No Manual Required

by Pastor Gina Johnson

So we all think about Pentecost and everyone knows to wear red when we're reminded by our minister the week before. That might be something I should have done last week. But I just let you know, don't feel guilty because this is like the only red thing I had in my closet, so no problem.

It's important that we celebrate Pentecost, not because it's the church's birthday. That is a beautiful reason to celebrate. And not because, oh it's the day you got the Holy Spirit, which is also rather beautiful.

But we celebrate Pentecost as an opportunity to be reminded and to honor that time in which there was an awareness. There was a remembrance of the power of God that was received by the people and we have it living in us each and every day. The celebration of Pentecost is a great opportunity just to stop and recognize that sacred power that is within each and every one of us, you know.

I mean, I used to always think about the Holy Spirit as the little Jiminy Cricket and I would always go back to the old school Pinocchio, you know. And sometimes Pinocchio just did not listen and Jiminy was like, come on buddy, please. And it didn't always happen.

But that's the Holy Spirit. It's been custom designed to walk with you each and every day. But what if I told you the struggles that I have with the Holy Spirit is it didn't come with an instruction manual, you know.

And I've heard different versions of how you get it started. In some traditions, they have to lay hands on you, circle in on you. It's like an attack of vultures and roadkill in the middle of the road, except it's more spiritual, more spiritual.

I think they're all white and I think there's music playing while it takes place. But I know they put hands on you and the Spirit gets you or they get you, but something gets you. And when you're done, you receive the Holy Spirit.

Has anyone had that experience? Anyone? Okay, but I've seen that one. Travis, you remember, we've seen that one in someone's living room. So that was very special and that actually was an incredible experience.

And I know the people there all had very strong connections in their faith to God and it was beautiful. For other people, they'll say that nope, you receive the Holy Spirit when you get baptized. That when you receive that baptism, that's when you receive the Holy Spirit.

Other people have different traditions in which you receive the Holy Spirit and I'm not here to tell you yours is right and theirs is wrong or theirs is right and yours is wrong. I'm trying to tell you that since the Holy Spirit is part of what we call that tri-head of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And we believe that ultimately it is all one I Am.

It is one God with those three parts. Again, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And so if we are forever connected to God, there is no separation.

We are the extension of the I Am and always the I Am at the same time. I don't want to believe, and I don't believe, but I offer you just to think a little bit about it, that there has to be a particular time where you receive the Holy Spirit. I think the Holy Spirit is always each and every moment residing in you.

In fact, I know that to be true. It's just a matter of us taking the time to acknowledge it, to be aware of it, and to start to do the things to cultivate and to work with the Holy Spirit that's in us. So here we go.

You receive this package. Beautiful package. Wow.

To you. Imagine your own name on there. No manual required.

And you know what? You don't even know what it is you need more than anything else, but you know it's in that package. You can just feel it. The package is radiant.

When I open this up, this is going to be perfect. And you open it up, and you're not sure what to think. And you look all around, and there's no paper.

There's no instructions. There's no manual. Thankfully, we have phones, right? So you go on to YouTube, and you take pictures, and you're scanning codes, and you're doing all you can, and there's nothing.

But there's something in you that just says, just turn it on. Just plug in. Like, just do it, and I will teach you, right? And you're like, okay.

Okay. Whatever this is, I receive it, and I'm going to follow that nudging inside of me, and I'm going to go for it. And that's the Holy Spirit.

It doesn't need a rule book. It doesn't need a checklist. It's not going to have some special dance or some certain order that you have to go through in order to hear from it.

With the Holy Spirit, it's that moment when no longer what is external is calling you out, but what is internal is calling you in. It's when the mystery becomes a clear voice. It's when the doubt becomes this wonderful nudging that just effortlessly draws you towards it.

It's when loud fears are now quiet whispers and gentle encouragement that you can navigate through this, that you can keep going. That's the Holy Spirit. We've heard it called the wonderful counselor.

We've heard it called the advocate. But sometimes I think it's easy just to drum it down and say, you know, it's going to be that wise counsel. It's going to be your best friend.

It's going to be that encouraging voice. It's basically the you that you need to stare at you and say, come on, you got this. You can do this.

Remember who the heck you are. That's the Holy Spirit. I want to tell you a story about Smith Wigglesworth.

What a name, Smith Wigglesworth. He was a plumber by trade, not a preacher, not a public speaker. He didn't even know how to read until he was an adult.

And you know who taught him? His wife, Polly, taught him how to read. And she used the Bible to teach him how to read. And she was the bold one.

She was the one that preached while he stayed in the back, nervous, didn't even want to say one word. But in time, there was something stirring in him. You see, he got the package and he pulled the item out and he went ahead and turned it on and he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

But something was stirring in him and he became more aware and he became more aligned and his enlightenment was coming through more and more. And it wasn't from a program. It was from alignment.

It was from surrender. It was from tuning in to the Holy Spirit. And as people were coming around him to receive healing, he was healing the sick and there were all sorts of miracles.

And wherever he went, people could feel the presence. And they would come and they would give him credit. And he said, the Holy Spirit does the work.

I just listen and obey. But then something changed. Polly died.

And that was the one who taught him to read. That was the one that helped him understand what it was like to be in relationship with Christ, with the Spirit. She was the one who believed in him.

She was the one that stoked that fire, that really ignited his love and passion for God. After she died, he laid down on her grave and he was broken. And he begged God, he begged God to take him too.

He had no words for the loss that he was experiencing. And he just lay there in silence. And he felt a whisper.

He felt the call of the Holy Spirit tell him to rise up and go. He didn't argue, but he said, if you give me a double portion, hers and mine, and I will go. And in that moment he did.

From that moment on, that fire of the Holy Spirit that lives in all of us, we just need to realize it and embody it and let it come to life. From that moment on, it burned in him even brighter. And he preached across continents and healings, giving people that recognition of the wholeness they already have.

He did that with his words, with his silence, with his presence. He said, I turned on what God gave me and it taught me as I moved. It taught him as he moved.

You know, so many people are talking about AI nowadays. I can't log on to a Google search without something AI popping up. I get really skeptical over things that I'm finding on YouTube because I love my YouTube.

And I'm like, man, is this another AI generated thing or am I going to hear something else? And at the same time, I found AI to be a remarkable tool of studying and engaging history and spirit and understanding so much more depth to what's out there. And so in a world where people are tuning into this artificial intelligence for good, for making life easier, I hope for learning and I hope for further encouragement in learning about who we are in this country, who they come from, things of that nature, education. But however, I want to dial it back a minute because we have something greater than AI.

We have what I like to call CI. This is conscious intelligence and that is what the Holy Spirit is. You think AI guides you.

Well, the Spirit knows you before you go and type anything into a search generator. You know, the Spirit not only guides you, it aligns you, it checks you, and it frees you. It gives you everything you need and empowerment to free you from these illusions of separation that like we like to cling so hard to.

It frees you from the stories that are quietly imprisoning you because you've had them playing in the background for so long. It frees you from illness and diagnosis that tell you now that you have this label on you, you won't get better. There is no better.

You're ill and you're aging and you're getting older and here's some sickness on top of that. The Holy Spirit frees you from that because it gives you the power that reminds you that you are without limitation and that healing is upon checking into that Spirit, aligning with that Spirit, and trusting because when you trust, the Spirit continues to move. The Spirit's always there just waiting for you and in John verse 16, it says, when the Spirit of truth comes, it will guide you into all truth.

That's the key. It's not about mastering anything. It's not about figuring out every single step.

It's just about trusting that when the Spirit of truth comes, you can trust in that Spirit and it'll guide you, but you have to allow yourself to be guided. You have to be willing to pause and to ask. You have to be willing to ask the Holy Spirit, what is it I need to see today? What is it you need to reveal to me today? What is it that I have forgotten? What are you guiding me to right now?

And then you need to listen, but we don't listen for thunder. We don't listen for a loud bang. We listen for that quiet, still voice. We listen in the stillness.

We listen when we turn down all the noise, including the noise that we like to make ourselves, when we interrupt the Spirit's message because we think we already know and we think we have all the answers, but if we just listen, we listen for that whisper. It often sounds like peace. It often sounds like complete and confident knowing in where you're going, and then we move because we don't always have to wait for complete certainty.

When we know it's the Spirit, we can move and trust that with every step, the next step will be lit to follow, that with every move that we make, the next direction will be shown to us. If we go down the hallway, we reach the door, the key will be provided or the door will already be open, but we have to keep going.

I know I told you all this story before, but I'll say it again.

I remember sitting at a stoplight with a minister in a vehicle with me in the back seat, and I had been talking to her over the past couple of days at a conference that we were at, talking to her about, I just, I just am waiting. I'm just waiting for the prompt. I just want to know what to do.

Do I go to this school or do I go to that school? And we're sitting at the stoplight, and there's a runner that comes jogging by, and she says, Gina, and kind of startles me a little bit. She's like, what is he doing? And I was like, oh, he's running. And she goes on to say, well, what is he running towards something? And it was her saying to me, like, do you think he stopped? And he think he just stopped and locked it in and said, okay, what do I do now? No, he got ready.

She was using it as a metaphor of saying, that's I'm ready, and he just took off running, and so it really spoke to me, because sometimes we wait. We wait for all these bells, and we wait for all these whistles, and we wait for the absolute certainty, but if we don't start moving when the Spirit's speaking, our certainty is going to slowly start to diminish. It's amazing how much bravery I had when I was little, as opposed to as I got later in life.

The things that I look at, like, “Wow, how do those kids do that? Why? Why would they do that? Holy, I'm never gonna do that.” But then when you watch the reel from before, it's like you did all that, and then some. Well, try that with your movement in the Spirit.

Try that with your trust and your following that, hey, you have all the courage, you have all the empowerment, and you have an army that you would not believe behind you, the teachers, the saints, those who have gone on before you and are still speaking to you today. So just move, and then repeat it every day. Pause, ask the Spirit for direction, listen, trust, move, and then repeat the next day.

And as you continue, you'll see that clarity follows trust, that you need to move, and everything will be pointed out to you. And so as we wrap up this morning, I just want to continue to encourage you all. You know, sometimes we don't really think about the Holy Spirit as it once was thought about, because it's like, yeah, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, oh, the Holy Spirit blesses us.

But think of it as having that internal voice, and that internal voice that's always going to respond, that's always ready to listen, that already has a path of discernment and clarity for you. It'll guide you every step of the way. The Holy Spirit is not with you to give you rules, it's with you to have relationship.

It's a living connection that's not here to make you powerful, that's not here to make you perform, but it's here to help you in the practice of ultimate presence. Because when you are in that ultimate presence, then you'll be able to see the Spirit in every step of this beautiful unfoldment. Please pray with me.

God, we thank you so much for this opportunity to be in your Word, for this opportunity to look at ourselves through your eyes, through the work of the Holy Spirit. And God, we ask that you would just remind us continuously of all that we are through you, through your Son, Christ Jesus. We ask that you would continue to speak to us through the Spirit, that you would meet us in our place of need in such a way that it is undeniable, that we can recognize who you are, and by that, who we are.

And for all of that, God, we give you thanks. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.