Transcription
Welcome back. This is Radical Christianity. I'm Trina Olsen and At the Table Ministries with Michelle Weidman. And then we have Jeff River of Radical Christianity and WW Denali with Bradley Widman.
We've got an action-packed show for you. We're about ready to take you on a journey of a lifetime. So sit back and buckle up because you're about ready to get launched into the arms of God. And He's going to catapult you into the world. Get ready, 'cause the Holy Spirit is about ready to just empower you to do things you never thought you would do or go places you never thought you would dream.
Amen.
Holy Spirit, we just thank You for showing up and showing off. We thank You that You would just light this house on fire for You. Spiritual fire, come down through the ceiling and wake up those that are sleeping.
Yeah. Wake up, you sleeper.
Little joy infusions.
But they're not that kind of sleepers.
No, we're just teasing. You know, there's reasons for people sleeping nowadays.
Amen.
Yeah, some people have to work.
Yes, we're working. We're still working.
We're working.
We're a work in progress.
Oh my goodness.
That's true. Until we take our last breath. Jesus is always stern in our hearts, always growing us. You don't grow too much for Jesus.
No.
Keep learning. I mean, we were in Acts One and I was just thinking about what I learned in Acts One and how many times I read Acts One and here I am again, like, just receiving more, receiving more. So, I just pray that each of you receive as we go through Acts Two and just collaborate, um, what the word is speaking to us as individuals because we've all come from different walks of life and, um, we have different perspectives and this is what iron sharpening iron looks like. This is what it is to be in fellowship with one another and just share the good news. It is good news.
Yeah, that's what He means to share the good news.
This is the good news, right?
I know. Like, yeah, you know, I pray that God pours out a revelation in and through you that you will actually go out and it will be like your brand new car, like we talked about in Acts One. You got that brand new candy apple red Corvette convertible and you are showing it off to the world. You got Jesus in your pocket and He's in your heart and you are about ready to let Him shine and He is going to pour out His glory in and through you in a way that you will bring others to know Him.
I have a question. Why do you got Jesus in your pocket?
I have Him right here, outside of me. Not in my pocket.
I got Him in.
We have accountability here at At the Table Ministries.
He's in my heart.
He's in your heart. Yeah. Well, some people have that little Jesus, you know.
Yeah, I have a little Jesus.
I was gonna say, you were talking about the sinker in the pocket, you know, to fill lead. They have the little Jesus now. You put him in your pocket.
That's right.
You can take little Jesus anywhere, but I got big Jesus.
That's right. That's right. Amen.
So, all right. Who wants to start with Acts Two?
I can start with Acts Two.
Go for it.
Yeah. Yeah, I'll be reading from the Passion Translation.
Speak it up.
Yes.
On the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, all the disciples were gathered in one place. Suddenly, they heard a sound of a violent blast of wind rushing into the house from out of the heavenly realm. The roar of the winds was so overpowering, it was all anyone could bear. All at once, a pillar of fire appeared before their eyes as separated in the tongues that engulfed each one of them. Each one of them.
Each one.
Each one.
They were filled and equipped with the Holy Spirit and were inspired to speak in tongues, empowered by the Spirit to speak in languages that they've never heard learned.
I think we need to.
There's so much in that. Wow.
Yes. Can you imagine, like, being in Jerusalem at this time? And it was a festival. It was a huge festival and thousands, if not millions, of Jews, God-fearing Jews were in the city, but they weren't in the upper room. Are you going to have your oil filled and be, you know, overflowing and abundantly being used by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you know, or are you going to be hearing it at a distance?
Yeah.
I think that's my question. So, they had these God-fearing men and women all over the city, but they weren't in the upper room. They weren't in the midst of the 120. They kind of missed the show, you know. Yeah.
But, but there's more.
But there's more.
Could you imagine a sudden sound?
Yeah. It coming. I think about how windy it is outside and you can hear like the house a little bit. Like when I was sitting early on in Acts One and I could hear the wind like just blowing back there and like you hear that sound coming, it's a distinctive sound. Like when people know about tornadoes and when that sound is coming.
Oh man. Yeah.
You know.
I heard that one night.
Yeah.
Yeah. You don't want the train to come. I prayed my heart is in tongues and prayed that the roof wasn't going to fly off because I was next to the roof. I was in a bunk bed right against the roof of the house and, yeah, I'd be the first one to go flying. And I heard it go up over the house and I heard, the next day, that a tornado hit about an hour away.
Wow.
Yeah. Never touched the farm. I prayed.
Praise the Lord.
Yeah. You know, I didn't pray for anybody else to get devastated though. But.
Yeah.
I like that part of the scripture about how it describes like, suddenly a sound like the blowing of the violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And that's what I think about when, here in our home, that we, when we got saved, that's what it was like. It's just like something came through our house and we were radically saved. We read the word and we believed the word and we know there's more to the word than just, um, I don't know, not doing anything.
We know there's a, we're supposed to do something.
All right. Start all over.
No.
Okay.
That's okay.
All right. So, we were talking about the rushing wind.
The rushing wind. So, that's.
Is that good?
We're in Acts Two.
Um.
Verses, verses 1-4. And I was just saying how when, uh, my family came to know the Lord, that's what it felt like coming through our house is that rushing wind. We received the, we received Holy Spirit. We read the word of God. We believe the word of God. And so we just want to encourage you that, um, in scripture it talks about, "Call no man your teacher, but believe what the word says."
Yeah. Yeah. So, I, I would like that to, um, challenge us. Okay.
All right. So, in Acts One, we were talking about how Jesus went up into the cloud.
And it said in Exodus that, um, that the Lord led them by day in the cloud.
So, and Jesus went back up in the cloud.
So, did Jesus return back in the fire, the pillar of fire that led them by night?
So, and it was on all 120. It was split. It wasn't one pillar. Now it's tongues of fire on every person, young and old, uh, male and female. And there was no separation between men and women.
That's right.
Yeah. And God filled the entire house. Not one person that was waiting for the promise was left out.
Didn't matter how intelligent they were. Didn't matter what stature they were.
That's right.
Yeah. Did you know the word "all" in Hebrew and Greek means "all"?
Really?
Yes.
It means all.
So, verse four, it says, "All of them."
All.
So, if you think like you got to know a little Hebrew and Greek, there you go.
That's the extent that I know because I just know the word of God. I like how the TPT, the Passion Translation says, "They are all filled and equipped with the Holy Spirit."
Yeah, that's good.
And were inspired to speak in tongues.
Okay, that's pretty good.
Oh man. Oh, so, you know, when God filled my car with baptism, Holy Spirit, when I, He saved me from suicide and spoke to me audibly that day, I was changed forever. Like, I was instantly changed. And I got to share this with some of my family members last night, that the person that I am today, I didn't know who I used to be. I can't relate to who they know. I really can't. And so it changed in an instant, in a moment, you know, in the twinkling of an eye.
Like we can be transformed into someone we never knew we were called to be. And now we're learning who we were always created to be.
Amen.
Amen.
In creation.
Does the back row have anything to say?
I did.
Sorry, Jeff.
Yeah. So, can you imagine, they're finally receiving the promise? I have no idea what to expect. The anticipation came and.
You know, like we're having a, like a something special event coming up, but we don't know what the outcome, how it's going to look. We can only imagine.
But the Holy. They never experienced the Holy Spirit. So this is something completely different.
Yeah. And.
You imagine your mind was probably come, it probably wasn't even have time to think because the Spirit just to consume them all.
Yeah.
Like fire. Fire consumes.
Yeah.
Fire.
And I think we said it in, in Acts One, we were talking about like, we have scripture to tell us what's going to happen.
They didn't have that. It just, what you're saying, it just happened. They didn't have a full warning of like, hey, we can read it and be like, oh, they all of them were filled. We know that we can have it.
Do you desire to have it?
And this is something completely new for them.
Yeah. I can't even imagine the power that they felt.
The presence of God that they felt.
You know.
So good.
Yeah. I just, man, you know, and this is the anticipation what Jesus came in Acts One for 40 days, um, trying to convince them He was fully alive, you know.
And now, I bet they felt fully alive.
Amen.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yes. You want me to read the, what's the next section?
Do you have anything back there, Brad? I was just going to say, it reminds me of Elijah when he's waiting to hear the Lord speak.
And like, for Elijah, right? It wasn't in the earthquake. It wasn't in the, the, the fire. It wasn't in the wind. But now we see the Lord imparting something to them, and it was in the wind. It was in the fire. It was in the earth. And it was kind of like a, like a foreshadowing. And we were talking about this before going into this one, too, but like the Bible, it's constantly connecting. It's constantly foreshadowing. Like, Old Testament is constantly foreshadowing the events of New Testament. It's constantly, the past is constantly foreshadowing the future. And how Elijah, Elijah was supposed to be the prophet that returns that makes way for the Messiah to come. And we learn later on, like John the Baptist was the returning of Elijah. We see that in the Gospels. We hear that. Hear that. And now the disciples becoming the apostles are receiving the Holy Spirit. And what, like to me, it almost sounds like something very, very similar as to what Elijah, as a prophet, got to encounter, except it wasn't time yet for him to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
And so it's just a foreshadowing of, listen, it wasn't in that before because it wasn't time, but now is the time.
Now Jesus says, "It is today, the day of salvation."
Yeah, it is. Amen. Now.
The kingdom of heaven is here. Yeah.
Right. And so it just, just more of that foreshadowing of.
Man, that, like they experienced the wind, they experienced the fire, and it it resided on them and in them and purified them. Even, like I think about Isaiah as well, where, uh, he says to the Lord, like, "Purify my lips, clean my lips." And an angel takes a coal and puts it on his lips and his tongue to purify. And the almost like the same imagery of these tongues of fire come down and encounter that touch their lips and what's uttered out is a heavenly language, a tongues unbeknownst to themselves.
Yeah.
In that.
Yeah.
Amen.
Man, that's so deep. Come on. Let's, let's go. Yeah. We want to encourage you. Don't just read the Bible to read it, but to get revelation from the Holy Spirit. Let Him breathe on the word and let it come alive in your life.
Yeah. I mean, just like we started, I mean, anytime we're opening up the word to read it, we're like, "Holy Spirit, show me what You want me to know today." It doesn't mean you got to understand every single verse in there or every single word in there. He'll just like pop out things for this moment where you are right now in this place. I mark up my Bible with different colors each time I'm reading through it and it'll tell me like how many times, like just in this place here, um, I have two different oranges, I have a blue and I have a purple pen, like so that's how many different times in different areas I've read it and it's just powerful. He speaks to you for what needs to be spoken right now in this moment.
Yeah.
All right.
Amen.
Amen.
All right. So, verse five. Is that where we're at?
Yes.
Now, there they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard the sound, the crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard them speaking in their own language. Utterly amazed, they asked, "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our own native language?" I'm just out there a second, you know.
Wow.
That's God. That's Holy Spirit.
Yeah. And I'm not going to try to name all those names because I'm just going to not give them justice.
Yes.
So, we're just going to be in the parts of, um, we're going to go down here to both Jews and converted converts to Judaism. Um, oh, that's creating the wonders of God in our own tongues.
Wow, that's new. That's cool. We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own in tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?" Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have too much, too much wine." Stop at that.
Wow.
There's always.
TPT says, "They're drunk on new wine."
Oh, the new wine has come.
Yeah.
Come on.
True. I tell you, I haven't personally experienced speaking in tongues and someone like, "You're speaking my language," but I have some friends who were like speaking in tongues and then the other person, let's say it's like Portuguese. What, what do they speak? Portuguese. Portuguese.
Portuguese.
Yeah.
The Brazilians, Portugal.
Portugal. Sorry. Uh, no offense. Um, but it's like the lady's speaking in in tongues, not knowing what it, we don't know what language our tongues is, but the Holy Spirit takes it and turns it into the language that the person needs to receive it in. And that lady's like, "I know nothing about the Portuguese language," but here they received it. Or like, if it's Spanish or or Italian or whatever. That's just so amazing. Yes.
I was in a service a couple years ago and and they were practicing, um, interpretation of tongues, which is different than speaking in tongues.
Yeah.
And, and so they were practicing it because if we don't practice it, how do we ever get it, you know, get better at it? That's right. You practice riding a bicycle, right? The first time you ride a bicycle, I think you probably fall off, you know. Uh, roller skating, you know.
I got a message on that.
Yeah. Yeah. Come on. So, this, um, person speaks in tongues in the congregation and I'm like, I'm looking at my friend, I'm like, "That's Asian. That has to be Asian." And it sounded like Chinese, like Mandarin, like specifically. I didn't even know my Mandarin. And, and here this guy sitting in the back, like, "That's messages for me." And, um, I speak Mandarin and it was in Mandarin and it was a message about him and a direction.
Wow.
And I got the goosebumps. Wow.
She got the Jesus bumps going on.
All the way up my spine. Jesus.
Good stuff.
Just like that. He could show up and give you direction.
Yeah. And the guy was from another nation.
Yeah. I like that when we, um, practice activating the gifts that we can have. We, you can have all of them if you want. I, I like to refer to myself as a selfish child and I want all the gifts. You know, of course, I need to be obedient with the ones that He's given me. And, um, I remember the first time and, and I like you saying that because I've really never thought about, um, stretching people in, in activating them in hearing, um, interpretations.
Yeah.
Because hearing an interpretation is pretty awesome. It's like receiving a word of knowledge or prophetic word.
Are you in tune with the Holy Spirit? And it doesn't happen all the time, but every once in a while, the interpretation does come when I'm sitting in church and someone's speaking in tongues and I'm like, "What?" It's awesome.
That's so beautiful. I also have a friend who was, um, on a mission trip with us and we were in Brazil. So, Portugal, Portuguese. Yeah, Portugal. Portuguese. And she's speaking in her, her tongue, regular, you know, her gift of tongues. And the translator hears perfect Portuguese. Wow.
And the lady gets healed.
That's awesome. Praise the Lord.
My friend, she spoke in her tongue and she couldn't speak very well for the next couple of days because she stuttered the rest of the time.
That's funny.
She got so wrecked by God.
Awesome. Love it.
What else you got, you guys back there?
I know, uh, towards the end there where it talks about like people thinking they were full on on new wine and mocking them. And I think it's such a, such a crucial thing, especially for fellow believers, that not to always judge what you see by what you think is right or wrong. Um, I say that in the sense of all throughout scripture, it talks about how the Lord uses the foolish things to confound the wise things of the world. And that's not saying you can't have godly wisdom, but there is a thing of wisdom of man. The Apostle Paul talks about that in First Corinthians and a couple of other places in his letters in the New Testament. And it's just one of those things of we can be very quick to look at something and want to say, "That's not of, not of God," when really, like for the apostles here, they were conducting themselves in such a way that people were able to say they were drunk. And I'm not saying that to be like, "So just do whatever you want and like, but don't without asking the Lord, without checking with the Holy Spirit first, don't be quick to judge what the Lord is doing." Um, my, like the thing that I work in, the thing that I do is in discipling people. And I have seen the Lord encounter people in ways where they've been blown across the room, where they've been slayed in the spirit, meaning that the glory of God fell so heavily upon them that their body just falls to the ground. I've seen them shaking. I've seen them like all their, like all their limbs cramp up.
But I've also seen the Lord speak directly to people as well.
Um, like I've seen, I've seen it where there's a time of worship going on and I've seen people, like a man standing in the back of the room just with his arms crossed, looking like he, he's not happy. And in my mind, like this is just something that the Lord, Lord had shown me just as an example of, I'm looking at him and judging him with my own eyes and not even asking the Lord what He's doing. And I'm just going, "Oh, this guy clearly doesn't like to worship the Lord. He doesn't like to freely worship because he's standing in the back of the room with a stern look on his face and his arms crossed." And so in my own arrogance, really in my own pride, and thinking I know what is best, I go over to talk to him to find out, "Hey, dude, like, why aren't you dancing and shouting and jumping around?" And when I go to talk with him, before I can even say anything other than, "Hey, so what's going on?" he says to me, he's like, "The Lord told me He needed to, as a father, correct me as His son, and that there were going to be hard things for me to hear, but that I need to hear them from my Father." And so, the Lord was actually encountering him in that space. And what it was, is it wasn't actually him disconnecting from worship. It was actually him receiving a strong word from His Father who loves him. In Hebrews, it talks about how a good Father disciplines His children because He loves them. And how quick, like I could have just been like, "Oh, this guy clearly," I was already judging him in my own mind of, "This guy doesn't want to worship. He doesn't want to engage." when really the Lord was actually disciplining His son because He loves Him. The Lord was encountering Him. Holy Spirit was speaking to Him. And so again, I say, I say all this like, we need to be careful not to be so quick to judge something. Look, if you feel like something is, if people are like screaming and shouting and you're like, "Huh, that's a little much," okay, that's fine, but don't in your own heart harden it and go, "That's not of God. That's not Christ at all." Yes, you might be able to say or experience things to be able to say, "No, that's not really it." But that's between them and God. If someone wants to perform, that's between them and God. Jesus is very clear when He talks about the, the Pharisees when they fast and they put on this whole show of, "Woe is me, I'm fasting." And Jesus says, "They've already received their reward and gain the acknowledgement of, look how much they're suffering," right? And so it can be a very similar thing of if someone is just putting on a display just to put on a display to gain attention, then you don't have to really worry about correcting them or judging them because the Lord already knows. So for things like that, again, unless it's something that is completely interrupting, that you can clearly tell this is a distraction from what the Lord is doing, you don't need to be the one to step into it. You don't need to be the one to stop it or correct it or anything like that because ultimately you don't know unless you ask the Lord.
Hey, is this of You or am I just completely missing or are they actually, is this a manifestation of the Holy Spirit or is this the manifestation of themselves or maybe something oppression or a demonic influence in their life?
Mhm.
And I've seen those things. But if you don't ask Holy Spirit, you can never really know.
And then you're caught being an accuser of the brethren instead of a lover of the brethren.
And, and we need the Holy Spirit, you know. Um, I was in a, in a class one day and, um, Roland Baker had an opportunity to teach our class and it was really awesome. And he taught on the manifestations and, and he shared a testimony. Um, and the crazy thing is, while I'm on the floor that day, he's praying for me. I have no idea what he's praying for me. And I go into an encounter and I encounter hell.
Wow.
And I am like, it took me forever to talk about it, but I saw hell. I was like behind glass and I'm looking out and I see people chained so they can't even escape from their tormentors. They're continually day and night tormented and the stench and the smell and the fire, like I felt the fire, but He protected me by this glass. And so, um, when I was able to peel myself off the floor and get up and, um, um, he gets up there and he starts speaking and he's telling about this manifestation of this young girl who is rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. And he said, "I, I challenge you not to judge what you don't understand what someone else is experiencing because sometimes what you're seeing doesn't, it has no rhyme or reason of the manifestation between the encounter that they may be having and the manifestation might look totally different." And so he said, "If you want to know, wait till after they're done and go and ask them about the manif." He said, "What did you experience?" Don't judge them. Just ask them, "Hey, what did you experience?" And he said, "Here the girl, she started to cry and she's, she said, 'Can I tell you when I, when I'm able to process it enough?'" And he said, "Absolutely." So she was just undone in tears. And a couple weeks later, she comes back and talks to him and says, "Hey, um, I just want to let you know, I, God took me through hell."
Wow.
And she experienced hell. So, she experienced the fire of God in hell. And yet her manifestation was laughter, holy laughter. So, was it the laughter that was protecting her from the hell that she was experiencing?
You know, it didn't. And so he ran into her a few years later and he says, "I wanted to ask you, did the encounter, did it still make a difference in your life?" And she said, "Yes."
Wow.
So the encounter will make a difference in your life.
It will, it will definitely.
Yes. That was pretty cool. Just a, I thought I would just piggyback on your, I love what you just had to say there, Brad.
Brad. Yeah, you're awesome, Brad.
He is.
Oh, you got an amazing mom, too.
She's all tatted up here with her little microphone. Yeah.
Got them all over.
All right. Oh, also on that, you know, out of 120 people's obedience to go and wait on the promise, thousands of people's lives were encountered by God that day.
Yeah.
You know, actually millions of people probably were encountered.
Thousands come to know Him.
Yeah.
It's powerful.
Yeah. So, yeah. Come on.
And they all got to hear.
Yeah.
You know, and some judged.
Yeah.