The Spirit is God’s personal presence in our individual lives AND in our midst ! as we gather for worship and for mission. This message was given on March 16, 2014 at New City Church of Calgary by Pastor John Ferguson. For more info visit: www.newcitychurch.ca

1. Keeping in Step with the Spirit
to Live the Kind of Life
Jesus Died to Give Us
Current Series for the Season of Lent

2. Daniel Wallace, Ph.D
Professor of NT Studies
Dallas Theological Seminary

3. “Through this experience I
found that the Bible was not
adequate. I needed God in a
personal way—not as an
object of my study, but as a
friend, guide, comforter. I
needed an existential
experience of the Holy One….

4. “I found a longing to get closer
to God, but found myself
unable to do so through my
normal means: exegesis,
Scripture reading, more
exegesis.…

5. “I believe that I had
depersonalized God so
much that when I really
needed him I didn’t know
how to relate…. I looked for
God, but all I found was a
suffocation of the Spirit in my
evangelical tradition as well
as in my own heart.”!

6. The Holy Spirit is not !
an impersonal force, but!
the personal presence !
of God in our lives.
Review Implication #1

7. The Holy Spirit is meant !
to be the experienced,!
empowering reality of !
God in our lives.
Review Implication #2

8. Tune in to what Jesus !
through His Holy Spirit !
wants to do in your life!
and through your life.

9. The Indwelling Presence
of the Spirt
!
~ Selected Scriptures ~

10. “The People of the Presence”

11. Rescued From Slavery, Yet Still Enslaved
Nicolas Poussin, ca. 1634
National Gallery, London

12. “If your presence will not
go with me, do not bring us
up from here. For how
shall it be known that I
have found favor in your
sight, I and your people? Is
it not in your going with us,
so that we are distinct, I
and your people, from
every other people on the
face of the earth?”
~ The Prophet Moses
In Exodus 33

13. The Tabernacle as the
Place of the Presence
“The Tabernacle at Sunset”
Pat Marvenko Smith

14. The Glory of the Lord
Departs from the Temple

15. The Promise of the
Renewed Presence of God
“My dwelling place
shall be with them,
and I will be their
God, and they will
be my people.”
~ The Prophet Ezekiel
in Ezekiel 37:27

16. image: Christopher Brown
The Presence of God
in the Person of Jesus

17. ~ John the Apostle
The Gospel of John (1:14)
“And the Word became
flesh and dwelt
[lit. “tabernacled”]
among us, and we have
seen his glory, glory as
of the only Son from the
Father, full of grace
and truth.”

18. The Presence of God
in the Church

19. “…you are…members of the household of God,
built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the
cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being
joined together, grows into a holy temple in the
Lord. In him you also are being built together into
a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
~ The Apostle Paul in
Ephesians 2:19-21

20. “Do you not know that
you are God’s temple
and that the Spirit
dwells in you…? For
God’s temple is holy, and
you are that temple.”
~ The Apostle Paul in
1 Corinthians 3:16-17

21. “For we are the temple
of the living God; as God
said, ‘I will make my
dwelling among them, and
I will be their God, and
they shall be my people.’”
~ The Apostle Paul in
2 Corinthians 6:16

22. The Presence of God
in the Believer

23. “The body is not meant for
sexual immorality, but for the
Lord, and the Lord for the
body…. Flee from sexual
immorality. Every other sin a
person commits is outside
the body, but the sexually
immoral person sins against
his own body.
~ The Apostle Paul in
1 Corinthians 6:13, 18-20

24. “Or do you not know that
your body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit, whom you
have from God? You are not
your own, for you were
bought with a price. So
glorify God in your body.”
~ The Apostle Paul in
1 Corinthians 6:13, 18-20

25. The Spirit is God’s
personal presence in our
individual lives AND in our midst
as we gather for
worship and mission.
Main Idea

26. Come together!
as the church!
with a sense of !
expectation.
Application #1

27. “On the whole, I do not find
Christians, outside of the
catacombs, sufficiently sensible of
conditions. Does anyone have the
foggiest idea what sort of power we
so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect,
does no one believe a word of it?
The churches are children playing
on the floor with their chemistry
sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to
kill a Sunday morning.

28. “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw
hats and velvet hats to church; we
should all be wearing crash
helmets. Ushers should issue life
preservers and signal flares; they
should lash us to our pews. For the
sleeping God may wake someday
and take offense, or the waking
God may draw us out to where we
can never return. ”

29. Cultivate a sense of !
the indwelling presence !
of God within you !
personally.
Application #2

30. http://www.artbible.info/art/large/269.html
Ted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frted/8186711792/
flickr images courtesy of:
other images:
http://www.dts.edu/about/faculty/dwallace/
Ian Britton: http://www.flickr.com/photos/freefoto/2747072912/
Brandon MacEachernhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/maceachb/8055580939/
“The Tabernacle at Sunset” by Pat Marvenko Smith
http://www.bible-lands.net/cities/jerusalem/375-jerusalem-and-solomon-what-was-the-first-temple-like
Christopher Brown: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7853490@N07/3531948937/
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/gustave-dore/the-descent-of-the-spirit