Welcome to Studies with Stearman.

Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.

Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.

And now, here's Gary.

We're going through Acts, and I am stressing in Acts that Acts is the history of the Holy Spirit.

And what we find today, I think, is a grand misunderstanding of the function of the Holy Spirit.

In today's world, pretty much everybody has a conception of God's Holy Spirit, the comforter, the pericleet, the function of the spirit in our lives.

And yet there is the tendency when living your life to experience the problems of life, and they are many, challenges, disappointments, problems of all sorts,

spiritual conundrums, you name it, that make us doubt the presence of God.

And Satan would love to play on that doubt.

That is, he would love to plant in you the idea that God is somewhere else and he's not listening.

He would love to convince you that it's useless to pray because God is often another galaxy,

very, very busy with larger problems than yours, and he's not going to hear

your prayer. But in fact, it's much more than hearing prayer. Christianity, from its inception,

was built on fellowship. They started out with one man, Jesus, who picked out 12 guys and he said, follow me.

And their entire relationship was built on a close interaction.

That is a sharing of everything in life, including life's problems.

And believe me, Jesus and the disciples had their problems.

They ran into trouble all the time. And not only did they have external problems, they had their problems. They ran into trouble all the time.

And not only did they have external problems, they had internal problems.

That is, they were imperfect men.

Judas being the most imperfect of all, but of course Peter was an imperfect man.

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