Lead On Podcast

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, discusses the importance of Holy Spirit-empowered ministry. Iorg challenges listeners to consider what it means to be a Spirit-filled leader, emphasizing that this empowerment leads to transformed lives and circumstances that can only be attributed to God's work.

Creators & Guests

Host
Jeff Iorg
President, SBC Executive Committee

What is Lead On Podcast?

Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.

Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.

From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

Put these principles into practice and Lead On!

Jeff Iorg:

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the challenges of day to day ministry and how to meet them more effectively. Often, when I start the podcast, I give another disclaimer and say this is not necessarily a preaching podcast, although occasionally, I do a little preaching.

Jeff Iorg:

It's also not a Bible study podcast, although I frequently reference the Bible or passages from the Bible on this podcast. Well, today, I'm gonna preach a little, and I'm gonna definitely reference the Bible. So if you can find your Bible or access it or at least remember to look at it later if you're driving right now, I want you to join me in the book of Acts chapter 11 where I'm going to use a passage of scripture that will be foundational to some of the comments I wanna make on the podcast today. In fact, I'm actually shooting for a 2 part podcast. One part today and then following up with

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the other part next week. Today, I

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wanna talk about Holy Spirit empowered ministry, And I'm going to focus on this podcast on Holy Spirit individual empowering the individuals who lead ministry, and then hopefully, next podcast, Holy Spirit Empowered Churches. These podcasts originated really from a couple of different experiences that I've had. The first one is that I frequently mention the power of the Holy Spirit when I'm preaching about the church and effective ministry in the church. And since that's a theme I'm frequently called on to preach about, it's not uncommon for me to incorporate into my message and show in scripture why Holy Spirit empowered ministry is so effective or so essential. When I finish preaching those sermons, it's not uncommon for someone to walk up to me and make some kind of joke about, well, it was surprising to hear a Baptist preacher talking about the Holy Spirit.

Jeff Iorg:

That is so sad to me. It is so sad to me that when I preach and emphasize empowering of the Holy Spirit for ministry, that someone comes up to me and remarks, even in a humorous way, how unusual it was

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to hear that kind of message. What is wrong with us that Baptists are afraid to or have forgotten about the importance of talking about the Holy Spirit as the source of power for our ministries?

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And then a second experience, which helped motivate these podcasts, was actually something that happened many years ago. While preaching at Gateway Seminary in Chapel, I asked a question. I asked, is a Holy Spirit filled seminary possible? And as a result of that question, the faculty actually came to me and asked if I would speak at the upcoming faculty retreat on that theme. Is a Holy Spirit empowered seminary possible?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, that sent set me on an academic study of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and of a fresh reconsideration of what the Bible teaches about this important subject. So today, drawing out of those two experiences, first of all, the need to preach and teach about the leading of the Holy Spirit and not to be surprised or embarrassed about

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it when a Baptist does so. And secondarily, drawing from my

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academic study about this issue of the filling or the empowering by the Holy Spirit and what the Bible actually says about that and how that can inform us, particularly as I presented it in more of an academic setting,

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I wanna talk to you today about Holy Spirit empowered ministry. You know, analyzing

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the leadership qualities of a person in ministry today often focuses more on educational achievements and ministerial accomplishments

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than it does on words like anointing, unction, or filling

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by the Holy Spirit. Now I'm, of course, not saying that educational, achievements and ministerial accomplishments are not significant, but I'm advocating today that we look beyond those things and ask ourselves the hard question, does a leader, particularly do you, give evidence of the filling or the empowering of the Holy Spirit? Now in the Bible, one of my favorite passages is acts chapter 11 and chapter 13 describing the origination and early years of the ministry at the church of Antioch. There are 3 distinct references to the Holy Spirit in this founding story or the in these early stories about the church in Antioch, and I wanna point them out to you as I'm laying out the groundwork for this podcast. In Acts chapter 11, beginning in verse 19, we see the story of the founding and the early days of the church at Antioch.

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The church started among as a gentile movement

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of the gospel. Large

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numbers of people were coming to the Lord. News about this development reached the church at Jerusalem, and they dispatched Barnabas who arrived to investigate the situation and see if it really was legitimate. We pick up his story then in verse 22. News about them, the Antioch Christians, reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the lord with devoted hearts.

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And then, this threefold descriptor of Barnabas, where he was

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a good man, full of the holy spirit, and of faith. And large numbers of people were added to the lord. Sandwiched between these 2 parentheticals of being

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a good man and a man of faith is this very important descriptor of Barnabas.

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He was full of the Holy Spirit.

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This passage is so significant in that it describes the key quality of this good and godly man that came from Jerusalem to give guidance to the church at Antioch. Although he came from Jerusalem in an apostolic role, he quickly assumed a pastoral role in Antioch. So the church then at Antioch identified its earliest and most prominent leader as being filled with the spirit. And notice that description is right in the center of this threefold description of what he was like. For a church to experience the empowering of the Holy Spirit, it must have leaders who are filled with the Spirit.

Jeff Iorg:

To be filled with the Spirit means to be controlled by the Spirit, to be under His guiding influence. It means your will is submitted

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to the spirit's leadership. You are no longer independent or self reliant. You're no longer trusting your strength, your judgment, your intellect, or your training. A person who's filled

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with the Holy Spirit has emptied himself. That sounds like how Jesus was described in Philippians 2:7. Emulating Jesus in taking the form of a slave, as Philippians says, and becoming a servant of the spirit's desires, the spirit's impulses, the spirit's urges.

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A spirit filled leader is empowered by the spirit producing spiritual fruit and supernatural results. Now, the significance of

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this cannot be overestimated. It's essential because no church's spiritual vitality will ever rise to stay above the spiritual devotion and maturity of its leaders. Now, an occasional growth spurt is possible. You may host a guest speaker, have a particularly moving worship service, perhaps go on a leadership retreat.

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You can have these spiritual surges, but no church's spiritual power will ever exceed over time that of its leadership. The spiritual responsibility to be a pacesetter is a normal healthy expectation of pastoral leadership. Pastors and others in related ministry roles, like the one I have, we are spiritual leaders. Think about that. We are spiritual leaders.

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While we are organizers and administrators, we are not primarily organizers and administrators. Our leadership skills and our leadership impact must be more than a collection of techniques and acquired abilities. We are more than speakers and motivators, influencing people by our charisma or intellect. We are spiritual leaders. We model what it means to follow the spirit's leading, to be spirit controlled, to be in the language of the text and the language of

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the bible, filled with the spirit. So that begs the important question. How is a person filled with the Holy Spirit? Now, when I made my more academic study of this, one of

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the most interesting discoveries was what I'm about to teach you right now. While being filled with the Spirit is mentioned several times in acts and actually commanded in Ephesians 5 18, get this, there is no biblical formula that guarantees being filled with the spirit. Now that's a good thing because if there was a biblical formula, Southern Baptist would have turned it into an acronym, put it on a checklist somewhere, and assign someone to measure our progress in fulfilling that formula. Well, I'm being

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a little funny there, I hope. But while there's no biblical formula that guarantees the experience,

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There are repeated examples throughout the book of Acts of the church and of individuals in the church being filled with the Spirit. You can find these in Acts 2:4, Acts 4:8, Peter was filled with preaching. Acts 4:31, the church was filled with the Spirit during a prayer meeting. Stephen was filled at his martyrdom trial, Acts 755. Paul was filled when Ananias visited him in Acts 9 17.

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Paul was filled again when confronting the sorcerer in Acts 13:9, and it says the Pisidian Antioch church is the other Antioch besides the one I'm mentioning today in Acts chapter 11, was filled in the midst of both blessing and persecution, acts 1352.

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These are just some examples. While these fillings are reported in the book of acts, the process of how they happened is omitted. There is no formula for being filled with the spirit,

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And I've come to believe this is intentional, in God's wisdom, to prevent these formulaic incantations or developing a false sense of what it means to have a pseudo spiritual approach to gaining spiritual power. Look, there's no mantra to chant or script to memorize to having a Spirit filled life. In every case in the Bible, the result of the Spirit's filling is emphasized more than the process. Now again, many examples. The results of spirit filling, the spoken languages in Acts 2:4, Peter's preaching in Acts 2:4:8 to 22, the church witnessing with boldness, Acts 431, Stephen, as I've already mentioned, Acts 756 and following, Paul being delivered from blindness in Acts chapter 9 verse 18.

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On and on, I could go with these examples of the Holy Spirit's filling the results being described, but not the process. So the important insight to take away from this part of

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the study is this. While there is no formula for being filled with the spirit, the results of being filled with the spirit are vital,

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and those results are so important. It behooves us to try to answer the question, how then

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is a Christian filled with the spirit? Now as I've already said in my study of this, I discovered there was no formula, but that did not mean there was not biblical help in answering the question. Principles

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can be discerned from various biblical passages that help us to facilitate this process. As part of understanding the work of the spirit in your life, the following aspects must be considered, and my choice of aspects to describe this list is careful and intentional. The following are aspects of being filled with the spirit, not steps to being filled with the spirit. Now I only know one way to teach and that's in order, so I'll talk about 1, 2, 3, 4, etcetera. But please don't think of these things as steps.

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This is not a formula. There's not a checklist. These are aspects. I like to think of them as points on a constellation. As these points of light come into focus, you begin to see an emerging picture of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

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So what is the first aspect? The first aspect

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of being filled with the Holy Spirit is conversion. Romans 8 14 to 16 teaches this. It says, all believers led by God's Spirit are God's sons. For you do not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you receive the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, father. The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God's children.

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As a believer, at your conversion, you received the holy spirit as a permanent indwelling presence that lasts a lifetime.

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So being filled with the spirit isn't something new. It's unleashing the influence of someone who is already a part of your core spiritual being. There is so much packed into this. You cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit

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if you are not a Christian. Now, most of you who'd be listening to my podcast would already consider yourself Christians, but listen carefully. If you're not a Christian, this passage that I've read says that you are in a spirit

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of slavery to fear, that you are captured by sin itself. That's what's filling you up right now. So if you are converted to Jesus, your slavery to sin has been broken, and the spirit of fear has been shattered. And you now have the capacity to be filled with the Holy Spirit because you are now indwelled by the Holy Spirit. The second aspect of being filled with

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the spirit is surrendering control of your life. Now many years ago, I had a deacon named Andy Hoag who meant a great deal to me. Once when we were talking about these kind of spiritual issues, I asked him, brother Andy, what does it mean to be filled with the spirit? And he turned and smiled and said, it's acquiescence of the heart to God, my boy. Acquiescence of the heart to God.

Jeff Iorg:

I had no idea what he was talking about. Acquiescence

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was a new word for me. Well, I was too embarrassed to tell brother Andy that I didn't know what he was talking about and that I'd never heard of his word, and this was back in the day, believe it or not, before the Internet when you had to go look up new words in in something called a dictionary.

Jeff Iorg:

So I found a big, fat, thick, helpful dictionary and started trying to find the word acquiescence. Who knew that word had a q in it? Acquiescence is a c q u I e s c e n c e. I stumbled around for a while before I found that q. Acquiescence.

Jeff Iorg:

That word has come to be so beautiful for me as an explanation of what it means to surrender control of your life, to invite the filling of the Holy Spirit. It's been an important word to me because I first heard it from a man I loved and respected. Been an important word for me because I like the sound of it, acquiescence. It's just a beautiful sounding word, but I also like the word because of what it communicates. The definition is passive submission, willing compliance, and no word in more than 30 years of searching better sums up this aspect of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

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It is surrendering control.

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Being filled with the Spirit involves surrendering control

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of your life freshly, daily, frequently. It's a willing choice to become passive, to submit, to willingly cede control to the spirit's influence.

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Now I think this fresh submission is best experienced through regular, transparent prayer, not perfunctory or habitual prayer, but genuine, transparent,

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self emptying prayer. Now bowing your head, getting down on your knees, or lying on the ground and and asking the spirit to take control can be

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important intentional external symbols of submission.

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But what we're really trying to accomplish here is the acquiescence of the heart.

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When you humble yourself, admit your lack of human generated wisdom or power or ability or anything else that smacks of adequacy. When you humble yourself and make the this admission, you are putting yourself on the path to spiritual power.

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Prayer crystalizes

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submission. I'm not talking about rote, formulaic praying. I'm talking about crying out to God

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Earnestly, passionately, abandoning all pretenses, praying

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in a way that genuinely reveals a

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lack of self trust and a longing for the spirit's filling.

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This past summer, I found myself in this place. I was moving away from Gateway Seminary and moving to the executive committee and, frankly, overwhelmed by what was happening in my life, the personal disorientation of all

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that we were going through, plus the professional challenges that were being thrust upon me. I found myself morning after morning after morning, on my knees, crying out to God, emptying myself, and asking for the filling of

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the Holy Spirit to empower me to do

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the work which I had been assigned. This is acquiescence of the heart to God. It's not using a

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formula or saying a certain set of words or even praying a certain kind

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of prayer. It's coming to

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the end of yourself and placing yourself before God and acknowledging your inability to accomplish anything supernatural in the lives of any person for which you are assigned assigned ministry responsibility, and instead, putting yourself entirely at God's disposal and asking him to work through you to accomplish his purposes. First Peter 55 says that god resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. There is no greater step than self emptying abandonment of anything you might be trusting in for spiritual power, authority, capacity, or

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adequacy, and saying, I surrender.

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I surrender to the Holy Spirit's power. Well, a third aspect of being filled with the spirit is confessing sin and stopping sinful behavior. Since the Holy Spirit entered your life of conversion, being filled with the Spirit is more about removing barriers to His flow, than obtaining something or even someone new. Now the idea is captured in some simple phrases in the bible. 1st Thessalonians 5 19, don't stifle the spirit.

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That verse is also in other translations, don't quench

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the Spirit. Stifle, quench, they both communicate the same idea. The Holy Spirit is alive in you, yet you have the capacity to stifle or to quench his influence. How so? Well, we go to another verse for some help.

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The Holy Spirit can also be grieved.

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Ephesians 430 says, and don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Now that admonition is in the midst of instructions about managing anger, showing integrity at work, communicating with wholesome words, avoiding bitterness, wrath, slander. Now the placement of this warning about grieving the Holy Spirit is significant. You can grieve, stifle, or quench the Holy Spirit's influence by your behaviors and attitudes. Look.

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Your actions reveal who is controlling you. Your attitudes show who or what shapes your thinking. When you're in control, your choices drift towards self serving, self justifying behavior unseemly for believers,

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and these actions revealed you are not submitted to the holy spirit. Therefore, you're not filled with the spirit. Your actions and your and the attitudes that motivate those actions are a barometer on your spiritual condition. So it is possible,

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once you're converted and surrendered to the Holy Spirit's direction and leading in your life, that you can grieve, stifle, or quench the spirit by behaviors and actions that are contrary to those described for believers in the word of God. And then finally, the last aspect of being filled with the Holy Spirit is accepting his filling by faith. When you pray, confessing known sin, submitting yourself to the Spirit's control, and asking for the filling of the Spirit, no special feeling will not will necessarily wash over you. As I've already said, there is no commonality to what must happen in order to be filled with the spirit. Giving control to the spirit is a spiritual exercise accomplished

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by faith. Colossians 2:6 says, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him.

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How did you receive Jesus? You received Jesus into your life by faith. How do you now walk in Him or live in Him? In the moment, you do it by faith that the Holy Spirit who has permanently indwelled you will also control you, fill you for His purposes. Believing you have the Holy Spirit filling you is a faith filled

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choice. Now while the focus of all of this in the book of acts isn't a formula for being filled, there are clear results of the filling. Barnabas, being filled with

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the holy spirit, experienced large numbers of people being added to

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the Lord. Barnabas, being filled with

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the Holy Spirit, enabled him to lead a church to develop a significant teaching ministry. Barnabas, being filled with the Holy Spirit, enabled the Antioch church to be a model of missionary giving and of missionary sending. Oh, I could go on and on about Barnabas and what he was able to accomplish as the pastoral leader in Antioch, but even beyond that, you can see other examples throughout the book of Acts that the holy spirit's filling prompted people to peep preach boldly and courageously. You see this in acts is in acts chapters 247. You see supernatural activity taking place, blindness being inflicted on people, joy being revealed in persecution and suffering.

Jeff Iorg:

So many results of being spirit filled, and I'll put them in 2 broad categories. 1st, spiritual fruit, and second, supernatural results. Let me wrap up part 1 of the podcast by saying this. When you are filled with the holy spirit, you will experience spiritual fruit. Now the Bible describes the fruit of the spirit, and we know that Galatians 52223 says that we have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self control.

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These are character qualities produced by the spirit. So when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you will demonstrate these character qualities in ways that are unexplainable except by the transformative work of the Spirit in your life. Look. I am very impatient, but over the years, I've learned patience by letting the Holy Spirit work through me. And now every time I point to any patience in my life, I say that's evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

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I could go on about any of these other fruit as well. These things are not spontaneously produced. These things are spiritually produced, spiritually motivated. And anytime you see this kind of life change in a in a person, you'll know that that life change was produced by the Holy Spirit. And then the second part is supernatural results.

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This is God doing things through you and through your ministry context that there is simply no earthly explanation for the results. I like to say it this way. Things are happening that cannot be explained by the work of our hands, that we simply seek God doing things that no one can explain and take the credit for. And I see this happening in 2 broad categories, particularly in church ministry. Number 1, lives being transformed.

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You simply see lives changed, and you see people over time moving from who they were to who they become, and you marvel at the transformative work of the spirit in your life and through your life in the lives of other people. And second, we see the supernatural results of circumstances being orchestrated that only God

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could put together, where God brings about things that you'll have

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to step back and say, only God could have accomplished that. Well, today in part 1 of this 2 part podcast on spirit empowered ministry, we focused on Barnabas as an example of a leader who was filled with the Holy Spirit. And I've shared with you out of some of my research about what this means in the Bible to give you some aspects of being Spirit filled. There's no formula, but there are certain things we can do that facilitate the filling of the Holy Spirit. When we do this, and we experience the Spirit's filling in our lives and through our lives into the ministry that we're leading, the results are in these two broad categories.

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We see lives change, and we see supernatural results. We see God doing things to change people and God doing things to orchestrate circumstances in ways no one could take the credit. Listen. Holy Spirit empowered ministry is not a sideshow attraction. The circus isn't rolling through town.

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Ridiculous things in worship services are not necessarily evidence that the Spirit is moving. Putting on a show, drawing attention to ourselves, or in some way doing something that is frivolous or extraneous to the true transformational work the Spirit accomplishes, that's not what we're looking for. But when we have Spirit empowered ministry by Spirit filled leaders, there will be transformative results, spiritual fruit in the lives of people. And there will be supernatural results, circumstances coming together that cannot be explained by the work of our hands, and God's work will be done. I'm challenging you today to think seriously about what it means to be a Spirit filled leader as you lead on.