Hey, church family, it is time for Devo.

If you've got your Bible, it's going to be in Acts chapter 19.

We're going to be here today and tomorrow, and we're going to talk about, well, tomorrow

we're going to talk about kind of the rise and fall of the church at Ephesus.

But in that context, I want to take a look at Acts 19 because as I was reading

through I think what we see here in Acts 19 is what it looks like for the Christian and I put

that in air quotes because I think there's a lot of church people that would consider themselves Christians

that may not have surrendered their life to Christ.

Okay, so what it looks like for church folk to try to operate,

absent the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, as you know, I didn't grow up in church,

but whatever church encounters I had growing up was with the Baptist.

And I make fun of the Baptist, but doctrinally, that's where I aligned mostly.

And it was almost like we left the Holy Spirit out of the Trinity.

It was like the people that I was around believed in God, the Father, God, the Son,

and God the Holy Bible, not the Holy Spirit. And anything that smelled of charismatic

action, they just thought that was awful. And so oftentimes Christians try to operate in their own power,

in their own might, with their own will, absent the very spirit of God. And you cannot read

through the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, and come away with this idea that

the abundant life that Jesus was talking about was you being

a better version of you. But in fact, when Jesus resurrects from the grave and leaves the tomb

empty and then sends the helper, the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost, he didn't leave us

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