach by the Spirit and you know how to pray by the Spirit because the dynamic of doing by the Spirit, doing in the power of the Spirit, is the same wherever you turn in life.

The Glory of Jesus and the Ministry of the Spirit

So, the first reason for why I am so excited to spend time in the last week or two and then now thinking and talking about this, my main reason for why I love this topic is because I love the glory of Jesus Christ. I love the fact that Paul, whatever else the gospel is, he calls it “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). That God’s glory shines most brightly in his work on the cross where he brings grace to its apex of expression and suffers for sinners. Nothing in all the universe is more grand, more glorious, more magnificent than the death of Jesus Christ for sinners and his resurrection to vindicate his great work. And I love the gospel. I love the way the glory of Christ manifests itself in the gospel. I love to think about my Lord dying for me, rising again, coming to me. I love Christ. I love the glory of Christ.

“If you treasure the glory of Christ, you’re going to love the ministry of the Holy Spirit.”

Now, you know the next step in the syllogism. The Holy Spirit was given, according to John 16:14, in order to glorify Christ. J.I. Packer, in his book, Keep in Step with the Spirit, said, referring to John 16:14, “that basic definition as I take it to be, of what the Spirit was and is sent to do, gives us a comprehensive directional frame of reference with which the whole of the Spirit’s new covenant ministry should be seen.” And I say amen, exactly.

The Spirit is meant, in all that he does, to make Jesus look magnificent. That’s what he’s in the world to do. So, if you love the beauty of Christ, if you treasure the glory of Christ, you’re going to love the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You’re going to be eager to know it, talk about it, think about it, and most of all, you’re going to be eager to experience his work in your life doing that.

I think that is the main challenge in the ministry as a pastor — seeing Christ for who he really is and having affections in our heart that correspond to what is being revealed. Those two things, the opening of our eyes to see that and then responding appropriately is the work of the Holy Spirit and that’s the way he glorifies the Son. The Son is glorified in being seen for who he really is and being responded to with affections appropriate for that glory. And that’s the work of the Holy Spirit and you don’t get to base one without the Holy Spirit. We desperately should be crying out every day, “More! More! More of your action, more of your power, more of your bestirring.”

It’s possible to grieve him, Paul says (Ephesians 4:30). That’s a frightening thought to me — just absolutely terrifying. I just can hardly bear the thought of grieving the Holy Spirit. I didn’t even know what it means — grieving God. This is a very strange thing. And yet, there it is. If you go to bed with anger at night, what’s the context? You give place to the devil and you grieve the Spirit (Ephesians 4:26–27).

So, we need him and we need him stirred up, we need him upon, we need everything about him he’s willing to do because my vision of Christ fades every day. It fades every day, and football becomes big. Didn’t mean to distract you, I shouldn’t have said that, but there it is. Or anything, anything can distract you. And mainly it’s good things that rise up and start to take over Jesus. I desperately need the Spirit, I love the glory of Jesus, and hence, I love the ministry of the Spirit because I can’t see Jesus without him. I can’t love Jesus without him. I can’t follow Jesus without him. So that’s the main reason why I’m excited to think on this about you.

The Person of the Spirit

Second, how do I think about the person of the Spirit? We’re going to get to living by his power in a minute, but I thought this would be important to say. I’m totally traditional in my trinitarian understanding. I think the church historically has got it right that God is one God, one divine essence in three persons. The Holy Spirit is one of those persons, who relates personally to the other persons of the Trinity. And yet there is one God.

Now, I’m going to read to you a conceptualization, and I admit it is a human effort to put into language the mysterious three-in-oneness of the Trinity from Jonathan Edwards, who wrote an essay called, “Discourse on the Trinity,” and I find this conceptualization so faithful to Scripture and so illumining when it comes to the work of the Spirit that I embrace it and I think about it and I try to relate it to everything that I do in regard to the Spirit.

So I’m going to read you a page from Edwards about how he conceives and how I conceive of the person of the Holy Spirit. And then I’ll show you, just in brief, how the person and the work go so closely together. So here’s what he said and this is complicated, so put on your thinking caps for three minutes. Here we go:

Therefore as God with perfect clearness, fullness and strength understands himself, views his own essence . . . that idea which God hath of himself is absolutely himself. This representation of the divine nature and essence is the divine nature and essence again. So that by God's thinking of the Deity, [the Deity] must certainly be generated. Hereby there is another person begotten; there is another infinite, eternal, almighty, and most holy and the same God, the very same divine nature.

And this person is the second person in the Trinity, the only begotten and dearly beloved Son of God. He is the eternal, necessary, perfect, substantial and personal idea which God hath of himself . . .

The Godhead being thus begotten by God’s having an idea of himself and standing forth in a distinct subsistence or person in that idea, there proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and sweet energy arises between the Father and Son: for their love and joy is mutual, in mutually loving and delighting in each other. Proverbs 8:30, “I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before [him].” This is the eternal and most perfect and essential act of the divine nature, wherein the Godhead acts to an infinite degree and in the most perfect manner possible. The Deity becomes all act; the divine essence itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence, and there proceeds the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz. the Deity in act . . .

And this I suppose to be that blessed Trinity that we read of in the holy Scriptures. The Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an idea of himself, and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the Deity subsisting in act or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth, in God’s infinite love to and delight in himself. And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the divine idea and divine love, and that therefore each of them are properly distinct persons.

One of the reasons that is relevant to what I’m going to say from the Bible, not Edwards — Edwards is not our Bible, the Bible is the Bible — is that understanding the Holy Spirit as not less than, but more than the love and joy and delight that the Father and the Son have for each other, standing forth as a person, as it were, language fails here, embodying that energy of love and delight. If that is close to what the Holy Spirit is, then his work being poured out into our lives with one of his central marks being love for the Father and love for the Son means he doesn’t just make that, he is that.

When you are loving, when you’re saying, “Abba! Abba!” The Spirit is crying “Abba.” This is really profound and way over my head. When the Holy Spirit inhabits us, he’s working on us, he’s in there, and he’s giving rise to himself, expressing joy in the Son and joy in the Father. And I think if you grasp that, you get close to how he does everything he does in transforming human beings because I think his transforming work is mainly by showing us the Son, showing us the Father, and then awakening in us affections for the Son and for the Father that wean us off of the sinful pleasures of the world and make us like Jesus. That’s the sum of how he works.

I or the Spirit?

Now, would you open your Bibles with me and turn to Galatians 3. Today’s message is built around these five verses at the beginning of Galatians 3. I’ll read it with you and then make seven observations about it. And the goal is to try to get at the basic biblical dynamic of what it means to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is basically a paradoxical statement: “I’m living, but not I, but the Spirit, or Christ.” Or “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

That’s the mystery of the Christian life. What is that? How in the world do you do that? Could your people give an account of that? Could they say, “I understand somewhat of what it means that I’m living and I’m not living. I’m living and another is living in me. I’m living and I’m being empowered by another.” That’s what we’re after. How does that work? How does he come and what does it feel like when he’s doing it? It just feels so like me to get out of bed and yet it feels me to kneel, it feels like me to worship. It feels like me to pray. Am I doing this?

Is the Holy Spirit at work now? Or is that just American diffusion? That’s it, that’s the issue. And that is not something I have any control over. There are steps I can take, we’ll talk about them, to put myself in the way of the Spirit. But right now, he’s at work or he’s not at work. And I don’t make it happen. This is a great thing, you know because you’ve all got different personalities. Wouldn’t that be horrible if it were dependent on you or me?

Galatians 3:1: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” So keep that in your mind, it’s kind of lurking in the background, then it’s going to come out again. Now let’s read verses 2–5:

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?

I think that’s one of the most important passages on the Spirit and the life of the believer in the New Testament. So let’s spend some time on it. Let’s consider seven observations and they build on each other.

1. The Same Power

The way we receive the Spirit in the first place — that is, become a Christian — and the way we go on experiencing his power is the same. Now, you see that in the parallel structure of that key phrase in verses 2 and 5.

So first, look at verse 2, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” And the answer is: you received the Spirit by hearing with faith. So how did you get saved? You got saved, you got the Holy Spirit, and he became indwelling part of your life by hearing with faith.

“If you began with the hearing of faith, live by hearing with faith.”

Now verse 5: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Identical structure, identical question, and the same answer for both, namely, by hearing with faith (ex akoēs pisteōs) — from hearing of the faith. This is a very important phrase — the only place Paul uses it.

That’s observation number one. We began the Christian life, received the Holy Spirit, and we continue being empowered the same. Not a new technique.

2. Faith in the Heard Gospel

That single way of receiving the Spirit at the beginning and going on in the Spirit is called hearing with faith, or the hearing of faith. Implication of verse 2: “You received the Holy Spirit by hearing with faith.” Implication of verse 5: “The Spirit goes on working in you by the hearing with faith.”

Now, what does that mean? Here’s what I take it to mean. The human act or human experience that corresponds to the divine act of the Spirit’s coming and working is faith. Now, in the human experience, what’s going on consciously in me? What am I doing or feeling or thinking that corresponds to his empowering movement because I don’t control him, he’s God? It’s called faith. And the reason, I think, he calls it hearing of faith is because he means very pointedly to say this is not vague faith. This is faith in response to a heard message. “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” and “so faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:14, 17).

That’s the link up there with Romans 10. So we receive the Holy Spirit and we go on being empowered and living in the power of the Holy Spirit through a faith, which is faith in a heard message about Jesus. He’s talking about the gospel.

3. Begun and Live by the Spirit

This parallel between receiving the Spirit in verse 2 and experiencing the power of the Spirit in verse 5 is confirmed in Galatians 5:25: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” So we received life by the Spirit’s coming. Now, go on walking in the life that you receive by the Spirit.

Now the link between Galatians 5:25 and Galatians 3:2, 5 is verse 3: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” And the answer to that is it can’t be done. If you began in the power of the Spirit, the only way to go on living and walking, being perfected, completed, is in the power of the Spirit and not the flesh. You don’t begin here with faith, faith alone! Justification: faith plus sanctification. No. The Holy Spirit works miracles among us and I’m willing to take that in terms of signs and wonders and love. In fact, I’m going to put the emphasis on love because it’s harder. The devil can imitate signs and wonders. The devil can’t imitate love. This is why this whole thing is complicated, right? And I believe in signs and wonders and think they should be prayed for.

So, observation number three is that Galatians 5:25 ties in with Galatians 3:3 and confirms our understanding of the relationship between Galatians 3:2, 5. If you have begun by the Spirit, live by the Spirit. If you began with the hearing of faith, live by hearing with faith.

4. Bear the Fruit of the Spirit

Walking by the Spirit in Galatians 5:25 — also used in Romans 8:4 — is also described as bearing the fruit of the Spirit. So if you ask, “How do you receive the relationship between Galatians 5:22, ‘bear the fruit of the Spirit,’ and Galatians 5:25, ‘walk by the Spirit’?” I would say, I don’t see any difference. It’s just a description of what happens. The Holy Spirit is in me and he is bearing the fruit, that’s my life, that’s my walk. I’m walking by the Spirit when I’m bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

Now what’s the first, and I would say summary, fruit of the Spirit? And the answer is love. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. So I take it that walking by the Spirit would mean I become a loving person, radically, unnaturally, sacrificially, distinctively, crazy love kind of person. Love is really strange. You lay down your life for people. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. And he does it by hearing with faith.

So now we can say that Galatians 3:5 could be paraphrased as: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and goes on working the miracle of love in you, do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” And the answer is: hearing with faith. Hear a promise, hear the gospel, believe it and something happens, namely, the Spirit is working somehow to produce love.

5. Love the Treasure

Galatians 5:6 confirms that we’re on the right track. Let’s try to piece together Galatians here. Galatians 5:6: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” So not works but faith — faith working through love. So faith produces the effect of love in our lives. And the Spirit produces the effect of love in our lives. Do you see that? Galatians 5:22: “The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love.” Galatians 5:6: the fruit of faith is love. One is describing the sovereign free work of the Spirit and the other is describing how I experience it. I trust something. I believe something. I embrace something. I treasure something.

You could preach a whole message right here, but let me just stick in a little parenthesis, I’m assuming and I’ll try to put some foundation under it tomorrow. I’m assuming that faith is a really profound thing. Faith, at our church, I have tried to move our people beyond the phraseology, “We trust Jesus as Savior and Lord,” to “We trust Jesus as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure of our lives” because in our context anyway, Savior and Lord leave you pretty much often unaffected indifferent. “Okay, I’m rescued from hell and I’ve got a counselor.” And you do not like what he tells you.

Paul says in Philippians 3:8, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” I think that’s what faith says about Jesus. Faith says, “My Savior, I need one. My Lord, and I’m so lost and need a guide on every corner of my life. And my Treasure whom I esteem and value and cherish above everything in the world.” That point right there, which I think is part of saving faith, changes everything in your life, which is why faith produces love (Galatians 5:6). And that work of my cherishing Jesus is the work of the Holy Spirit. And therefore faith is that great work.

6. Simultaneous Acts

Our act of trusting God’s gospel promises and the Spirit’s act of coming and empowering us, are simultaneous acts. So the gospel is preached, or read in the Bible, or read in a tract, or heard a webcast or something, the gospel gets to me and I hear with faith, that act, and the Spirit’s act of coming are simultaneous acts. But the Spirit’s act is causally decisive.

I think both of these are really important. Getting the simultaneity piece has practical effects, theological effects, and getting the decisive causality of the Spirit so that he, not I, am decisive. Even though we’re simultaneously acting at that point, that matters to get both of those. So let me try to show where I got it.

Born of God

First John 5:1 is probably the clearest text in the New Testament on the order, the causal order of the work of the Spirit and my being made alive as a believer, new birth. Notice the tenses of the verbs. I’m going to read you a sentence or two from John Stott on this because he gets it exactly right, I think.

First John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” And in the context, it’s by the Spirit, has been born of God. John Stott comments, “The combination of present tense (believes) and perfect tense [has been born] is important. It shows clearly that believing is the consequence” — this is what I mean by the Spirit being causally decisive — “not the cause, of the new birth.” So the faith is not the cause of the new birth, the Spirit is the cause of the new birth. “Our present, continuing activity of believing is the result, and therefore, the evidence, of our past experience of new birth by which we became and remain God’s children.” That’s John Stott.

So the work of the Spirit in coming, we receive him. So when it says in Galatians 3:2, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” That “by hearing with faith,” you could take that, couldn’t you, as saying, “We did that and then the Holy Spirit came.” And if Stott is right, and I think it’s pretty plain in 1 John 5:1, that’s not the way to understand the dynamic of Galatians 5:2. The Holy Spirit is coming and as he comes, there are two things happening there, he’s arriving and I’m believing and they’re simultaneous.

The Word of God

Let me give you another text, see if you get this. If you ask from 1 John 5:1, “Everyone who believes has been born of God,” “How did he do it?” 1 Peter 1:23, 25 are hugely important in my understanding of so many things in ministry. First Peter 1:23 says, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but imperishable” — I take that to be the Holy Spirit — “through the living and abiding word of God.” And then verse 25 defines that, “This word is the good news that was preached to you.” So I just think this is getting clearer and clearer.

So here I am and I’m dead in my trespasses and sins. I’m blind, I’m hard, I’m rebellious, I’m disinterested. The cross is foolishness and a stumbling block. I don’t want anything to do with it. And here comes the seed — the imperishable seed. The Holy Spirit comes and he sovereignly intrudes upon my heart. And he does it through the gospel. So at the front of this is the gospel. It’s him through the living and abiding word, the gospel. He’s coming in like this.

Well, my experience of that is faith. When this gospel, this Spirit-empowered gospel starts penetrating me, my response is faith. So I’m arguing that faith, gospel, and Spirit are simultaneous at the point of regeneration, not sequential. Three events: The word of God concerning his Son is heard as true and compelling. Second, the Spirit comes with life-giving power. Third, faith is experienced in our hearts. And I’m arguing they’re all simultaneous, but the work of the Spirit is causally decisive.

“Faith is not the cause of the new birth, the Spirit is the cause of the new birth.”

Now here’s why I think getting this simultaneous piece is so important practically and theologically. If you say that there is a lag time, a gap between the sovereign gospel-pointed regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and my response to it, my faith in it, what’s going on in that lag time? Either something false is being said about the Spirit or something false is being said about my will. Either we’re saying the Holy Spirit is biblically ineffective, or we’re saying my will has an unbiblical autonomy. I’m dead in trespasses and sins. I’m not the least bit open to spiritual things. And the Holy Spirit moves powerfully on me and everyone who is born like this believes. There isn’t any lag time. There isn’t any gap by which I somehow become autonomous and neutral, thinking, “The Holy Spirit is sovereignly working on me. I wonder if I should respond?” It doesn’t work like that.

Let me give you two illustrations. Take the illustration of fire and heat and light. Wherever there is fire, you strike a match, there is light. And wherever there is fire, there is heat. But we would not say that the heat or the light caused the fire. We would generally say the fire caused the light and the heat. And yet, there is no time between the coming into being fire and the existence of heat and light. That’s what it means for there to be fire. There is now heat, there is now light. That’s the way I think the Holy Spirit works.

Here’s a more immediately biblically relevant illustration. I’ve done this experiment over and over again to try to figure out if I’m right about this. Close your eyes and just pretend that your eyelids don’t let any light through, and then open them. Now which came first? The opening of your eyes or seeing? I don’t think there’s any lag time. It’s the meaning of open eyes. The eye is open because I’m seeing. If I didn’t see, I’d say something’s wrong.

So the Holy Spirit is coming to a blind, dead heart. And he is coming with a spearhead of the gospel, through the living and abiding word of God, which is the gospel. And we are born when he comes, and the birth is the awakening of our heart, the eyes of our heart are opened to see glory in the cross! Once it was a stumbling block. Once it was foolishness, but to those who are being called, which is just another word for new birth, to those who are being called, it is now power! It is now wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:18)!

What happened? You all have gone through this. Once it was all boring. It was just so boring. Why do these people go to church? Why do they read Bibles? Why do they read books? It is so off the charts, unrealistic, mythological, boring and unintellectual. And then, what happens? Late at night, early in the morning, something changes and now, “I think I should take this off the shelf .” That’s how people get saved. That’s the Holy Spirit doing a miracle and we’ve heard it from the panel and from the others, this is what we need. This is what Britain needs. This is what America desperately needs — a great movement of the Holy Spirit.

I don’t really care what the frills look like. I just really want this miracle. I want this miracle. I want it through my preaching way more than it happens. And when I hear the brothers talking about expecting more, I just want to cry because I’ve tried so hard to expect more. More, more, give me more.

I want to ask any of you who are farther along than I am. Every Spirit-filled person — whether charismatic or not — I’ve ever met has sin in their lives. And I mean stuck sin. I mean, same old, same old. What’s that? Well, what is that? Well, it just means this thing called the fullness and empowering of the Holy Spirit can come on people who are very immature. Can come on people who have remnants of sin and it can come on me when I still have problems with my wife and she with me.

Can we ever get this worked out? Isn’t that strange? You’d think we’d just get my life perfect here. Got to get my life cleaned up at home and get my act together in every sanctified area of my life. Then there might be some power. And I don’t doubt that there would be more power and I hope that before I’m dead at whatever age, more power will come. But it is not a simple formula here that when the Holy Spirit comes in power.

We’ve got this little image we use at our church of an octopus — eight legs. It is possible to have seven sanctified legs and one not. And if you only look at the one that’s not, you say, “I don’t think that guy’s a Christian.” I mean, pick your favorite sin. I don’t think you should settle for a bad leg, but I don’t know any other way to account for what I’ve seen all over the world in the godliest people I’ve ever met, when I really get close to them, they’ve got problems. And the problem isn’t the other people. It’s them.

So that sixth observation was that the Holy Spirit comes, we believe, the word is heard, and that’s all simultaneous and the Holy Spirit is the decisive cause of it all.

7. Magnify Christ

From all that we’ve seen so far, it’s clear that the Holy Spirit binds himself to the Christ-exalting word of the gospel in his saving and sanctifying work. The Holy Spirit has come into the world to glorify the Son of God. The gospel is the apex of the manifestation of the glory of God’s grace. Christ placarded it.

Now I said we’d come back to verse 1, what’s making Paul so mind-boggled here in chapter three is, “You bewitched Galatians! I placarded the crucified Christ! I placarded him before you. And when you saw him, the Spirit came to you. Unless you believed in vain, if so many things were in vain, which I don’t want to believe. So stop trying to live another way than the way you received him.”

So, the Holy Spirit, when Paul placarded the Son of God crucified, the Holy Spirit’s flying right there with them in the churches of Galatia. Here comes the gospel, landing down, and when it hits, the Holy Spirit is right there empowering and revealing the glory of Christ in the gospel. The central work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Son and that is how we are changed. Now I’m going to wrap things up.

“The gospel is the apex of the manifestation of the glory of God’s grace.”

There’s so much more to say right now about how does this practically feel? How does it work? And I’m going to begin tomorrow’s message, even though it’s a message on preaching, I hope you can see right off the bat how this relates to preaching and prayer.

If seeing Christ crucified as placarded in vivid colors is what Paul is so amazed that they could be walking away from, having received the Holy Spirit, then clearly the preaching that is going to transform people, will be preaching that preaches in such a way that the Holy Spirit will fly in tandem with it, namely, preaching that magnifies the greatness of Christ and describes how unbelievably satisfying and desirable and what a treasure he is. That’s the kind of preaching, so that’s where we’re going.

Living by Faith

But the practical, how do you do this? How does verse 5 look on the ground? “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” Answer: He works miracles among you by hearing with faith. We’re going to leave here in just a few minutes. How will you do that in the next hour? That’s the question. What will that feel like tonight? How will you do supper that way? How will you do it? How will you have sex? How will watch television? How will you walk home? How do you do that by faith, such that it’s by the power of the Holy Spirit? And I’ll try to put some real practical meat on the skeleton tomorrow.

The main point here is this: Paul’s emphasis in Galatians is that living by the power of the Holy Spirit is pursued the same way you receive the Holy Spirit in the first place. That’s the main point of Galatians 3:2, 5, namely, by the simultaneous act of hearing, believing, and being empowered. It all happens at once, and our job is to see and believe the promises of God in the gospel in regard to the next act in our lives.

And the implication of those promises and that gospel for this next act in my life and what believing that would signify, what would believing that mean for this next act? That’s our job and the Holy Spirit is flying with the word and empowering us in that.