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Welcome to the Bridge Church VB Podcast, your weekly source for uplifting and transformative Sunday messages! Each episode features insightful, practical teachings rooted in Scripture, designed to inspire and guide you on your spiritual journey. Led by our passionate Lead Pastors, Archie and Tangie Callahan, we strive to create a welcoming environment that encourages individuals from all walks of life to connect with the person, power, and purpose of Jesus Christ.
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Today we continue the series called Chiseled.
Now I want you to take out your Bibles and turn to Acts chapter 2.
This is the last sermon in this series called Chiseled.
When we first began, we talked about chiseled by the call.
Our second one was actually chiseled by correction.
And correction is very important in our lives.
It keeps us in line.
It keeps us in God's direction.
Then Pastor Scott did a masterful job last week talking about chiseled by failure.
Can you give him a hand?
He did a great job last week.
We appreciate our staff here at Bridge Church.
So it's good to be here today.
We were out last week.
We were celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary.
Man, what a 31 years, man.
That's nothing.
That's a long time, man.
It's a long time of working together.
And figuring it out.
You know, fathers are an important role in our society.
And I've had a great father.
He was a disciplinarian.
He wasn't, I wouldn't say he was the model father, but he was my father.
And I appreciate him.
And today, in honor of him, I'm wearing his watch.
His watch that I received after his death 28 years ago.
This watch was given to him by his wife.
My mom, 1981, it's a Seiko 17 jewel watch.
It was a pretty expensive watch in those days.
And I received that.
It's only my second time wearing that.
You know, the Bible says, honor your father and mother.
And it comes with a promise, so that your days will be long on the earth.
I think the Bible, when it talks about honor, you always honor the source.
You always honor the source.
Maybe you didn't have a great dad.
And you know, the Bible doesn't say honor your father and your mother if they were great people.
Honor your father and mother if they bought you a brand new car when you were 16.
That's not what it says.
It just simply says honor them.
Why?
Because they brought you into the world.
God used them to get you here.
And you are a blessing.
And I've got a Bible in my hand.
This Bible is one of my spiritual fathers, my pastor of 45 years who passed away three years ago.
Last year, his wife called me and said, well, you stopped by my house and I was in town.
My wife and I, we stopped by her house.
She said, I want to give you something.
I want you to pick out one of his Bibles and I want you to have it.
And I picked it out.
So I'm going to read the scripture today from this Bible.
It is the King James translation.
I don't normally use that because it's hard for me to read old English.
I have a problem reading new English.
But whole English is pretty hard.
But I'm going to read one verse, if you'll just bear with me.
One verse, which is our verse for today in Acts chapter 2.
Or Acts chapter 1, actually.
Verse 1.
And it says this in Acts chapter 1, verse 8.
It says, But ye... Look here how King Jimmy said it.
But ye...
Say ye.
Sounded like a hillbilly.
But ye shall receive power at the Holy Ghost.
Notice how he translates spirit, ghost.
A better translation is spirit.
Holy Ghost always kind of made me scared.
The Holy Ghost.
I always pictured fog coming in and all that kind of stuff.
I love this Bible because it has all his markings in it.
And has his handwritten notes and honor my pastor and my physical, natural dad today on this Father's Day.
And I think honor is an important part because if you ever see a turtle on a fence, you must understand he didn't get there by himself.
Each one of us are standing on the shoulders of the people that have gone before us.
And we need to honor past generations today.
chiseled by the spirit is our topic today but you will receive power when the holy spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in both jerusalem judea samaria to the remotest part of the earth acts 2 4 says this all of them were filled with this holy spirit say all in the greek that actually means all
All of them were filled.
Not some of them, but all of them.
About 120 in the upper room in Jerusalem were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit of God enabled them.
Acts 2.14.
Look what happens to Peter.
Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice, and addressed the crowd.
A little over two years ago, I broke my ankle.
It was a terrible, terrible day.
It's always a terrible day when you see your foot going one way and your leg going the opposite.
That's a terrible day, any way you look at it.
Got home, had surgery in a few days.
They put two rods in my ankle and put some, about 12 screws in my ankle.
So I'm screwed tight.
My wife says I'm all screwed up.
Just cutting up on this Father's Day.
That was funny.
I couldn't resist.
But during that episode, man, I had just bought a year earlier a Z-mower because we bought a piece of property.
And I pushed it one time and I said, that will never happen again.
And I went out and bought a Z-mower.
And when I broke my ankle, my Z-mower stopped working.
A year.
So I had my son who went out and he looked at the ZMO.
I said, I think this is what's wrong with it.
I told him to check a wire that was a ground wire from the motor to the actual machine.
And he said, Dad, that's okay.
And I said, man, I don't know why this thing's not cranking.
I couldn't get out.
I was high.
I was high because they gave me drugs from the hospital.
After you break your ankle, you have surgery.
You're going to take some drugs or you're going to bite a stick real hard for 30, 40 days.
And I couldn't get outside.
He couldn't get it cranked.
I said, well, just leave it in the yard.
It stopped in the yard.
He was cutting the grass for me.
It just stopped.
I don't know if he did that on purpose because he didn't want to cut grass or what, but it just stopped.
Just stopped.
So I had another guy from church come check it out.
He's in the army and he works on electronics and electrical wiring.
So he thought it was something electrical.
And I said, man, why don't you just check the ground wire?
And
He checked in.
He said, yeah, it's okay.
He worked two and a half hours on this Z-mower that was a year old.
Two and a half hours.
He was sweating.
I was sweating just watching him.
I wasn't outside.
I was watching him through the window and talking to him.
I was like, man, I was so high anyway on those drugs.
It didn't matter.
He finally said, I don't know.
I said, okay, forget it.
And when my son and son-in-law came over, I said, man, just push that thing in the barn, the garage out there and leave it.
And then I handed my wife, don't ever hand your wife a credit card when you're high.
And I handed her the credit card.
I said, go buy another lawnmower because I can't stand this grass high because I'm high.
You know, just go buy that.
And she comes back.
She comes back with a bad boy lawnmower.
She's like one of them big ones.
Grrrr.
So my wife learned how to cut grass on a Z-Mower.
Man, she looks so good on that llama.
She looks so good on that llama.
And I didn't want to buy a lawnmower.
My lawnmower was only a year old, but I knew I couldn't get to that lawnmower for a while to check it out.
I didn't know who to call.
I said, just go buy one.
My son-in-law comes back over.
It's not my son, my son-in-law, the one that was just up here.
And I said, man, go check that lawnmower.
If you can get it running.
He just bought or rented a house that had a big yard.
I said, if you can get that running, I'll give it to you.
Lo and behold, he was out there every bit of six minutes.
might have been providence i don't know or he might have been the one that did it i don't know he sabotaged my lawnmower because he needed one he knew i was high on drugs he gets this thing running and i give it to him i said what was wrong with it he said man you're not gonna believe this but it was the ground wire it was loose
And I'm not going to tell you he's in the building.
My son's not in the building, but the guy who checked it out is in the building.
I'm not going to say anything.
I'm not going to say I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or anything on Father's Day.
But I gave a $4,000 lawnmower away to my son-in-law.
He must have been praying day and night.
Lord Jesus, let something happen.
I need a lawnmower from heaven.
Hallelujah.
He was praying.
The bad thing that happened to me became a good thing to him.
And he just moved out of that house and gave it to my son who has a big lot.
And my son, that thing's five years old, still working, still going strong, ground wire tight.
So, you know, I just blessed them.
Amen.
I just blessed them.
But how many, you know, just like that lawnmower, if we're not grounded as Christians, we have no power.
That lawnmower had a mower.
It had a mowing deck.
It was beautiful, clean, year old.
But it would not start.
It had no power because it was not grounded.
And if we're going to operate efficiently, if we're going to do what God's called us to do in this world on mission, we have to be grounded in his word.
And we have to be grounded in the power of the Holy Spirit for mission.
And when we look at Peter's life, the arc of his life.
How many of you know everybody's life has an arc?
Not A-R-K, A-R-C.
My initials.
Arc.
We have an arc.
And if you look at the arc of people's lives in the Bible, many of them started well initially.
went halfway well, but only 10% of all biblical characters finished well.
So the arc of their life went something like this.
It didn't just go straight up.
Most of them went like this.
And when you look at the arc of Peter's life, Peter had a good arc.
His arc kept going up.
Now he had a little bit of fluctuation because at times he felt like a failure.
At times he stuck his foot in his mouth.
At times he wanted to hit somebody.
I believe at times, because he had a big mouth, he probably cussed.
But when you look at the arc of his life, you see that he was called out of the old life into the new life.
Anytime God wants to do something in your life, he's always going to require you to disconnect from an old season, an old way of life, an old mindset.
He calls him out of the old into the new.
He corrects him into the truth.
We talked about correction.
How many of you know truth brings correction to our lives?
And Peter had to learn to live by the truth of God's word.
The word of Jesus.
So we see the ark.
We see him called out of the old life into the new.
We see him corrected in truth.
And then we see him restored after failure.
And today we see him empowered for mission.
See, Jesus never told the church to be clever enough, strong enough, or persuasive enough.
He told us to wait for power because the mission ahead would require more than just human ability.
When he told his disciples in Acts chapter 1, he says, I want you to go to Jerusalem and I want you to wait until power from on high comes to you.
He didn't say go do missions work.
He didn't say go heal the sick.
He didn't say go set up a tent and have a tent crusade.
He didn't say do anything.
He said you go wait because the mission is so great.
You're going to need power.
I know you guys.
I've been with you for three and a half years.
I know you need more than what you got right now.
And you need to be grounded in the Holy Spirit.
So I want you to go to Jerusalem.
And I want you to wait for the promise of the Father.
And when the promise comes to you, it's going to empower you to do something.
You were never able to do in your own strength.
I mean, you know, the church, our modern day church has become smoke without fire.
We have become powerless.
We've taken on a form of religion, but we denied the power thereof.
This thing is about power, folks.
I'm not talking about just power to go to heal the sick.
I'm talking about power to break addiction over your life.
Power to walk in truth.
Power to hold your tongue.
Amen.
Amen.
Power to keep from you giving somebody the bird on 264.
And when you think about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit working in our lives is for formation and function.
Diane Chandler.
A former professor at Regent University wrote a book, Christian Spiritual Formation.
And in that book, she defines Christian spiritual formation as the process of God fashioning us into the image of his son through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
She connects the power of the Holy Spirit with
Into the chiseling process that God uses to form us into the image of his son.
Did you know sin robbed us of the image of God?
Jesus came to restore the image of God in us.
But that never happens unless we surrender to the power and working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
You cannot embrace the church and embrace Jesus and reject the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, I'm going to send you another one just like me in every way.
And not only will he be with you, but I'm going to put him in you.
How many of you know Jesus is in us by the Holy Spirit?
And Jesus in us is forming us into the image of himself.
That's what happens.
So it's formation in our lives.
But not only formation, but function.
Say function.
Meaning that the Holy Spirit wants to function through our lives by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians chapter number 12 gives us the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit.
These dying gifts are powerful.
But how many of you know, when gifts were given to men, the whole Godhead got involved.
Meaning this right here.
Romans chapter 12, we see the motivational gifts.
What are motivational gifts?
They're DNA gifts.
Those are the gifts that are given to you at conception.
These are the natural abilities and gifts God has designed you with.
When you were conceived in your mother's womb and you came out, you're just naturally gifted and bent toward a certain way.
Those are DNA, motivational gifts.
The manifestational gifts are in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
There are nine gifts of the Spirit, like the gift of faith, the gift of miracles, the gift of tongues, interpretations of tongues.
prophecy, miracles.
These are gifts, spiritual gifts.
God gave DNA gifts.
The Holy Spirit gives what?
Spiritual gifts, manifest, manifestational gifts.
And Jesus gets involved over in Ephesians 4, 11 and 12.
It says that he gave some, Jesus gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers for
For the equipping of the saints.
So the gifts that Jesus gives is the five-fold ministry.
It's the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.
For what?
The equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.
Right there, Jesus gives us a New Testament gift.
job description for the modern day pastor.
The modern day pastor is not called to do all the work of the ministry.
The modern day pastor, apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher are here to equip you and the saints for the work of the ministry outside of the full walls of the building.
So when you go to work, you're in ministry.
When you leave the building, you don't leave ministry behind.
You take ministry with you because you've been exactly
equipped and you've been deputized and authorized to fulfill the plan of God in the earth.
That's why we grow up in him.
So just as Jesus prayed for the sick, I mean, you know, Jesus did all his miracles almost outside of the church.
That means if you go to Harris Teeter, somebody looks sick and they want prayer, pray for them right there in the fruit aisle.
Pray for them.
That doesn't make you fruity.
Just pray for them.
You do miracles outside of this building.
You do ministry.
You encourage outside of this building.
So when we look at Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2, we see the ark.
Peter's life just not going down, but it's it's Ascending it's going up man.
This is Peter This is Peter that was called by Jesus in Matthew 4 He saw him assignment
Simon, but Peter.
He renames him in John chapter 1 because he sees Simon as a man that's iffy.
He sees Simon as a man that's shaky.
His character is not there.
He says, they call you Cephas, but I call you Peter.
I call you rock.
I call you boulder.
He called him a rock while he was a pebble.
God's always speaking to your destiny, not your reality.
God is constantly speaking to who you can become.
He's speaking to your potential.
He's speaking to the ability of him in you.
And when you think you are a Cephas, when you think you are a Simon, God is calling you Peter.
He's calling you a rock.
He's not calling you a pebble.
He's not calling you somebody that's worth nothing.
He's always speaking to your destiny.
He calls him out of.
The shady way of life.
He calls him into purpose.
He changes his name.
In Matthew 16, Peter gets this revelation that Jesus is the son of the living God.
He gets this divine revelation.
At the same time, Jesus turns around and rebukes him because he's trying to keep him from the cross.
In that same chapter, you see Peter and you see Simon.
How many of you feel like sometimes in your day, you're Peter and then you're Simon?
you're all shook up he begins to speak to him he sees jesus walking on the water he says if it's you jesus call me to come out he says come at his eye he steps out peter steps out on the water and begins to walk but when he sees the water he becomes simon he begins to sink and jesus helps him
helps him.
He denies Jesus three times.
He feels like a failure, but Jesus restored him.
And now Jesus is telling him that he's going to die for his faith at the end of the gospels.
That would be a good time to run.
If I was Peter, man, I ain't dying for this.
Come on, man.
I ain't dying for this, but he didn't stop.
He kept going and he heard Jesus and
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be, say be.
Notice, God could have put the words do or the word do there, but he didn't do that.
He said, you will be.
In the Greek, it's a predictive declarative, meaning it is not present tense.
He's speaking to your future.
He's predicting that when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, this is a command, you will be my witnesses.
He said, you won't even do it.
You will be, you will become what I want you to become when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
Yes.
He was saying, Peter, I know who you were.
I've been walking with you for three and a half years.
But here is a declarative over your life.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be my witness.
You'll no longer be shady and shaky and fumbling.
You will become another man.
The Holy Spirit will transform your life.
There in the upper room, he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
There was about 120.
It doesn't say exactly 120.
It says about.
It could have been more.
It could have been a little less.
But Peter was in there.
And the Holy Spirit came into that place.
And they were baptized by Jesus in the Holy Spirit.
And they received the Holy Spirit.
The Bible says all of them spoke in tongues as the Spirit of God gave them enablement or empowerment.
Movements begin with movement.
And the first thing we see is this right here.
Pentecost turns weakness into boldness.
It turns fearful people into faith-filled people.
But you will receive power.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
And you will be my witnesses in both Jerusalem.
Say Jerusalem.
For us Jerusalem is our local area.
If you live in a community that is your Jerusalem.
If you live in a city that is your Jerusalem.
In other words what Jesus was trying to say at this moment in life.
He says if the gospel doesn't work in home don't try to export it.
You cannot export something that's not working in your own life.
I ain't getting no amens on Father's Day.
If it's not working in your own life, why would you try to give it to somebody else?
If it's not working in your marriage, if it's not working in your home, make sure the gospel is working at your address.
Make sure it's working in your relationships.
That takes a little bit of surrendering.
Come on.
Sometimes I want to attack.
Sometimes I want to fight back.
But I've got to make sure that I'm being the witness in Jerusalem.
Look here.
Then he goes Judea.
That's the surrounding region.
That would be Hampton Roads.
That would be the seven cities of Hampton Roads or Tidewater.
He's saying, man, once you get it at home, you expand it to Judea.
That's why we keep planting campuses.
Because it is a call of God.
This is the Acts 1.8 message.
A church should never stand still and become stagnant when we have a mandate given to us by Jesus that we're empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The gospel has to go everywhere.
Now it has to work here.
It has to work at 3168 Indian River Road.
But once it works here, we've got to begin to export it.
We've got to begin to get it out.
We've got to begin to equip people to take the gospel out.
Then he said Samaria.
Now when he said Samaria...
It offended every disciple because they were taught from an early age to hate Samaritans.
To them, Samaritans were dogs.
They would not even walk through Samaria.
They would not be seen with a Samaritan.
They treated them subhuman.
He's saying if you really got the gospel and you really got the goods...
It's going to be cross-cultural, and it will cross ethnic barriers.
That's why I don't believe churches should be one ethnicity.
Because if Pentecost shows up, if the power shows up,
Love shows up.
Grace shows up.
All ethnicities show up.
Just read Acts chapter 2.
It gave them the ability to go trans-ethnic communication and went across.
into other people groups.
The gospel will always expand.
So when you get to heaven, there's not going to be a white heaven or a black heaven or a Hispanic heaven or a Brazilian heaven.
There's not going to be a heaven for Jews and a heaven for non-Jews.
There's going to be one heaven, one group of people from all ethnicities, all nations, all tribes, all tongues, worshiping together.
If you're going to have to worship like that when you get to heaven, you better learn to worship like that on earth.
on earth right now.
Don't wait till you get to heaven to be trained to worship with other people that don't look like you, think like you, act like you, or smell like you.
Do that now.
Amen.
That's good preaching.
That's good preaching, but I don't want to stay there too long.
Number two, Peter preaches with clarity and conviction.
Up to this point, he fumbled with his words, couldn't hold his tongue, but now he's preaching with clarity and conviction.
Look what he says.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Notice what he says.
And everyone who calls on who?
Who is he talking about?
What's he talking about?
It's open book test.
J-E-S-U-S.
Jesus.
Who was the Lord in that culture?
Caesar.
For Peter to stand up and say, everyone who calls on the Lord Jesus will be saved had to take some guts.
Because he could have been decapitated for that statement.
Caesar was Lord.
And he offended the Roman Empire when he called Jesus Lord.
Lord Jesus.
Because Caesar was seen as Lord Caesar.
He was the highest authority.
But Peter was saying there is something that is greater than the authority of the Roman Caesar himself.
And the Roman Empire.
His name is Jesus.
And at the name of Jesus.
Every tongue will confess.
And every knee will bow.
And confess that he is Lord.
To the glory of the Father.
So for Peter to stand up and say.
Hey.
everyone who calls on Jesus who is Lord will be saved was poking a finger in the eye of society and the government and the ruling empire of that day and Caesar himself and it took power from on high for him to get boldness to stand up in a day which was very pluralistic come on there were many gods many idols just like it is today and for him to stand up and say Jesus is the only way
It took guts.
Took guts, folks.
We live in a very pluralistic society.
You say, Pastor, what are you talking about?
I'm talking about many religions and people believe that all religions go to the same direction and the same place.
But Jesus never taught that.
Jesus was inclusive.
Meaning, he says, all can be saved.
All can come to my table.
Amen.
But he was exclusive when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
What he was saying, I'm the only way to get to the Father.
Every other idol in your life has to bow its knee to me.
Think about that.
He says, if you call on the Lord, you will be saved.
And he wasn't talking about simple forgiveness.
That's a part of salvation.
He says, you're going to be rescued.
That Greek word is soza.
It means to be rescued from darkness.
It means to be rescued from the dominion of darkness and the terrorizing terror of the evil one.
It means to be healed.
It means to be restored.
It means to come back to life.
He says, when you call on the name of the Lord, he'll bring salvation not only to you, but to your household.
He stands up and preaches the gospel.
Now you got to understand something about Peter.
He didn't start out this way.
Peter was casting nets, washing his boat.
Jesus comes by and says, follow me, Peter and James.
Just follow me.
The Bible says he threw down his nets and left his boat.
What if Peter never threw down the nets and left his bass fishing boat?
Would he have ever experienced the power of Pentecost?
No.
He had to surrender his life.
And we see his whole story.
His story is one of Jesus taking a raw human being.
And molding, chiseling, fashioning him into the image of himself.
And then empowering him in Acts chapter 2 to perform mission.
To live life on mission.
The story that I told last night, the men's gathering.
This rich dude, mega rich dude, owned a huge company.
Employed multiple thousands of people.
his business began to experience decline.
It flatlined and experienced decline.
As it began to decline, he got nervous about it.
He says, I got to come up with a plan.
We're losing money.
We're not moving forward.
He was a very successful man.
So he decided to have a banquet at the headquarters of his company.
And he was going to take a thousand of his greatest employees and bring them in, feed them, and give them a speech and lay out a vision for the company for the next 35 years.
He goes home.
He has to prepare this speech.
But as he comes to the door...
His wife says, can you watch our son?
I need to go out and run some errands.
His son is seven years old.
He was going to say no because he had to prepare the speech, but he bit his tongue.
Aren't you glad that God gives us the ability to bite our tongue?
Amen.
Nobody wants to sleep in the doghouse.
So he takes his seven-year-old son.
He knows he has to work about three hours on his speech.
And he takes him into a room and he says, son, here's some toys.
Here's some things that can keep you busy.
Dad's got to go into his office and work on his speech.
Goes into his office, starts writing the speech.
It was a very important speech.
A speech that could either mean life or death for his company.
30 minutes later, his son comes in.
Says, dad, I'm bored.
How many of you have ever heard that before?
I'm bored.
Well, you've got all this stuff.
You've got a swimming pool.
You've got a phone.
You've got movies.
You're bored.
Frustrated, the father took him back to his room and started to thumb through a magazine to try to figure out what he could do to occupy the boy's time until he got his speech done or the wife got back from her errand running.
He sees this page in the magazine of an atlas of the world.
He tears it out and decides to tear it all to pieces and put it on the floor.
He looks at his seven-year-old son.
His seven-year-old son didn't know one continent from another.
He says, son, I want you to put the world back together.
Put the globe back together.
Walks out of the room, goes back to his study and begins to commence to writing his speech.
And before he could get one sentence out, his son comes back.
He says, dad, I'm done.
His dad was amazed.
He thought he had a genius.
Thought this guy would go to Princeton, Harvard, Yale, or UNC.
Goes into the room and he looks and the world's put back together.
He says, son, tell me, how did you do this?
How did you put this world back together?
How did you put this globe back together?
He said, dad, while you were gone, just in a few minutes, I discovered on the backside of this piece of paper was a man.
I didn't know what the world looked like, but I knew what the man looked like.
And when I put the man together, the world came together.
Can I tell you, God uses a chisel to build the man.
And if he can build the man, he can build the family.
He can build the marriage.
He can build the community.
And I believe over the last 20, 30, 40 years, the enemy has tried to destroy godly manhood in our society in order to fragment the family and destroy society.
But once again, God says, I'm building my father's
I'm building my men.
And when I build my men, I'm going to build marriages.
And I'm going to build families.
And I'm going to build communities.
Because when the man gets put back together, the community comes together.
The marriage comes together.
The family comes together.
The state comes together.
And the world comes together.
It will not come together from the White House.
It will come together from your house.
Men standing up and becoming what God has called them to become.
Peter preaches with clarity.
And number three, God uses Peter to build the church.
Do you know God is building you so you can build something new?
You have to understand, guys and ladies in here, God's building you so you can build something.
A good marriage doesn't happen just because it happens.
A good family doesn't happen just because it happens.
A good community doesn't happen just because it happens.
No, it happens because people surrender to the chisel, the call, the correction, responding favorably in failure, ultimately surrendering to the Holy Spirit.
Peter stands up and it says this, those who accepted the message were baptized and about 3000 were added to their number that day.
I don't know about you.
That's pretty, that's pretty good church growth.
God took a fisherman, a pebble, made him a rock and built him a
So that he could build the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I want you to stand.
Just go ahead and bow your head.
We're going to give away a Father's Day gift here in a second.
But I just believe there are men and women in here.
You need to surrender to the chisel of Jesus Christ.
Maybe you've never given your heart to Christ.
Maybe you've never received the free gift of salvation, the free gift of the forgiveness of sin.
You need to do that.
That's your first step.
If you're in here and you say, that's my first step, Pastor.
I need to receive the forgiveness of sin.
My sin, I know, man, overwhelms me.
I know I need to repent of my sin.
I know I need to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
He died for me.
He was buried for me.
He was resurrected for me.
I know I need salvation.
If that's you in here today and you want to receive the free gift of forgiveness, I just want you to raise your hand where you're at.
You say, that's me today.
I believe God is speaking to people.
Believe God is speaking to people.
Maybe you've been here the whole series and maybe it was the first message on the call, the second on correction, or the third on failure, maybe even today on the Holy Spirit.
He's touched your life.
God wants to work.
He wants to build your life so you can build his kingdom.
Lord, I thank you for every person in this place.
God does not heal us for our private comfort.
He builds us for public usefulness and kingdom impact.
God deliver us from the sin of comfort.
God help us to be people that are uncomfortable with comfort.
Help us to be world changers.
People empowered for mission.
Lord, I pray over every man today.
I pray, God, that you would bless them.
Over every father, bless them.
God, where they feel insecure, I just pray that you will be their security.
God, where they feel inadequate, that you will be their all sufficiency.
God, fathers that have been beat down in here, I pray that you would lift them up, that you would encourage them, that you would strengthen them.
God, there are those people in here today that maybe their fathers passed away a year ago or this year or two years ago, and they feel the void of that.
I just pray that you would be comfort to them today, that your grace would abound more and
God, may the words of Malachi come true.
Would you turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the hearts of the children back to the fathers.
God, do that.
Wherever there's family contention, I pray peace.
God, if we can be the peacemaker, help us to be that peacemaker.
In Jesus' name.
And everyone said, amen, amen.
Come on, give the Lord a hand clap of praise.