Holy Spirit | Part 6

The big idea

The Holy Spirit's plan A for transforming us is people — real, messy, inconvenient biblical community, not the comfortable, agreeable kind we naturally want.

Real spiritual community is not what we expect: it is not designed to be convenient, it aims at development rather than comfort, it is imperfect and messy, and it calls us to unity rather than uniformity. This is exactly the kind of community the Holy Spirit uses to grow us to be like Jesus, because it mirrors what Christ did when He left heaven's comfort to enter our broken world for us.

Point 1 of 7

Pastor Bill explains that after weeks looking at the Bible and prayer as pathways the Spirit uses, the number one tool the Spirit uses is people in biblical community. He notes the church's 'one another' passages double as the Holy Spirit's job description, and that people are the conduit through which the Spirit works.

Point 2 of 7

Working through Romans 14-15 and the disputable issue of meat sacrificed to idols in the Roman and Corinthian churches, Pastor Bill shows Paul asking the 'strong' to be considerate of the 'weak' rather than just pleasing themselves. He applies this to the modern mask debate, arguing that disputable issues (ideology) should never be elevated to doctrinal issues (theology), and that community means giving up personal convenience for others.

Point 3 of 7

Pastor Bill reads through 1 Corinthians 10:23-33, where Paul says he is allowed to do anything but restricts his freedom so as not to offend Jews, Gentiles, or the church, doing everything for the glory of God. He applies this directly, saying our freedom should never be worth more to us than someone else's salvation.

Point 4 of 7

From Romans 15:2, Pastor Bill teaches that helping people grow requires transparency and grit, what the church calls a 'throat punch' — a tough truth at the right time in the right way. He shares his own transparency about wrestling with the mask decision as an example of choosing growth over comfort.

Point 5 of 7

From Romans 15:3-4, Pastor Bill points out that even Christ didn't live to please Himself and was insulted for it, and that we live in an in-between time where nothing, including the church, is perfect yet. He warns that longing for a perfect church breeds impatience with the present one, and jokes that even a perfect church would be ruined the moment we joined it.

Point 6 of 7

From Romans 15:5-6, Pastor Bill distinguishes unity (agreement on the gospel's non-negotiables) from uniformity (sameness of opinion, including politics). He illustrates with mock 'praise' lines for opposing political parties to show that the church joins together in praise to God, not shared ideology, and warns against letting political fear seep into faith like Peter's fearful sword-swing in Gethsemane.

Point 7 of 7

Pastor Bill closes with a video of a man who, instead of getting angry at a child riding a toy motorcycle across his driveway daily, built the kid an elaborate racetrack that grew until the whole neighborhood joined in. He connects this to communion, saying Jesus did the same for us — making a path instead of condemning us — and that is what real community, and the Lord's Supper, calls us to remember.

Take it into your week

Pastor Bill asks the church to embrace inconvenience as the pathway into real, Spirit-formed community rather than running from it.