Counselor Not Control

Thank you so much to the chorale for all the work, and thank you to Emil and Cameron and everybody else here who makes all this possible. It is so wonderful. Hopefully you guys are awake, right? That carrot cake is kind of kicking in, or maybe actually the sugar high is fading and now you're feeling like, oh, I'm going to make it through the afternoon. It's really great. I really enjoyed the chance to talk with so many of you, and hopefully it's nice to be in one place with one accord and just really be able to fellowship here. It's just such a blessing to be together. So, as many of you know, I'm a certified public accountant and I worked for many years as what's called a corporate controller here in Northern California for different tech companies.

The title controller is actually a formal title. Sometimes it's referred to as a comptroller. You might have heard that. That's a government term. The reason it's called comptroller is the word comp actually comes from the French, which means accounts. The word controller actually comes from the French and it means to control accounts or to oversee accounts. Typically, somebody who's a corporate controller or a divisional controller will be somebody who has responsibility as a chief accountant for that area for ensuring that the accounts of the business are correctly stated.

So, in my job, I had to make sure that the accounts were fairly balanced and they were presented correctly so that people could make decisions about whether or not to buy the stock of the company. It's a fairly high-pressure job because when you're talking about people's money, people will get a little bit sensitive. In fact, there was one situation where there were two companies that were being merged together, two fairly big companies, and I had the responsibility to ensure that that merger was handled appropriately from a financial perspective.

We were not late in terms of delivering the results to Wall Street, but we couldn't give them the results when we said we would give them results. We weren't even late, but we had missed the expectations of when we would deliver the accounts. And literally, the CEO of the company overseeing that merger and the main company received death threats. That's how serious this stuff gets.

Because if you've put in several million or, in some cases, if you look, some people will put in hundreds of millions of dollars, quote-unquote, betting on a stock to go up, and then you delay your accounts, or maybe there's some lack of confidence in what those accounts are, now you could be looking at losing money, or maybe the bet that you had put down wasn't going to pay off.

And so the title controller is actually fairly well, is a good representation of what that person has to do. They have to, through a set of controls, mitigate the risk of some inaccuracy in the financial statements. They have to make sure that everything is controlled. You can't have anything kind of coming up in the last, oh, we forgot to account for this thing over there, we forgot to account for that thing over there. You have to make sure that you've got the entire picture, every detail worked out with a whole set of controls with your staff, because you just can't take the risk of something going wrong.

And over the years, I have found that although most people are not accountants, we have a little bit of that accounting controller in all of us. We have a little bit of that sort of mentality, really, depending, you know, it doesn't matter really who we are. Now, if we think about control over our money, or we think about control over our time, well, that's kind of reasonable, right? We need to know where our money's going, what we're spending, we need to know what we're spending time on.

If somebody walks up and says, hey, would you like to come, you know, here with me, we want to know how long that's going to take and when it's going to be and whether we have an appointment already. And, you know, so a certain amount of control in our lives is there's nothing wrong with it.

But what I've often seen is that the control that many of us will take will go beyond sort of that normal sort of diligence and it will go into things more like trying to control other people's actions. There's a word for that, we call it manipulation, right? Or you're trying to control sort of having difficult conversations and so there's an avoidance that begins to kick in and that's just another sort of technique to try and avoid some sort of situation that might lead to some loss or pain.

Or even worse, sometimes people will have a fear of doing the right thing because of what people might think of them. And so there's sort of this fear of well if I do this then that person's going to think this way of me and then I won't sort of have that same reputation and so there's a loss of reputation. And so that can cause us to do unnatural things or things that really are contrary to really what the right thing is to do. And that's why we have this expression that says well I'd rather go with the devil I know than with the devil I don't. Because I'll just stick with this, even if it isn't so good I'd rather have this evil here than a good that I don't know.

And so for most of us, doing something new, for example, it can lead to some unpredictable outcome. And so a lot of times we'll kind of shy away from doing things new because we don't know what that outcome is going to be and that outcome could be worse or unpredictable. And dealing with the unknown, dealing with the unpredictable, dealing with something that we don't know, well that can be difficult, right?

You know, like asking a girl on a date, right? It's probably one of the most difficult things for young men because maybe she'll say no, maybe she doesn't like me, right? Fear of rejection, fear of loss, or even just something more serious, calling somebody up and saying hey I wanted to apologize about something I said the other day.

And that's very hard because maybe the other person will just say yeah well it's about time, you know? And then we're like oh, I felt bad already, now I feel even worse. Thank you. But you know, so we're worried about doing things like that because we don't know what that outcome is going to be. And you know, when our lives end up with let's say health issues that disrupt our lives and suddenly our plans aren't what we thought they were going to be because our health issue is causing an issue or maybe there's a death in the family, right?

All these things create stress for us. They create stress because a lot of times it's a lack of control. It's a lack of ability to sort of try and fix everything and keep it all going. And that can even be with positive things, right? Getting married, having children. Even positive things can create stress in our lives because we can't control the outcome. We don't know what that is going to be. And so this is our human condition.

And so I think we all have some kind of an accounting controller inside of us to some degree to manage and maintain control, to manage loss, and to cope with uncertainty. And this is really becoming an issue in our society. In an article published in the online journal Medical News Today from last September, Tim Newman asked the question, anxiety in the West, is it on the rise?

And his answer, his conclusion was likely yes. In fact, he cites that, quote, anxiety disorders are now the most common mental illness in the United States. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness. And they affect 40 million adults. Almost one in five people in this country have some kind of anxiety disorder.

And millennials are particularly affected by this among all the different generations, whether you're looking at baby boomers or Gen X or millennials and so forth. But the day of Pentecost offers an alternative to this. It offers an alternative to control, an alternative to anxiety, and an alternative to the fear of loss. Today offers us an opportunity to not focus on a need for an accountant in us, right? But on the need for an advocate or a counselor. Indeed, we have been promised not a controller, but a counselor. But a counselor. Not some power to help us better manage things or keep things under control in the way we want, but really an advocate to help perfect our character. That's what we're promised today. And so the day of Pentecost is really an alternative to that. We can see that in, if you turn over to Acts 1 verse 6, we can see in Acts 1 verse 6, and this sort of dialogue that takes place, really this contrast between the controller and the counselor. Acts 1 and verse 6 says here, and of course Jesus had been with them for 40 days, and they're having this last conversation with him, and they have something that they want to ask him. They say in verse 6, therefore when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? See, they knew what they wanted. What they wanted is what every Jewish person at that time wanted. They wanted the Romans out, because with the Romans out, that meant that they would be back in control, because they were subject to Roman occupation and Roman rule, and that's what they wanted. But Jesus wasn't interested in what they wanted. He was interested in giving them a power that would help counsel them. Not a controller, but a counselor. Look in verse 7 And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put into his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

He said they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came, and that power is not a power that equals control. That's a power that equals counsel, because as humans, we want the power to control. That's what power is about. It's about authority. It's about control. It's about being able to manage and be in control. But this power would be different. This power would come from having a counselor, having an advocate by our side, giving us advice, guiding our decision-making, and working with our human spirit to become something completely new. Not just a better version of ourselves, but something completely different. And so today I want to define what that Holy Spirit, what that word means in Greek, we'll look at that, and how that informs our thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit. And then I want to contrast human control with godly power through counsel, and flesh out and understand this better. And finally, we're going to talk about how God is seeking children to act in faith and not react in fear. How He's looking for us to act in faith and not react in fear. And so the title of this message I think we have up here is Counselor Not Controller. Counselor Not Controller. And you might add the path to conversion, because I think as we go through this, you'll see this is really where conversion begins. We talk about how really you can have the Holy Spirit with you, or you can have it upon you and so forth, as we heard this morning. But really, it's when the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in you that that's when conversion begins. That's when we receive the laying out of hands, and that's how we define that process of conversion. So let's start over in John 14, and let's look at the actual word that is used for this power. John 14 and verse 16. We've looked at this word before, but let's just look at it again. John 14 verse 16. This is a word that I've talked about before, which doesn't have an easy sort of equivalent in English. It's a Greek word, so this is a word in Greek that describes a bunch of different things. Starting in verse 15, it says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Verse 16, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another paracletos in Greek that he or it may abide with you forever. Now, this word for helper in my Bible says helper. It might say advocate in your Bible. It might say counselor. It might say comforter. The reason there are so many words is because there really isn't an equivalent word in English for paracletos, which is the Greek word. The word is paracletos, and it's a combination of two words, para, which means beside, and calio, which means to call. So, literally, the word means called to one side, or in a verb form, to call alongside. And Vines' expository dictionary says called to one side, or one's aid, it suggests a capability or an adaptability for giving aid, which is why in my Bible it says helper, or sometimes it says comforter, or sometimes it says advocate. But Vines further goes on to say that this word is used, and I'm quoting now, it's used in a context of a court of justice to denote a legal assistant, a counsel for the defense, one who pleads another cause, which is why some translations use the word counselor.

Now, I don't know how many accountants and lawyers we have in here. I'm not trying to create a, you know, sort of this debate between the two, but really what we're talking about is we don't need to be an accountant, but it wouldn't be bad to have a lawyer. And that's what we have. We have a counselor. Now, a lot of times when we hear the word counselor, sometimes we think about like a camp counselor, right? I go, that's my camp counselor, that's my counselor, right? I'm in B2, that's my counselor. Well, that's great. That is a type of counselor. But the counselor here that's being described is a legal term. It really is the counselor in a court of law, a counselor, it's the core service of an attorney, what an attorney is going to provide. Now, what does an attorney do for a client, right? Well, an attorney considers the facts and circumstances of a situation that the client is going through. If you bend to an attorney, you know, it's going to be kind of scary. They want to, you know, kind of evaluate your facts, all the facts. They want to know everything about the situation. And they're going to evaluate all the facts, and they're going to outline a set of possible outcomes. Okay? Now, if they're a good attorney, they're going to be two, three, four, five steps ahead, right? They're going to think, well, now, if we do this, it's going to be this, but we don't want that. So we'd want to do this instead, and that would lead to this. But that might be a problem. So instead, we're going to do this over here. And that attorney is going to walk through all the different possibilities. And if you've ever sat with an attorney, after a while, your head will just spin, because they're just in all these different possibilities. And when they get all done, they'll come down and they'll lay out one or two very good options, if they're a good attorney, that you can take. Now, you may not like those options, but that attorney is going to say, look, if, you know, if I'm counseling you to do this, these would be the best options available to you to achieve whatever your outcome is. And then it's to the client to decide what to do, right? The attorney is not going to make the decision for you. The attorney has given you all these different options that you can go through, and now you've got to make a decision. And if you don't follow the attorney's advice, the attorney isn't going to come and beat you up, right? Now, you might grieve your attorney, right? Your attorney might be disappointed, like, wow, you know, you came to me, you paid me, I gave you my advice, and then you walk away, you didn't take it, right? But that's the client's prerogative. That's how it works between the client and the attorney. And so we are given a counselor in that way. We're given a counselor that's going to think these things through. It's going to understand and sort of guide us in that decision making. And then if we continue, then, in verse 17, it says, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither knows him nor knows him. Now, verse 17 is a grammatical nightmare in terms of pronouns, okay? This is just, we kind of went through a little bit of this morning. So I'm going to go ahead, for sake of brevity, I'm going to read this in the New World Translation. And you can follow along. This is the translations that's done by the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they have a similar view to the Holy Spirit that we do. So I'm going to read it out of the New World Translation because it's just a lot easier to follow.

What it says here is, the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive because it neither sees it nor knows it. You know it because it remains with you and is in you, and is in you. And so this this power of God is in us as converted members of the body of Christ. This paracletus that is dwelling in us, God's spirit, is there to provide counsel or help to give guidance and to be a support, just like Jesus Christ was a support for the disciples, just like he was a support. And if we don't follow this guidance, then we can, as Paul says in Ephesians 4, we don't have to go there, Ephesians 4 verse 30, he says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit, right? We could grieve our counselor. We could go to the counselor, ask for help, and then not follow it and grieve that counselor. And Paul says, don't grieve the counselor. And what's interesting in verse 17 is that we see that this spirit is not given to just anybody. It's not given to just anybody, right? It says the world cannot receive it. It's not given to just anybody. Jesus says the world cannot receive it because most people's eyes are not open to receive it. Now, think about that for a second. In light of mainstream Christianity, think about verse 17 in light of mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity's goal is to convert everybody now. And Jesus said the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because they just can't receive it. I mean, let that sink in. This is something special about the firstfruits. This gets to a concept of the firstfruits, to people who are followers of the way today. This is something special that we're talking about, something unique. Now, if you go to the Oxford English Dictionary and you look up council, if you just look up that word, it says that council is advice, especially that given formally. And that's what we're given. We're given a spirit that gives us formal advice. We are the recipient of a power of formal advice or counsel. That's what's promised. Now, sometimes when we call the Holy Spirit the power of God, we can confuse the word power with the word power that we typically use in English, right? When we think of power. Now, how does the Oxford English Dictionary define power? Power is defined as the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way. And the second one is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. You see, a lot of times power for us equals control. I want power because I want to influence events. I want to take the risk out of my life. I want to take the loss, the potential for loss in my life, and I want to get rid of it. Give me that power so I can do that, right? What we want is we want a genie in a bottle. We want a magic wand that can just solve our issues. That's the kind of power we want. But that's not the kind of power that's promised here. The kind of power that's promised here in John 16 is the power of counsel. It's the power of help.

It's the power of aid. It's the power of comfort. It's not a genie in a bottle.

And I would, you know, I don't know if you were, when I was a kid, I thought, man, what would my three wishes be? You know, I just thought about that. I'd ask for this, and then after a while, you're like, no, don't ask for that, because if you ask for this instead, you could get that with it, you know? And you start going through your head about what you would do to make the best use of these three wishes. And that's really kind of what we want. We want that ability to just sort of manage these things. But God is not interested in having that for us. He wants us to be able to receive counsel that we might grow in character, right? Because receiving counsel and dealing with the unknown, that builds faith. And over time, that faith develops into character. And over time, that character then allows us to be prepared to be with God and His Kingdom, because He knows what kinds of decisions we're going to make. When the chips are down, this is what we're going to do, because our character has been developed through this process, through this process of listening and learning. You know, many of us would love to have a controller. Sometimes when I'm going through a crisis, I would love to have somebody just come up and say, do this, do that, and do this, and it's going to be done, right? We'd love to have just a controller who just kind of manages all those things. Go left, go right, go now, go later. But that's not how the counselor works in our lives.

God gives us a counselor so that we can learn to listen, to ask questions, to discern, to exercise something really powerful called free will, and to take actions based on faith. That's the power of the counselor. Now, research has shown, interestingly, that I want a person, especially a young person, has been in prison for a long time. So if somebody's convicted of a crime, and they go to prison at a young age, and they're in prison for 10, 20, 30 years, something happens to that person over that long period of time, because in prison there's a loss of liberty. There's a loss of the discretion and the ability to sort of manage your own affairs.

And so after decades of that, you sort of get used to that. You sort of get used to that approach.

And that when a person's personal liberties are taken away and decisions are made for them, after a while they just get used to it. And then when the freedoms are restored, and the person has to start making decisions for themselves, that is incredibly stressful.

That's incredibly stressful. And in fact, a lot of research will show that recidivism, that is to go back into prison after being out of prison, that stress and anxiety of making ends meet, of paying the rent, of figuring out all the complexities and messiness of life, is so stressful that it can actually lead people to kind of go do dumb things that can land them back in prison. And who would want to be in prison? Right? Who would want to have their liberties removed? And yet, that's kind of psychologically how that happens. But what we'll find is that our adversary wants to take away those liberties and take away those things and wants to enslave us to a set of behaviors. And once we fall into those behaviors, it feels weird to get out of those behaviors. And we don't know what to do with it. It's messy. And we run from it. And we kind of run back into our old way of thinking. And that's what conversion is all about. Conversion is moving away from one set of how we think about things in terms of human nature to how God thinks about things. And that's where true change occurs. God is not interested in removing our liberty. Like Satan is interested in removing our liberty. He's interested in building a muscle of decision-making.

He's interested in building a muscle of decision-making through listening, through counsel, because he wants sons and daughters to be with them in his kingdom. He doesn't want slaves. He doesn't want servants. And we can see this in Romans 8 verse 15. If you go over to Romans 8, we can see this contrasted. We can see these two ways of thinking, these two ways of life. Really, the way of the adversary versus the way of God contrasted here in Romans 8 verse 15. Romans 8 and verse 15. Paul says, For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear. Now that's a mouthful, but that's a certain type of spirit. That's a spirit of fear. That's a spirit of addiction. That's a spirit of slavery to a certain sort of way of life and way of thinking. That most people are enmeshed in, and they don't even know they're enmeshed in. But that's not the spirit that God gave us.

Instead, what it says in verse 15, But you received the spirit of adoption, the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. Abba, Father. Now the context of Romans 8 verse 15 begins in verse 1. Let's look in verse 1, and we'll see this contrast.

He says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And so we have a choice. We can walk according to our own way of thinking based upon our own experiences. And as I've shared before, the famous quote from Edward R. Murrow, we are prisoners of our own experience, right? Sort of what seems right in our own eyes, it says in Judges, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as we see in Genesis. That's one way of thinking, and that's how most people operate.

Or we can receive the spirit, or we can walk according to the Spirit, this power, this counselor of God's Spirit. And in verse 5, it says, For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

So if we follow our human nature, it's an invitation to death. It's an invitation to death. Sometimes it's an early death in the case of addiction, in the case of anxiety, depression, right? It can literally take the life from us. Or it can be an extended death, where we live a long time, but we might be nonetheless enslaved, and our quality of life is very, very problematic. It can be a spiritual death, ultimately, if we don't really make the changes that we need to.

Or, as I said, it can be a soul-crushing victimization. And we've seen those kinds of people just crushed. Their souls are just crushed, victimized, unable to break through the things that they're going through in their lives. And now we can understand the context a little bit better in verse 15. Let's look in verse 14 and see that context. For as many as are led, it says in verse 14, by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. These are the sons of God. Now, if you were in the congregation in Rome and you were hearing this letter read aloud to you, and you came to this part where he's talking about the spirit of bondage again to fear, well, you were coming out of a background where there was no Church of God, there was no Bible, there was no Old Testament.

You were coming out of your life of mysticism and spiritism and all sorts of fear of deities and all these different Roman and Greek gods. And you would have to put away that old way of thinking, not that bondage of fear of like, I better go pray to the deity because I need my crops to, you know, to be, have them receive enough rain and I want them destroyed.

And you had to put away that fear of the way you were thinking before and say, no, I'm called to be a son of God. I don't have to be in fear anymore. I can walk according to the spirit. I can receive the counsel of God. And they didn't have to participate in all those rituals anymore. They didn't have to do all those types of things. And I don't think we're really much different today than those ancient Romans.

We don't like uncertainty either. They didn't like uncertainty and we don't like uncertainty. And Paul is saying that when we become sort of so focused on avoiding uncertainty, we become slaves to that. We become slaves to the worry of keeping our jobs or the worry of maintaining control so that we can sort of, you know, get a bunch of perceived good outcomes, right? This is where I'm supposed to be in my life right now. And this is where I'm going to be in my life then.

And then I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to do that. And this is what success means for me. And so we have kind of all these things in our head. And what Paul is saying is, you know, that's just all slavery to a set of sort of expected outcomes. I have something else for you in mind to be adopted, to be able to ask God for help and to have God lead you where he wants you to be.

And again, a lot of times what we want, and we think about with power, we think about Superman, right? We want to be Wonder Woman. We want to be Superman. We want to have it all. We want to do this and this and this, and it's all going to be good. But God comes along and says, no, I'm not interested in having Superman. I'm interested in having a son or a daughter. And I'll tell you what I need from you. And we're not going to worry about you managing and controlling your lives and all those types of things and dealing with all of that.

That's just going to lead to a bunch of anxiety, which can lead to depression and lead to all sorts of really bad stuff. Don't worry about all that. I will take care of you.

And our adversary, on the other hand, he's like, you know what? You're going to want this, and then you're going to want that, and then you're going to want this other thing. And he wants us to be slaves to these things. He wants us to be slaves to all these sort of expectations. Now, Pastor Gary Petty, in one of his sermons that he described recently on this, he has a good quote that I like. He said that, God brings every Christian to a point where despite every effort a person might make to fix an issue. Now, I'm talking about controlling things. It's very similar. So whatever issue we might have to control something, he or she must quit trying to fix the problem and give it over to God. So I think that's a very interesting insight, because I think it is true that we come to a point, and all of us have to come to that point, where we just quit trying to control things. We just quit trying to manage every aspect of our lives because of the risks associated of loss, and we just give it over to God. And I think this is what conversion is all about. I think this is conversion. This is when a new creation begins. This is when a breakthrough happens. And when I say give it over to God, I don't mean we quit working. In fact, we might actually start working a lot harder. In fact, it might be a lot more painful. It might be a lot more uncertain. We might actually have a little bit of anxiety as we go through that. But that's building that muscle of faith, because we've now let go of what we wanted, and we're being led by the Spirit to where God wants us to be. And that's when we start fixing problems, and we start letting God lead us. You know, some people may go their entire lives fighting for control, blind to their own feeble attempts to manage their lives in some sort of expectation that they had. Maybe something that they were imprinted on as young, or maybe something they wanted as a teenager, or whatever it might be. But other people are able to break through. And you know, the issue with a sermon like this is being able to share an example, because these are very, very personal things we're talking about. When somebody overcomes a fear, they're not just going to blab it, because it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing, and it's personal, and it's sensitive. And so these kinds of personal breakthroughs are not easily shared in public.

And these stories are the kind of conversations that you really only share with somebody very, very close. But I do want to share a story to help bring some practical theology out. And I'll just share a personal story. As I said, these things are personal. It's a personal story of my life. About 20 years ago, probably a little bit less than 20 years ago, I was working for a very difficult boss. A very, very difficult boss. And the hours were long, and the criticism was heaping, and the praise was very sparse. And so, you know, I think we've been in those situations where you just dread going to work. You just, you know, Sunday night comes along, and you're like, ugh, do I have to go? And then you just, you know, you get yourself kind of up, and then you, okay, you get to work, right? And so, okay, that's fine, you know. I got stressed on the job. You've got stressed on the job. Everybody's got stressed on their job, right? That's kind of almost par for the course. But at the time, I also had a lot of pressures at home. You know, two young kids, and, you know, trying to balance, you know, the needs in the family, and the needs of work, and the hours were long, you know, Silicon Valley, that's kind of how things are around here.

And we had a mortgage, you know, we were trying to balance, and how we're going to keep up with this, and all these different financial pressures, and so forth. And then I was serving in San Jose, I was song leading, giving sermonettes, so there was the whole thing with the church.

And so I was just getting to a point where I just didn't think I could take this anymore. I was just feeling so stressed, and I was just feeling like I wasn't myself. I was 34 years old, and the pressure was just... I was thinking, this is not what my life is supposed to be, you know? This is not what I signed up for, you know? I got baptized, and I'm doing, you know, I'm trying to keep God's law, and I'm trying to do the best here, and I'm managing this, I'm managing that. And what I came to was, I just had to let go of all that. And all those sort of formulas that used to work weren't working anymore, because what I came to is, I was actually just trying to manage everything in my life, instead of just giving it over to God. Instead of letting just God take care of those things.

And, you know, getting to that point, I mean, the dot-com bubble at birth, so it's the kind of thing where, like, you know, somebody said, well, why don't you just quit your job? Well, you know, I got a mortgage, right? I got two kids and a mortgage. And, you know, there's not a lot of jobs. There weren't a lot of opportunities, and I couldn't just walk away from what I was doing without a job, and deal with that. And then, you know, I'm certainly not going to quit my family, and I don't want to stop serving here in San Jose, and what do I do? And so, you know, you get to that point where you're just like, I'm doing everything I can. I'm getting all the counsel. And what I came to realize was that I just had to quit trying to control things. And I discovered a verse, and I want to share that verse with you. It's in Matthew 11, verse 28, and it's a very powerful verse in terms of making this transition from controller to counselor, where you quit trying to control everything. You quit trying to fix everything. You're trying to manage every aspect and just try and get that best outcome. And you give it over to God, and you let God just take care of your needs. Matthew 11, verse 28, is such a beautiful Scripture. It says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And so, if you're trying to manage every aspect of your life, and your job isn't quite what it's supposed to be, and the family seems challenged, and you can't keep up with things here. Think of Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all you who are who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I think that's so interesting. That's what the counselor does. The counselor gives us counsel so that we can learn. Learn from me, he says, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And if you're feeling burdened, if you're feeling stressed, that's not what Jesus says we're supposed to feel.

So something might not be going right. You might be holding on to things that you shouldn't be holding on to. You might be trying to manage things you shouldn't be trying to manage, because he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. The Spirit of God within us is the Spirit that cries out to God, that learns from God. And if we believe the Scriptures, God hears our prayers. He answers by the paracletus, by this helper, by this counselor, and His Spirit counsels us, advocates for us, and leads us. That's what this day is about. Now, I've been baptized at that point for 14 years, but I really think that was the point that was really the beginning of my conversion.

Now, that doesn't mean I didn't know about God's law when I was 20, when I was baptized, or my baptism didn't take, or whatever. But that was really the moment where I came to see that everything that I was doing was just what I was doing. And it wasn't really what God necessarily wanted. And I just let go. If we go back to Romans 8, go back to Romans 8 again. Let's read verse 16 and kind of build on this. Romans 8 verse 16. Paul says, the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. God is looking for children. He's looking for sons and daughters.

And we've often talked about how the physical family is a representation of the spiritual family. All right, we've talked about that. Well, I think there's a greater spiritual purpose here that we have, and that we're here to talk about. And if we consider what a loving parent desires for his or her child, right? A loving parent desires that their child feels loved, right? They want their child to know they're loved. And they want their child to grow up and be an independent person that can stand on their own and be able to face the things that will come at them in life. That's what a parent wants for their child. And at some point, a parent is going to discipline. And a parent is going to use instruction that's age appropriate. And that means that there's going to be, let's say, more control or more discipline early on. But at some point, that's going to just give way. And most of a parent's life is going to be spent in council.

It's going to be spent in teaching. Because that period of time, if we're blessed to have our children maybe, you know, 25, 35, 40, 50 years, if we're blessed that way, most of that time is going to be spent in council. Most of it's going to be spent in teaching. And that's where we have an influence on our kids. And God, I think, recognizes as children, as his children, we need his council. We need his presence. And that's what he promises to give us through this day of Pentecost. He promises to give us this council that would guide us in an appropriate way. Now, what does that look like? How does that work? Let's go over to John 16 in verse 13.

John 16 in verse 13. It says here, describing this power that we're given, it says, When it, the Spirit of truth, has come, it will guide you into all truth. For it will not speak on its own authority, but whatever it hears, it will speak, and it will tell you things to come.

And in verse 8, we understand that the Holy Spirit, the power of God, it convicts. It convicts our spirit. It actually helps us to understand what we should be doing. Now, a servant or a slave does what his master tells him to do, mostly out of fear or retribution.

He reacts to external forces that come upon him, and he's just acting out of a set of commands.

I'm dating myself, but if you remember, cool hand Luke, right? I'm just digging a hole, boss.

Just digging a hole. There's no ownership involved in that. The servant is just doing what they're told. I'm just digging a hole. But God is not interested in that. God wants sons and daughters to take ownership for the family name. He wants to instill core principles that the sons and daughters will use, and he wants to share things that they'll stand for. This is what the family name stands for. This is what it means to be my son or my daughter, and this is what it means to be a child of God. And you don't need God around, just like you don't need the parent around, to stand for that, because you stand for that, and that's what it means. But God is with us, to guide us, to convict us, to convert us. This ownership of these core principles is what unites a strong family. This is how families come together. Brothers understand. Did you do the right thing? I did the right thing. I stood up for the family name. I stood up for what was right. That's good. Good job. You hung in there. You come back. You get some strength from the family. This is what unites a family. And when one member of the family suffers, then everybody suffers. Did you do the right thing? No. What happened? Oh, I just let it go. I don't know why that happened. Okay, well next time, right, and you sort of get yourself together, and you go out, and you give it another go. That's what brings families together. And when external forces come upon a family, when external forces come upon a family, the family comes together and unites against the storm. It unites because it knows what its principles are. It knows where it's going. It knows the direction and what needs to happen. That's different from servants. That's different from slaves. Now, this morning, Mr. Chance went through an example with the Apostle Peter, and I want to go through that similar example. So let's go back to Matthew 26. He quoted a little bit of this. Let's go to Matthew 26, and let's see this transition from servant to son, and how this happened in the life of the Apostle Peter. Matthew 26, and let's start in verse 69.

Matthew 26, right over here, in verse 69. Now Peter sat outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him, saying, You also were with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied it, saying them before them, all, saying, I don't know what you're saying. So if there was ever an example of someone trying to control a situation, we have it right here with Peter. Peter's trying to control this situation. It's getting out of control. And you can almost feel the fear jumping out off the page, right, as you read the story. Peter was in trouble. As far as he was concerned, his life was hanging by a thread, right? He had the accent. He had been with Jesus for years, so he was probably recognizable and identifiable to people. And just to add a little bit extra, you know, sort of challenge to it, he had attacked the high servant with a, the high pre-servant with a sword. This man was deserving of death, okay? You know, attempted murder. That's what we, you know, he wasn't aiming for the ear, as we say, right? I mean, he was ready to kill this man. So his life was hanging by a thread, and he knew it. And he is in full damage control. That's what he's doing right here, right? Now we go to verse 71. And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth. But again, he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. Okay, so now he's beginning to swear with an oath, right? He's like, you know, by God, I do not know this man. And now the stakes are even higher, because really what he did was he had now, he had a, he had a, he, he, as it were, failed, right? He, he, he spoke in fear. He's trying to manage it. Now he has another opportunity. He has another opportunity to go, okay, that wasn't the right thing to do. Come to yourself, Peter, you know, get your act together. You know, you were with him. He told you these things. You know, he's a son of God. You know, there's a plan. Get it together, right? He has that chance. And what does he do? He goes right back into the same thing he did before, by saying he doesn't even know the man. It's again, it's a desperate attempt at damage control. So we go to verse 73. And after a while, those who stood by came to him and said Peter, said to Peter, Surely, you also are one of them because your speech betrays you. He's got an accent. He's got an accent from that region. So they would have identified him. And he says, and then he began to curse. So he's not just going to swear by the temple or swear by this or by that. He's literally, you know, this is where PG-13 turns to R. Okay, this is where all those bombs start going off. He is adamantly telling them under no circumstances did he ever know that man. And he's swearing and telling them he didn't. And he says, I do not know that man. And immediately, a rooster crowed. And Jesus had predicted Peter's denial. He had predicted how he would react.

And we can see in this passage our controlling selves. We can see our reaction and how we can react sometimes by this way. And verse 75 is very, very powerful at the very end. It says, Then he went out and wept bitterly. That's when it hit him. That's when the emotion came and he realized just what an awful individual he was to sit here and deny him and to curse and to swear and to pretend he had not been with Jesus for three and a half years and that he had not been instructed by him and that he had not said he would give his life for him. And now when the chips were down, this is how he behaves. I mean, just the guilt and the hypocrisy and the regret just came just sweeping in and he wept. He wept bitterly that he was that kind of man because that's the kind of person that just controls. That's the controller. That's the person that's trying to just keep this all under wraps and all going and then, oh, that's whack-a-mole, get that thing down. Okay, we're going to manage that and manage that. And after a while, it's more than we can take. And then pretty soon we're in a different place. We're in a different place and we realize what's actually happening. And this is where growth begins. And this is likely where Peter began this process of conversion. And later he would receive the Holy Spirit. And several months later, we read about Peter in Acts 4. Let's go over to Acts 4 verse 1 and let's see the apostle Peter now with the Spirit of God. Now with the Spirit of God. Let's see what it's like when he's receiving counsel and guidance. And he's got the advocate helping him, leading him, giving him options of what he's supposed to do and inspiring him. Acts 4 verse 1, Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, captain of the temple. Okay, captain of the temple, that's sort of, you know, that's the police, right? These are the same people that were ready to arrest him and kill him, or, you know, put him in the same sort of situation as Jesus. These are the same people. Verse 2, Being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead, and they laid hands on them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. Now when it says they laid hands on them, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen an arrest, right? But that's what we're talking about here. And, you know, sadly in this country, people die being arrested. People can be killed being arrested. I mean, a lot of really terrible stories that we've heard about police brutality, or people, you know, just being, you know, really being roughly handled. He was arrested. He was arrested, and he was taken into custody, and he's being put in prison. That's what's going on. And if we understand the following day, he's going to be called to give account for his actions. And so now's the good time to start thinking about damage control. Now's the good time to start thinking about how you're going to manage your way out of this situation.

If you don't have God's Holy Spirit. But if you have God's Holy Spirit, that's the time when you start praying for guidance. That's when you start praying for counsel. That's when you start praying for courage. That's when you start praying to do the right thing in the face of a difficult situation. And we don't know what he said or how that happened, but it says that it came to pass on the next day that the rulers, elders, and scribes, as well as the high priests, and etc., they all came together, and they called them out of prison.

And we see in verse 8 Peter's response, and this is so telling. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit. I think when Luke wrote that, I think he definitely had in mind the Peter that we had met a few months earlier. The Peter who was in damage control. Right? Now this is Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, and now he's going to basically stand up, and he's going to tell these people. He's going to speak truth to power. Whatever the consequences might come out and be. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and he told them boldly that Jesus was the Messiah, that there was no other path to salvation, that this was the truth, and he was going to speak it no matter what they told him.

That's a transformation. That's a new creation. That's not a better version of Peter. That's a different Peter that is speaking here in chapter 4. And we can see in verse 18 the response of Peter and John. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.

So they said, stop it. And that would have been a good time for Peter to say, you know, you're so right. I'm so glad you mentioned that. I really, you know, you're right. I just need to stop that. Something came over me. I'm so sorry. Right? No, I mean, you know, he could have like, that's damage control. Good. I got out. Right? But no, he says in verse 19, Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge.

Like, yeah, right, whatever. I'm going to do what I need to do. Verse 20, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So they said, we're going to keep doing this. And amazingly, so when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them because of the people since all glorified God for what had been done. For the man was over 40 years old on whom this miracle had happened, had been performed. They let them go. Wow! Peter pretty much said, I'm going to do whatever I want.

And they're like, okay. And they let him go. I mean, think about how Peter felt, right? How inspiring, how encouraging that must have been to have been sort of at the depths of the depths that he was at, weeping bitterly, now being thrown into prison, telling them he's going to do what he needs to do and being let go. And that can happen to us. That can happen to us no matter where we are, no matter how low we are, no matter how much we're trying to manage and control and keep all this together.

We can let that go and let God guide us and we can speak and act under his power, under God's power of his Holy Spirit. And that's what God is looking for. And if you go over to chapter 5, verse 41, you'll see another example of Peter's power, of what he was willing to do, along with all the other disciples.

And in this example here, they had been literally arrested again and the local authorities were after them. And it says, so they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. Now, this is an interesting word study if you look at shame. Shame is a very powerful thing. I mean, you know, being shamed or feeling shame, that's a tough thing to deal with. If we feel shame, you know, that's embarrassing. Loss of reputation. What do you stand for?

All these types of shame. Shame is a big thing. And they were willing to be shamed for his name. It didn't matter what ego they had, what reputation they had, what people thought about them. That didn't matter.

What mattered is that they were following God's counsel and they were sons of God. That's what mattered to them. And the shame that the world might put on them, that's nothing. That was nothing. That is a very powerful place. That's the kind of power that God's Spirit gives us. It gives us the Spirit to be able to do the right thing and not worry about what people think about us.

Not worrying about what others may say, but knowing that God is leading us to do the right thing. That is not human nature. That is not normal. That is something special. That is something powerful. And that is something freeing. That is incredibly liberating. And more importantly, that is something that God's people need to see and we need to follow today. I think God's people can see the same thing, and we will need to see the same thing to face the challenges and trials that will come upon us.

I don't know if you've noticed, but we're about to hit the longest economic boom cycle in the history of the country. Now, you know what happens after a boom cycle? It goes down, right? These are the good times. These are the good times. And this is the time when we need to be building our faith.

This is when we need to be building that courage. This is when we need to be listening to God's Spirit, because when the tough time comes, that's when we're going to need to be ready. That's when we're going to need to be able to deal with that. Instead of focusing on fear, it's time to be led by God's Spirit to see the bigger picture. It's time to break out of a cycle of fear, or whatever is in the evening news, or on our Facebook feed, or on talk radio, or whatever it might be, and put that out of our mind.

We have God's Spirit to guide us into all truth. Guide us into all truth. It's time to start living courageously, speaking boldly like Peter, and letting our light shine. You can't do that if you're worried about what people think about you. Now, that doesn't mean we're supposed to go out and be like crazy people. I'm not talking about that, right? I'm not talking about grabbing a bullhorn and preaching on the corner. I'm not talking about that.

But we should not be embarrassed to let our light shine, right? Keeping the Sabbath, how we conduct our lives, going to church, all these types of things that we stand for and what guides our thinking. It's time to stand up and be counted. We're not here to try and convert, convince, control, somehow help some sort of weak God who can't convert the world. It's a shame God's not doing a better job. There's only a certain number of Christians in the world, and all those people don't get it.

That's not our thinking. That's not what we're about. We're here to let our light shine. God has a plan, and we know that every person will have their chance.

The Holy Spirit has been given and poured out on the firstfruits today, on the firstfruits of who we would call. Our role is to be lights, lights that show courage and follow counsel and listen.

And, you know, that might be a simple thing. Like, as I said, making a phone call and saying you're sorry. That's God's Spirit leading you into an uncertain, unpredictable, embarrassing, potentially shameful situation. But you do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. It's time to stop listening to that negative self-talk, you know, that talk that comes into our head, oh, you know, it's not going to work, and what are you doing, and why are you trying to do that, and so forth. Or listening to whatever debate is going on in the news about immigration, or whatever it might be, the presidential-electric cycle, and so forth. God, the question right now is, what does God desire for me? That's the question right now we have on this day of Pentecost. If we're converted, if we're willing to let go, quit trying to fix things in our lives, then we're ready to ask the question, what does God want me to do next? That's the question that we should be asking as God's people. What's next? It's time to dare. It's time to step out in faith and be something new, be something completely different. This is what the day of Pentecost is about. This is about receiving God's Spirit. This is about conversion. Why don't you go over to Matthew 6, verse 34, and we'll just wrap up here. Matthew 6, verse 34. This is at the end of a long discussion that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount about worry, about anxiety. He goes to this whole discussion about anxiety and not worrying about what clothes you're going to have and what you're going to eat and all these types of things. And he comes to the end of this discussion in Matthew 6 and in verse 34. And he says, therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Faith, not fear. This is not about worrying about tomorrow.

Faith, not fear. Sonship, not servitude. Counsel, not control. These are the choices we have between our human nature and God's Spirit. Whatever we're trying to control, let's give it up. And instead, let's ask and seek and knock and look to God's Spirit to lead us to the right outcome, the outcome that He wants. Let's leave this place today ready to take the difficult step to be brave, to be vulnerable, to take the risk to follow God's counsel wherever it may lead, wherever the paracletus, the helper, the advocate, the counselor wants us to go.